Only one word that comes to mind as I think about the movie “The
Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”. It is this: bloated. This movie is the second part of the trilogy that has been
crafted out of the prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and it was written
and directed by Peter F. Jackson, and released in 2013. It is based on the
novel by J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit, but while the original was a rather slim
tome that introduced the reader in a light-hearted and charming way to Middle
Earth, a place populated by goblins, by elves, by wizards and dwarves, this
movie transforms the material and weighs it down with a baggage that it all
darkness and non-stop action, stripping it of the airy bits and most of the whimsy
of the original source material. It can only be described as a movie transformed
by a Hollywood spell to fashion yet another box-office hit, relying as it does
on the same old formulas that, because they are no longer novel, having been
used with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, strike one as exhausting. It is as if
the Hobbit were to carry around the burden of the subsequent trilogy, expanded
as it is in scope and utterly changed as it is in tone.
Which is not to say that in the original Tolkein novel there
were no elements of darkness. There were, and we had madcap pursuits and
moments of bewilderment and terror. But overall it had a lightheartedness that
was charming, with a narrator who frequently spoke to the reader in asides,
making practical observations that were meant to ground the whole in whimsy. We
never for a moment thought that any of the band of 14 would suffer serious
harm, even though we could at times catch glimpses of a disguised commentary on
the political situation in Europe at the time. We had only to take note that
the novel was written in the 1930s, during the age of fascist dictators, and
that the work is pervaded by a sort of worldview that emphasizes the value of the
west, a land of civilization and progress, in contrast to the east, the region
that the band penetrate in their attempt to reclaim Thorin’s kingdom. We see it
in the description of the Wood Elves, who
“….differed from the High Elves of the West, and were more
dangerous and less wise. For most of them (together with their scattered
relations in the hills and mountains) were descended from the ancient tribes
that never went to Faerie in the West. There the Light-elves and the Deep-elves
and the Sea-elves went and lived for ages, and grew fairer and wiser and more
learned, and invented their magic and their cunning craft in the making of
beautiful and marvelous things, before come came back into the Wide World.”
Given the undercurrent of criticism directed at the kings
who lived in the east, such as the Dwarf king who unwisely plundered a
mountain, or the menace of the East, the disembodied spirit of Sauron, one
can’t help but see in them a premonition of war. But this came later, and did not color or
dominate the whole novel the way it does in this Jackson movie adaptation,
where apparently somberness of tone is necessary to achieve the sense of scale
that is equated with grandeur and wonder, something which wasn’t really the
case in the movie, which was more of a caper, frequently emphasizing comic
notes in the charming interaction of this band of adventurers.
Here, what we have in this second movie trilogy is a story unto
which has been grafted the epic scale of the trilogy that was to come, The Lord
of the Rings. The adventures described
now have an epic quality, and there is a mood of seriousness, a heightening of
dramatic impact, a banging as it were on the heavy drums where before we had the
lightness of a charming fable told amidst the high-pitched notes of a reed
flute. The movie accentuates the bombast, with plenty of brooding characters, and
with a scale that doesn’t match the intimacy of what was evident in the
original material. We have somber counselors, and a dwarfish Lothario who seems
to fall for an Elvish maid, and a misguided Elvish king who has no compunction
about torturing orcs or sneering at other races. And we have the familiar brand
of villains, the anonymous hordes of orcs and goblins and evil spirits, who are
always vowing to kill to the accompaniment of swirling dark music. They sneer
and grimace and threaten in this accentuation of the one note of menace, while
in the original novel at least the monsters (such as the trolls or the wood
spiders) are seen to converse and joke amongst themselves as any old hunter
might be at the capture of their prey. They have been simplified in this movie
adaptation, in other words.
It seems to me that the Hobbit was not meant to assume such
epic garb. It always struck me as a story to be read by a kindly old grandfather
to a child on cold winter nights, a story with a lightness of character that
was also, perhaps, edifying, in a way that was common for modern day fairy
tales and not the brutal and scary way of old European folktales. What is
fantasy but a travelogue through a metaphorical dream landscape, one that isn’t
too unsettling or unrecognizable but, instead, upholds a certain comfortable moral
framework? Innocent and long-suffering youth prevails, with the help of magical
aides or their own luck, and their oppressors are punished suitably in a reaffirmation
of our beliefs.
Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings adaptation was acclaimed
by fans as true to the spirit of the original, and his storytelling was
vigorous, matching the more somber note of the literary work while highlighting
those deeply-felt and innocent personal notes that provided such an effective
contrast in scale between the endless succession of battles (army after army of
orcs and eastern hordes besieging the fair westerners) and the personal
struggles of Frodo and Samwise as they trekked into Mordor on an impossible
quest.This emotional resonance was not overpowered by the scale, but majestic
and sweeping vistas were complemented by the personal interactions, and Peter
Jackson captured them effectively in his movie trilogy. But it seems to be next
to impossible to weave the same spell more than once.
One couldn’t help but be bewildered and also disappointed by
the incorporation of so much filler material that has been written by Jackson
and his fellow co-writers to “flesh out” this epic. We have now storylines that
take liberties and transform the original work beyond all recognition, refashioning
and stuffing it so that it becomes an exercise in excess. For example, we see
it in the episode with Beorn, the man-bear who lives out in the wild.
As portrayed in the movie, he has become another sulking survivor,
the last of a dying breed, who doesn’t smile and seems tortured by his past. He
is first seen in bear form, pursuing Gandalf and the adventurers as they flee,
and is at the point of snapping his jaws on them if not for a fortuitous burst
of speed. It is menace that is accentuated, and this menace continues when he
assumes human form and reluctantly agrees to help them. But this wasn’t the
Beorn that I remembered from the book.
As I thought about it, I came to the realization that almost
all the male figures in this movie fit into the mold of tortured and sulking
individuals, broadcasting their self-involvement in a stylistic exercise that
is repeated over and over in modern culture and the romantic elevation of the
misfit and the loner. They don’t seem to laugh, they are always brooding,
always making plans for revenge, always on the defensive, always with the
metaphorical wall drawn up, and with none of the openness I remember from the
novel. Here is his first appearance in the novel:
“Ugh! Here they are!” he said to the horses. “They don’t
look dangerous. You can be off!” He laughed a great rolling laugh, put down his
axe and came forward. “
He laughs, he chats with the dwarves and the wizard, he
seems amiable beneath a gruff exterior. In the movie, he scowls and stars and
never laughs, and he only agrees to help them because he despises them less
than he despises the orcs that are hunting them. And except for Bilbo and
Gandalf, all the other male leads seem to share in varying degrees with these
qualities. From Beorn to Thorin to the Elf King to Legolas to the Smuggler of
Lake Town, they all come from the same mold: embittered men who engage in an
excess of Sturm and Drang. They are outsiders, they have been wronged and they
are single minded in their relentless emoting of their anger.
The pacing of this movie also seems wrong, and draws much
from Jackson’s first movie trilogy. We have peril succeeding peril in a nonstop
sequence, where each escape seems more unlikely than the former, but in action
sequences that are drawn out, long and frequently exhausting. The pacing is
relentless, and it numbs the mind with its repetition. We see it over and over:
encounters with trolls, with goblins, with orcs, with Beorn, with elves, with
humans, and with the dragon Smaug. Orcs head are parted from their bodies with
singular ease, as if they weren’t hardened warriors, and were instead what they
are: expendable elements in a monotonous narrative sequence. We saw it in the
first movie from this trilogy, and we see it over and over in this movie, a
pacing that seems to be very much in line with a Hollywood action movie formulas
that are calculated to appeal to adolescent male audiences, where the meal that
is the movie consists not of a sequence of subtly varying courses that
complement each other, but is instead a buffet of adrenaline spiced action. It
is fast food for the masses, all fat and salt but with little nutritional
value.
Now, in the literary source, the elves were portrayed as fey
creatures, ones who had an otherworldly edge to them but who were also
characterized by having a certain quality of whimsy or, if one could express it
with another word, a joyous humor. In the book they are chanting fey songs, and
while the lyrics were not epic poetry, they did at least suggest another side
to the elves:
“Hmmm! It smells like elves!”, thought Bilbo, and he looked
up at the stars. They were burning bright and blue. Just then there came a
burst of song like laughter in the trees:
O! What are you doing,
And where are you going?
Your ponies need shoeing!
The river is flowing!
O! tra-la-la-lally
Here down in the valley!
Which is quite a contrast with the elves in the movie, who
are all menace and pent-up energy waiting to be unleashed. How easily the elves
slay orcs, without any moral compunction! Elves such as Legolas and the female
Elvish warrior perform impossible physical leaps, changing direction in midair
in the best tradition of Hong Kong kung-fu epics, as if they are weightless,
while also able strangely enough to perform herculean feats of strength. They
fight without getting tired, they never miss when they shoot their weapons,
they have the visual acuity of the Hubble telescope and they can meld into the
background instantaneously. And did I mention that they have no compunction
about killing and torturing orcs? Where is the innocence of these elves?
