vulgarweed (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vulgarweed) wrote2013-12-14 12:19 am
vulgarweed) wrote2013-12-14 12:19 am
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HOBBIT HOBBIT HOBBIT HOBBIT (The Discombobulation of Smaug) Pt 1
Saw the midnight show last night, and I'm still pretty happy. My approach to these movies has become this: I imagine Peter Jackson as, not a powerful director, but a fellow fan (In reality, he's both). He has a huge budget and a global audience for his crackfic. I have to ask myself: do I enjoy the sensibility of his crackfic? Would I read it if it was free on AO3? The answer is yes. I would like to hang out with him all night at Denny's laughing about crackpot fan theories. I would like to game with him - I bet he's an awesome DM. Once I accept the films on that level, I'm happy as a pig in shit, so that's the perception option I choose.
Here are scrawls from my notebook in the last 12 hours:
-- It's always raining in Bree. The Seattle of Middle-earth. Also, evidence from both trilogies convinces me that the Prancing Pony is the most hostile gay bar ever. Petite ingenue twink, blue-collar bear, long-bearded silver fox - doesn't matter who you are, this is only recommended for people who have a Threatening Stare kink. (The barmaid is pretty, but none of the clientele gives a shit.)
--Why do Dwarves keep wondering why no one in Middle-earth trusts them, when they are always - ALWAYS - the worst houseguests ever? They don't know how lucky they are that Beorn is a vegetarian.
--BEORN. I wanted more of him. More please.
--Speaking as someone who has actually had bad acid trips: the Mirkwood sequence got it right. That really is what it's like, and it was creepy as fuck. It was so well-done I wish it had gone on longer.
--OK, I also wish it had gone on longer because I was in no fucking hurry to get to the spiders. I absolutely loved seeing the scene with Bilbo being so joyous in the treetops, finally getting some fresh air and hope and enjoying the butterflies. And I said to my friend, "this will be Bilbo's last happy moment for the next five hours of film."
--Fucking spiders. I can't comment on this part because I couldn't actually watch it. I'm good at not watching spiders. Ten years and countless rewatches on, I STILL haven't really seen the Shelob scenes in ROTK. Valar willing, I never will. I understand there was some really good MF acting here - I heard him naming Sting, nice, and I heard the Ring theme playing, so I know that must have been meaningful.
--the Woodland Realm. Here's a case where Tumblr gifs actually set me on edge going on, because I didn't think I was going to like this depiction of Thranduil just based on all that little-substance adoration. But I do so love the way he was written and the way Lee Pace plays him. As has been pointed out, he is the only Elven ruler still remaining in Middle-earth who has succeeded for so long under intense threat without holding one of the Three. That requires a certain ruthlessness and unsentimentality - and he is also perfectly positioned to undercut the pretentions of other rulers. The ways in which he is wrong are perfectly reasonable ways to be wrong - and the ways in which Legolas and Tauriel defy him are perfectly reasonable ways for them to disagree. There's no villain here, although there is disagreement. He's no Denethor. He's not mad or deceived by Sauron, and he sincerely loves his son and his people; he's just been beaten down into a limited, militant pragmatism that revolves around eliminating threats. I think in the book, Tolkien was suggesting the traditional concept of Faerie here - an Other people whose morality is not the same as that of humans. They won't drop everything to sacrifice themselves to help you - but that doesn't make them evil. It makes them Other. They have their own agenda.
(Can I just say that one of the things I always loved about Tolkien as a child is the idea that human concerns are not necessarily the most important concerns for everyone always? Park ranger's daughter. Nature lover. Grew up in the woods learning to observe all sorts of life forms. Humans aren't even the most interesting aspect of Earth life a lot of the time, never mind the only important ones! Tolkien is one of the few writers who really hints at this in a meaningful way to me.)
--Tauriel. Thumbs up. She's good. I like her. I wasn't even all that irked by the "love-triangle" storyline if only it had taken up less time. (I get the feeling it takes up much less time in Tauriel's inner life than it did in the movie). I'd like her more if her being in the movie didn't mean more endless Legolas. I thought the interactions between her and Kili were sweet, though, and I liked the fact that she was plausibly badass. Props to Evangeline Lilly. Kate was my second-least-favorite character in LOST (JAAAAACK was the anti-Midas, everything he touched turned to shit) but it wasn't because she's a bad actress, ffs.
