I'm still not sure whether or not I'm sold on the whole "48 fps" thing. During normal dialogue scenes in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, I was fascinated by how the frame-rate made everything look as realistic and clear as a documentary. But during the action scenes the frame-rate became somewhat of a distraction. The picture began to chug and clip like a video on Netflix that hasn't fully loaded. Jackson's Tolkien films have always featured some of the best visual effects in the industry, but the frame-rate makes makes the computer-generated images seem...well...artificial. I'm not sure if computer graphics are up to snuff for 48 fps. Anyhow, The Desolation of Smaug is an enjoyable, if padded, affair. Since the first movie has set the plot and characters up, Jackson was free to have a bit of fun with the proceedings. Two of the best sequences in the film demonstrate his trade-mark slapstick and sense of humor that was somewhat lacking in the first film: the battle against a horde or giant spiders and the escape from the realm of the wood elves via river-barrel. One scene where eight Dwarves each grab a spider's leg and pull them off leaving a twitching torso was a delightful reminder that Jackson was, in fact, the director of Bad Taste (1987) and Braindead (1992). These sequences worked because they allowed Jackson to be Jackson. I briefly revisited Jackson's early Lord of the Rings films and was reminded how visually clever, disturbingly intense, and warmly humorous they were. His Hobbit films, on the other hand, contain too many passages that feel like he was simply on auto-pilot. A mercilessly padded action finale where Smaug is almost drowned in liquid gold felt too contrived, too unrealistic, and too forced for even a franchise involving dragons and wizards. It felt unnecessary because it was unnecessary. Jackson just needed to end the second film on a high point. I wish he would have limited his Hobbit adaptation to just two films. There is too much in them that doesn't need to be there. In addition to making the films overlong, they sap the stylistic sparkle that makes Jackson's best films so damn enjoyable.
6/10
I found this second Hobbit film much more enjoyable than the first, although I'll admit that my inclination is to be indulgent of Jackson's effort to make the movies at all. Still, after watching Pacific Rim, I wondered what the first Hobbit movie would've been like if Guillermo del Toro had directed, as I'd heard rumors of early on. While PR is a simple, silly movie, its pacing and visual cohesiveness—despite the busy-busy-busy look of the action sequences (heck, every sequence)—were remarkable.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I don't feel the 2nd Hobbit is as padded as you state. I long ago accepted that Jackson wanted to play around with the connections among Tolkien's works—something T probably would've gotten around to doing himself—and so the new elements don't seem out of place. As for the set pieces, while I share our enthusiasm for the spider and barrel episodes, I don't have the same problem as you do with the Smaug finale. The aesthetic of CGI-dirven films is guided by improbable trajectories of all kinds, beginning with the physical and ending with the plot itself. While a true-to-the-book Hobbit film experience could be done well in 4 hours, I'm thankful that the book ended up in the hands of a director who at least has a deep affection for the source, which is about all I want from a film adaptation.
I, too, am glad that the series was given to a director who passionately loves the source material. But I still think that Jackson has done better work. I dunno...it seems like he did the Hobbit movies not because he WANTED to, but because he was afraid of someone ELSE doing them.
DeleteI think you're right about his motive.
Delete*shrugs* Just a guess.
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