Film Review: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Gaming … at least this game … clearly develops multi-tasking skills. It requires complex project management and long term thinking. (Piers, like most of his online compatriots, runs multiple characters who each perform certain tasks to help each other out.) If you love the novels, it's a magnificent way to immerse yourself in the universe. The developers have taken enormous care with the sets and the plot details; I enjoy taking regular peeks over Piers' shoulder though I have no desire to start killing orcs.
And it turns out that it doesn't isolate you from other people at all. As I learned last night, it has a democratising way of bringing unlikely people together in a way I can't imagine any other hobby would.
LOTRO is what's known as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, in which a large number of real people, all over the world, are taking on characters and playing together in a virtual world. This is no niche: revenues for the genre are predicted to hit $8 billion next year, and the top games cost as much to make as films. Piers (who, thankfully, paid a one-time-for-life fee when LOTRO launched and is therefore not contributing to that revenue projection) wanders Middle Earth with a fellowship called the Rangers of Artherdain (for the Tolkein aficionados out there, Artherdain was one of the kingdoms of the North). They are people who, like him, run multiple characters and all work together to pursue their quests, while chatting in an open IM stream. Piers had been playing with, and talking to, these people for four years. But had never met them face-to-face. Until last night. When we met up at the Odeon Leicester Square to see second film of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy.
I thought I might have some wild tales to tell. But, a wee bit disappointingly, they were all normal. Nobody dressed as a dwarf, insisted on speaking Elvish or carried a wizard's staff. All were capable of carrying on conversations that did not involve Middle Earth. All had productive lives and jobs. What was glaringly obvious, however, is just how different those lives and jobs were.
In the corporate world we talk a lot about diversity. But life conspires against that. Work throws us together. Our jobs set our incomes. Our incomes tend to set where we live. All meaning that, even without active choice, we usually spend our lives with others of the same professional and economic background as ourselves. And with that comes similar hobbies, cultural tastes, etc. LOTRO brought these guys together without any socio-economic reference point. Bringing me to one of the most diverse dinner tables I've ever sat at.
Joining us was a French-born grade school teacher living in Brussels, an Asian IT student, a landscape labourer and a grave digger. (Seriously.) I can't think of another situation that could have brought these people together. And yet, there we were, chatting happily. I can't say that the conversation would have easily stretched for too many hours, and things were always livelier when they returned to their shared passion of all things Tolkien. But it was a good night, and were I a sociologist it would have triggered thoughts of a fascinating social study.
What of the film?Peter Jackson, I fear, has gotten a bit carried away with himself. The unquestioned king of Tolkien interpretation perhaps needed a bit of questioning. It's definitely enjoyable. A feast for the eyes filled with rich characterisation, and rip-roaring adventure. The acting is fabulous, particularly from Martin Freeman's noble-but-amusing Bilbo, Stephen Fry's cringe-worthy Master of Laketown and Aidan Turner's unnaturally sexy dwarf Kili.
But, unlike the first instalment, I found myself getting slightly bored and distracted several times, wondering how much more of the film we had left. This inevitably happened during action scenes. Four minutes of beautifully coordinated fight scenes, river rafting in barrels or crazy escapes from a terrifying dragon is edge-of-the-seat stuff. Seven gets tedious. I got the feeling Jackson was having so much fun he just couldn't bring himself to trim. He should have. And saved the extended versions for the director's cut.
He takes far more liberties here than he has in any of the other films thus far, something we knew had to be coming when he announced he was turning the slim volume of The Hobbit into three films. This is where opinion starts to divide, especially amongst those like the LOTRO community who know Tolkein's universe in depth. ("The subtitles in that scene between Thranduil and Legolas didn't translate the Elvish properly, did they?" is real quote from our group's post-film discussion.)
As a humble fan who's only read the books twice, I understand Jackson's moves.
There's a lot of back story here about the rise of Sauron (the primary bad guy in The Lord of the Rings) that wasn't in The Hobbit, but makes perfect sense if you look forward to a time when people are going to be sitting down to watch six films in order. Jackson's elaborations turn The Hobbit into more of a prequel than the almost stand-alone children's book it was.
The primary objections are to the invention of a new female Elvish character … Tauriel, the captain of the Elvish guard … and the inclusion of the Elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom's character), with a love triangle involving them and Kili. Tolkien fanatics, particularly men, are left sputtering in amazement. Unlike Jackson's other elaborations, this has nothing to do with deepening Tolkien's original intent. How could he! True. But if you're a woman, it makes perfect sense.
And for this I'll forgive Jackson his over-long action scenes. Because he's given me a brave, sexy, intelligent female character I can care about. And some romance to balance all the adventure. Personally, I'm looking forward to film three to see what happens to Tauriel far more than to see the dragon slaying and battles that are to come.
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