Now, in spite of the title, I’m not a particularly strong LOTR fan. I read the books, liked them, and I liked the Hobbit as well, but failed to see them as classics of any kind. Thus, I watched it with a rather open mind a year or so ago.
All in all, I found that I enjoyed all the bits that were faithful to the book, as Peter Jackson was able to awaken the magic inside all those dinner scenes, the banter between dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf and the tension of the very first encounter with Gollum. The scene with trolls in particular was astonishing: I never expected it to translate so well to big screen, and the altered conclusion actually worked, even if it was a little cliché. Sadly, that was the only unequivocally positive alteration Jackson has made.
There’s Radagast, whose scenes simply drag and aren’t engaging at all. It doesn’t help that he’s plainly offered weed by Gandalf in a WTF moment (I’m pro-legalisation myself, but this was just out-of-place and self-indulgent) and it feels openly hypocritical when he cradles every rabbit, yet finds giant spiders unnatural (who is he to decide that their lives are less valuable?). There are absolutely unneeded flashbacks about Torin, full of completely unengaging action and rendered pointless by conversation with Goblin King. There’s another pointless bit with rock giants that only wasted good CGI and running time. There’s the Goblin “cave”, which made no sense and retconned Goblins from small, badass-looking creatures to some fat bipedal pigs that are completely useless and get dispatched by dozens in yet more unimpressive action. White Council scene tells us nothing remotely valuable or engaging at all, and shouldn’t have left the cutting room floor.
Finally, there’s Bilbo with real Mary Sue overtones: he gets to almost-kill Gollum instead of just fleeing, and he saved Torin by killing off that Elite orc with implausible surprise attack. I would have loved it if they had an evenly matched duel, Bilbo’s blade vs. Orc’s experience, going on until eagles arrived. At that point, orc would have had left Bilbo and sacrificed himself against eagles to allow Azog and others to flee. This might sound far-fetched now, but I thought these prequels offered some freedom to provide at least traces of moral ambiguity, yet it was ingloriously lost in what is ultimately a mediocre film.
Good adaptation diminished by Jackson's alterations.
Now, in spite of the title, I’m not a particularly strong LOTR fan. I read the books, liked them, and I liked the Hobbit as well, but failed to see them as classics of any kind. Thus, I watched it with a rather open mind a year or so ago.
All in all, I found that I enjoyed all the bits that were faithful to the book, as Peter Jackson was able to awaken the magic inside all those dinner scenes, the banter between dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf and the tension of the very first encounter with Gollum. The scene with trolls in particular was astonishing: I never expected it to translate so well to big screen, and the altered conclusion actually worked, even if it was a little cliché. Sadly, that was the only unequivocally positive alteration Jackson has made.
There’s Radagast, whose scenes simply drag and aren’t engaging at all. It doesn’t help that he’s plainly offered weed by Gandalf in a WTF moment (I’m pro-legalisation myself, but this was just out-of-place and self-indulgent) and it feels openly hypocritical when he cradles every rabbit, yet finds giant spiders unnatural (who is he to decide that their lives are less valuable?). There are absolutely unneeded flashbacks about Torin, full of completely unengaging action and rendered pointless by conversation with Goblin King. There’s another pointless bit with rock giants that only wasted good CGI and running time. There’s the Goblin “cave”, which made no sense and retconned Goblins from small, badass-looking creatures to some fat bipedal pigs that are completely useless and get dispatched by dozens in yet more unimpressive action. White Council scene tells us nothing remotely valuable or engaging at all, and shouldn’t have left the cutting room floor.
Finally, there’s Bilbo with real Mary Sue overtones: he gets to almost-kill Gollum instead of just fleeing, and he saved Torin by killing off that Elite orc with implausible surprise attack. I would have loved it if they had an evenly matched duel, Bilbo’s blade vs. Orc’s experience, going on until eagles arrived. At that point, orc would have had left Bilbo and sacrificed himself against eagles to allow Azog and others to flee. This might sound far-fetched now, but I thought these prequels offered some freedom to provide at least traces of moral ambiguity, yet it was ingloriously lost in what is ultimately a mediocre film.