--Legolas. It's been pointed out that it's possible he has more lines in this movie than he did in all of TLOTR. Not a plus. I don't hate him. He'd be more interesting if I did. I have no feelings about him whatsoever and never have, not even in the book. He's an embodiment of the syllable of meh to me, so everytime he's on screen, my brain interprets it as: commercial break, time to go pee. Except I can't, because I already went to pee when I was hiding from the spiders. (That said, I do find him mildly interesting when he's shipped with Gimli, so I am glad he got to see Gimli's baby pictures, and to have canonical evidence that he's partial to redheads.) I wanted less of him. Less please.
End part 1, goddamn this post is long.
More coming soon, this is only about a third of the movie covered here.
Here are scrawls from my notebook in the last 12 hours:
-- It's always raining in Bree. The Seattle of Middle-earth. Also, evidence from both trilogies convinces me that the Prancing Pony is the most hostile gay bar ever. Petite ingenue twink, blue-collar bear, long-bearded silver fox - doesn't matter who you are, this is only recommended for people who have a Threatening Stare kink. (The barmaid is pretty, but none of the clientele gives a shit.)
--Why do Dwarves keep wondering why no one in Middle-earth trusts them, when they are always - ALWAYS - the worst houseguests ever? They don't know how lucky they are that Beorn is a vegetarian.
--BEORN. I wanted more of him. More please.
--Speaking as someone who has actually had bad acid trips: the Mirkwood sequence got it right. That really is what it's like, and it was creepy as fuck. It was so well-done I wish it had gone on longer.
--OK, I also wish it had gone on longer because I was in no fucking hurry to get to the spiders. I absolutely loved seeing the scene with Bilbo being so joyous in the treetops, finally getting some fresh air and hope and enjoying the butterflies. And I said to my friend, "this will be Bilbo's last happy moment for the next five hours of film."
--Fucking spiders. I can't comment on this part because I couldn't actually watch it. I'm good at not watching spiders. Ten years and countless rewatches on, I STILL haven't really seen the Shelob scenes in ROTK. Valar willing, I never will. I understand there was some really good MF acting here - I heard him naming Sting, nice, and I heard the Ring theme playing, so I know that must have been meaningful.
--the Woodland Realm. Here's a case where Tumblr gifs actually set me on edge going on, because I didn't think I was going to like this depiction of Thranduil just based on all that little-substance adoration. But I do so love the way he was written and the way Lee Pace plays him. As has been pointed out, he is the only Elven ruler still remaining in Middle-earth who has succeeded for so long under intense threat without holding one of the Three. That requires a certain ruthlessness and unsentimentality - and he is also perfectly positioned to undercut the pretentions of other rulers. The ways in which he is wrong are perfectly reasonable ways to be wrong - and the ways in which Legolas and Tauriel defy him are perfectly reasonable ways for them to disagree. There's no villain here, although there is disagreement. He's no Denethor. He's not mad or deceived by Sauron, and he sincerely loves his son and his people; he's just been beaten down into a limited, militant pragmatism that revolves around eliminating threats. I think in the book, Tolkien was suggesting the traditional concept of Faerie here - an Other people whose morality is not the same as that of humans. They won't drop everything to sacrifice themselves to help you - but that doesn't make them evil. It makes them Other. They have their own agenda.
(Can I just say that one of the things I always loved about Tolkien as a child is the idea that human concerns are not necessarily the most important concerns for everyone always? Park ranger's daughter. Nature lover. Grew up in the woods learning to observe all sorts of life forms. Humans aren't even the most interesting aspect of Earth life a lot of the time, never mind the only important ones! Tolkien is one of the few writers who really hints at this in a meaningful way to me.)
--Tauriel. Thumbs up. She's good. I like her. I wasn't even all that irked by the "love-triangle" storyline if only it had taken up less time. (I get the feeling it takes up much less time in Tauriel's inner life than it did in the movie). I'd like her more if her being in the movie didn't mean more endless Legolas. I thought the interactions between her and Kili were sweet, though, and I liked the fact that she was plausibly badass. Props to Evangeline Lilly. Kate was my second-least-favorite character in LOST (JAAAAACK was the anti-Midas, everything he touched turned to shit) but it wasn't because she's a bad actress, ffs.
--Legolas. It's been pointed out that it's possible he has more lines in this movie than he did in all of TLOTR. Not a plus. I don't hate him. He'd be more interesting if I did. I have no feelings about him whatsoever and never have, not even in the book. He's an embodiment of the syllable of meh to me, so everytime he's on screen, my brain interprets it as: commercial break, time to go pee. Except I can't, because I already went to pee when I was hiding from the spiders. (That said, I do find him mildly interesting when he's shipped with Gimli, so I am glad he got to see Gimli's baby pictures, and to have canonical evidence that he's partial to redheads.) I wanted less of him. Less please.
End part 1, goddamn this post is long.
More coming soon, this is only about a third of the movie covered here.