Sunday, December 29, 2013

The Hobbit:The Inflation of Peter Jackson's Ego

We let our boys choose the movie today.  It was between Catching Fire and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. It was a hard choice, but the boys picked The Hobbit.

The movie itself was enjoyable, although the forced love story slowed things down and got really boring, feeling 100% out of place. It doesn't help that it was one of the many added scenes/stroylines that are not in the book.

One of the most obvious isseus with the Hobbit movies is this is Peter Jackson's ego gone wild. With the success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, it seems like Jackson really believes himself to be above it all.  We are getting a trilogy from him that should never have been a trilogy.

I understood going for two films, and that might have worked just fine. The story from the book could have been told in one film and expanded nicely for two. But here we are getting three.  With the end of the second, we are close to the end of the book.  So what are they going to do to flush out another three hour long film?

While the movies are enjoyable, the fight scenes are getting more and more silly.  Now that is saying something with how ridiculous the fight scenes got by the end of Lord of the Rings. It is a weakness that Jackson does not seem to see.  One can make such scenes exciting without over doing them to the point that they are cross that line and end up being just silly.

And there is no point at all in having Legolas in it.  That was as forced and pointless as it gets.

So the main issues with the movie as the aspects that were not in the book that felt forced on us.  I didn't mind the orcs being in a little more or that the dwarves actually go up against Smaug, although there are many parts of the battle that fit with my issue about how silly the battle scenes are getting. I understand the idea of adding some filler to make things a little more exciting and fill out the movie. Just too much of the filler here feels forced and unneeded. I am scared that the third fill will be nothing but pure needless filler, as there is less than an hours worth of story left if one is following the book.

If you know the story of Jackson having to push the studio to let him expanded the whole saga to three films, then you should be able to see where the problem started. Jackson's ego is getting too big and it may hurt the saga in the end. I really do have a bad feeling about the third movie. I predict some serious story issues to come before the saga is done.

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