They are, of course, a nightmare vision of the superman, the
superior race that can kill without compunction, and who can have any
compassion for orcs when they are so manifestly ugly and deformed and stunted
and hardly even look like anorexic runway models the way the elves do? To hark
back to the example of high school, they definitely occupy the haughty upper
echelons, so self-centered, so casual in their dismissal of the lower classes,
able to preen and maybe even a touch arrogant. They are not like the elves
described in Tolkein’s novel, I must repeat. These elves are hard to admire,
and if called upon to sum them up in a telling phrase, I would call them the
stormtroopers for the west, a dark fantasy of power.
There are notes of melodrama in this adaptation by Jackson.
They remind me of what I saw in Dickens or in Balzac, with characters who are
scrambling in a new social and economic order, where if the realist novel of
the 19th century involved an incorporation of the conflicts of social
class and the ascension of the bourgeoisie into literature, we have now a more
disguised version of this same story, where the dwarves are the working classes
on the move, and the elites are groups who have their own enduring cultural
capital, able to set the aspirational norms for the others, the perfect taste,
the perfect fashion, the perfect manners (even if underneath they are all
menace), while the orcs are little more than slaves, the endless supply of
soldiers and warriors or colonial subjects. Is it any wonder then that they
resist this colonial order? Is not Sauron the Spartacus of Middle Earth?
The wonder quotient was also severely lacking in this film.
It was present in the first Lord of the Rings, in the innocence for example of
the country fair where the hobbits were allowed to roam and enjoy an honest
evening, with hobbits involved in innocent shenanigans that provided a moment
of respite from the serious and somber overtones of the latter half of the
work. Here, everything seems so much heavier, a continual clanking noise where
the lighter notes are absent. The visual landscapes are beautiful, painterly in
their scope and impact, but they accentuate the note of artificial excess. They
remind me of Disneyland and the concept of simulacrums. They are so purified
that they seem to bear little relation to the actual thing, and have become entities
in themselves, imaginary landscapes that just don’t seem to satisfy us because
they are too pretty, they are too magnificent, they are too much.
One is left anticipating, of course, the point of culmination
in this film, that of the encounter with Smaug. The encounter rings hallow, not
for the sequence in which the Hobbit and the dragon engage in verbal foreplay,
but because of what comes after: another
bloated action sequence.
The Smaug of the movie has all the bad habits of B-level movie
villains, namely, he loves to blather too much. This recurring motif, of course, is a device that
is meant to prolong suspense in order to provide an opening for the eventual
release of these pent-up energies. When we postpone the moment of confrontation,
but without diminishing or resolving the element of danger, we have suspense,
but one can’t help but think, over and over, that Smaug must surely be too
clever for that plot-worn device. It is, nonetheless, refreshing in the book, a
sequence to be savored, for it highlights what is improbable, but invests it
with charm. Bilbo the reluctant thief is
engaging in the only form of combat he can hope to engage in when confronting a
massive and dangerous dragon: verbal wordplay. We relish this turning of the
scales (pun intended) as the underdog, an undersized and reluctant hero,
confronts the despoiler of the kingdom of the Dwarves, the killer of legions, a
dragon who for all his might is rather silly. This sequence is narrated with
charm, but in the movie, we have another extended action sequence in which
Bilbo struggles to get away, and in which he and the band of dwarves are
involved in a Rubik’s cube sequence in which they try (unsuccessfully)to kill
the dragon. One misses the narrative pleasure of the book that need not linger
in such detail on these sequences.
The film ends with a cliffhanger. Gandalf is in peril, for
he has been captured by the shadow, the prefiguration of Sauron. The dwarves
are in the mountain, having made another miraculous escape, while Smaug bursts
out and is flying like a malevolent bullet train with no brakes to smash into
the small port village (Lake Town) where another hero, the smuggler, awaits to
kill him with the last arrow at his disposal.
We know what will happen. It will be drawn out, and filled with
overwrought elements, and be paced in accordance with the needs and expectations
of an adolescent audience that has been raised on a steady diet of vapid
superhero movies and hyper-violent videogames. It will be another bloated spectacle
filled with the air of inevitability, ready yet to shatter another beloved work
from my childhood.
Copyright 2014 (C) Oscar G. Romero
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