MASSIVE SPOLIERS!!!
Let me start off by saying that I’m a huge fan of the book, The Hobbit. I’ve easily read that thing about five times from cover to cover in my childhood so I know it like the back of my hand. That being said I liked The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I’m well aware that Peter Jackson is adding things to the movies that weren’t in the original book and I’m okay with that to an extent. I understand his reasoning for having the pale orc, Azog, as the main villain in the first movie. The book never really had a big baddie other than Smaug and of course he comes much later. A movie like this needs a central villain other than hoards of goblins, okay fine that’s fine-ish. I suppose. Radagast also sat well with me although I will point out that Jackson puts this guy in but Tombobadil is left out of…well what is done is done I won’t get into that.
But you don’t want to hear about the first movie, that’s not what this entry is about. You want to hear about the second movie. The movie where I walked out of and said to myself WTF?
The movie from the first to the second lost something called humor! Holy shizbots… if I had paid for an action movie I got it. Everyone was fighting or running away for their lives every damn moment. I chuckled to myself maybe once or twice, but it was less than the first movie that’s for sure. The air around most of the movie was sinister, foreboding, and action packed. When I think of the Hobbit I think action mixed with humor…
Smaller issues come in the form of Beorn, I don’t know about you but I was really happy when in the first movie the MistyMountain song was sung and there was the riddle battle with Gollum. I was disappointed when there weren’t any goblins signing at dwarves up a tree, but they made up for it with the singing Goblin King. I can deal with that. However the way Beorn was introduce in the book was that Gandalf kept talking of his adventure to keep the bear man at ease while bringing Bilbo and the dwarves to the house in two’s. This could’ve easily brought some light heartedness that movie desperately needed, but nope the movie has the dwarves running for their lives from the orcs, then the bear transformed Beorn, and locking him outside his house until he shape changes and has breakfast with them in the morning. The conversation at breakfast was serious of course because why not.
The scene with the spiders is my next complaint. Bilbo was always more of a clever trickster and not a fighter. We all know in the book he frees the dwarves and leads the spiders away by putting on the ring and taunting them. The Attercrop, Lazy Lob, Crazy Cob, and Old Tomnoddy taunt still linger in my memories. This also the time where Bilbo reveals to the dwarves that he has a ring that allows him to become invisible. There wasn’t any taunting, just Bilbo going invisible and fought the spiders. Then the elves came in to clean them up the dwarves get captured.
Oh look another complaint coming from me coming in the form of a red headed elf named Tauriel. I knew that she was not a canon character and I appreciated that Peter Jackson wanted to include a female character in the movie since there wasn’t one in the book. If they had left her as a woman who can take down any enemy that came her way I would’ve been very happy. What then happened was that Kili and her make doe eyes at each other while Legolas becomes jealous at their budding “relationship”. Does every movie have to have a female character that falls for someone? Even in the first Hobbit Galadriel and Gandalf seemed to have had a thing for each other at one point in the past. I hate that. This is going to play out with the sadness factor when Kili dies! I swear if Thorin, Fili, and Kili don’t die in the third movie I will be very upset. I felt like having the whole Legolas is into Tauriel thing was thrust into my face. If Thranduil didn’t say anything about Legolas having feelings for her I wouldn’t have known. And we don’t need the pretty boy of Middle-Earth in a relationship. Movie is about the dwarves and Bilbo stop showing up in my movie Legolas.
I have to voice concern about Smaug. At first Smuag when he encounters Bilbo for the first time he is an arrogant intelligent creature. And don’t get me started on how
Bilbo’s first visit to Smaug’s hoard the dragon decides to go to Laketown to burn it, but not before the dwarves have this epic fight sequence that ends in trying to drown him in molten gold. My goodness if all the dwarves in the kingdom were this epic maybe that dragon would’ve died in a long time ago. During this sequence Smuag is easily taunted like a dumb animal appearing impatient and easily manipulated.
I wanted to like this movie. I even slept the night before writing this thinking I would feel differently than I did last night The Hobbit should’ve been at most two movies and nothing more.
