The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Part 3: There and Whack Again LOL!)

Nick: Gandalf tells the dwarves he has to leave them and goes to meet Radagast, which culminates in him saying that there is war brewing, something I feel like Gandalf knew in the forest when he left the dwarves. He then tells Radagast he needs to leave and go back to the dwarves while not having any more information than he did before, but Radagast says it’s more important to face this head on, which is why I thought he left the dwarves in the first place. Gandalf seemed really unimportant in this film and his character was being forced away from the dwarves because he makes thing too easy for them.

Did you feel his character was forced in this film, and the only reason he’s there is because of how popular the character is?

Dustin: No. In the book, Gandalf left at the same point, and we don’t see him again until he turns up at the final battle. But it makes sense what he does here, because it is in line with what Tolkien mentioned in the book, that he was leaving to deal with the Necromancer, who we find out in The Lord of the Rings is Sauron. So if they needed to shoehorn Gandalf into this section, it made sense. Just like how they shoehorned in Legolas, who wasn’t in The Hobbit, in a logical place, i.e., when the dwarfs are captured by Legolas’s father.

Nick: I meant more of the logic of Gandalf’s decisions. He is with the dwarves and then chooses to leave (makes sense), but when he says the same thing in reverse with Radagast, I don’t think he finds out any more information, yet he feels he needs to go back to the dwarves, and all Radagast says is, “No, it’s more important that you go see if the Necromancer is back,” which I feel Gandalf knew from the image on the tree in the forrest. So his decision making was all for drama rather than logical conclusions. So when Radagast says, “Leave the dwarves up to fate,” we get a close up shot of Gandalf’s lovely “older” face saying “Leave my friends behind?”

Dustin: I think Gandalf wanted to confront the Necromancer.

Nick: I know he wanted to confront the Necromancer, but his scene with Radagast in the forest was 10 to 15 minutes long, gathering no new information, and yet he now felt he had to go back to the dwarves, and it felt like it was all leading up to the emotional line of, “I have to leave my friends behind,” considering it was the last line of the scene. I’m just saying that it was a long pointless scene besides allowing Radagast to return.

Dustin: Would you recommend The Lord of the Rings, Part -2: The Hobbit, Part 2: The Desolation of Smaug?

Nick: Hell yeah! When films can be attractive to kids and adults while not be a fully animated film it’s quite an achievement.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Part 2: The Desolation of the Middle Chapter)

Nick: The CGI in this film when in the dragon’s lair is remarkable. The dragon, Lonely Mountain and the vast amounts of gold make the scene where Bilbo meets Smaug all the more frightening. The castle is such an open space that it fits a dragon and more gold than any man has ever acquired.

Dustin: I agree the CGI was a huge step forward. The dragon looked awesome (voiced by Benedict Cumbersome [12 Years a Slave]). Peter Jackson does a terrific job imagining Tolkien’s Middle Earth. I remember in The Fellowship of the Ring thinking the Balrog looked exactly how I pictured it in the book, even though Tolkien gave a very sparse description. When I read books, I tend to cast the characters in my head to help me picture them, and I had actually cast Elijah Wood as Frodo a good five years before the movies were made. He just had a very hobbit-like look to me.

Nick: The films are casted superbly. The things that were concerning are throwaway lines like when we find out that one of the dwarves is Gimley’s father and the way we find out is Legolas being insulting while at the same time actually misconstruing the sexes of dwarves he sees in the picture. There are one too many gags about how the world sees the dwarves.

Dustin: I didn’t mind that too much. I would say for a movie called The Hobbit, though, the hobbit didn’t get much screen time, while the entire book was from Bilbo’s point-of-view. He was in maybe 15 minutes of the 4.5 hour movie. It should have been called The Wood Elf, since Legolas got more screen time.

Nick: I can guarantee that Legolas didn’t even have half the screentime of Bilbo, but if you said Kili, the she-elf, Gandalf or Thorin, I’d be more inclined to agree with you. Richard Armitage, who plays Thorin, is quite a good actor, and I’m a little shocked I have never heard his name before these films.

Dustin: I liked how his character developed in this installment. He is beginning to go mad with greed, where he started out courageous and generous, like Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It starts when he won’t promise the Wood Elves one treasure from Lonely Mountain in exchange for their release, and culminating in him going psycho on Bilbo when he thinks (probably correctly) Bilbo has the sought-after Arkenstone.

Nick: I’m pretty sure Bilbo does have it. He was reaching for something in his pocket, but then retreated his arm when he saw how mad Thorin looked.

The film does have another triangle where we have three characters who are obsessed with objects. Bilbo with the Ring, Thorin with the Arkenstone and Smaug with every last bit of gold. It’s an interesting addition to have multiple characters dealing with greed which is like most Western films, as you correctly compared it to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Dustin: They never actually showed Bilbo take the Arkenstone. It was left ambiguous so when Thorin confronts him, you don’t know whether he’s right to be angry. But that’s actually what I liked, it didn’t matter if he was right, he was still wrong in his reaction, and it showed his greed. I think the movie was very graceful how it portrayed that ambiguity.

Nick: I know they were playing the ambiguity of the situation, but i think it’s fact that he does have it, unless you are going to tell me that in the book he for sure doesn’t.

Dustin: Bilbo eventually finds the Arkenstone in the book, but I don’t remember at exactly what point. So even I wasn’t entirely sure he had it when Thorin confronted him.

Nick: I’m probably being over confident in saying that I’m 99 percent sure that he does, just because of what Smaug had said of Thorin’s greed right before the scene when Bilbo sees Thorin and right when Thorin asks (demands) that the Arkenstone be presented to him Bilbo immediately pulls away his hand, which was enthusiastically in his pocket and his smile fades realizing that Smaug was correct in his depiction of Thorin. But I digress that I’m not certain and no matter what the scene was done phenomenally well because as you said his reaction was not very kingly. Well not a good king.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Part 1: An Unexpectedly Long Review)

Dustin: 4 of 5 stars Nick: 4 of 5 stars Average: 4 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is the second installment in the film trilogy based on a 300-page book. It picks up in the middle of the hobbit and the dwarves’ journey to the Lonely Mountain to reclaim their treasure from the dragon Smaug.

What did you think of The Hobbit, Nick?

Nick: A rare sequel that is better in every aspect when compared to the first.

Dustin: I didn’t feel like it dragged as much as the first. I remember about an hour into the first film, I got up to use the restroom, and when I came back 45 minutes later they were still standing around Bilbo’s hole in the ground and the story hadn’t advanced at all. This time the story moved more briskly, and it held my attention, even though it got overlong.

Nick: Going into the first Hobbit film, I had just finished half of the book for the first time wanting to get an idea of what the movie would be like. The book was more geared towards children’s fantasy than adult fantasy, which made the whole series a little less interesting to me. While the Harry Potter films gradually grew in darkness, we are treated to a new trilogy from Middle Earth that doesn’t seem as complexed or as dangerous. It’s hard to find their quest interesting when its not as interesting as the trilogy that came before. Where I stopped in the book was actually right where the first film stopped. While I’m not sure what was added in this adaptation, I assume it was most of the scenes I enjoyed and the film needed in order to be more than a straightforward adaptation would have allowed.

Dustin: I think I would have preferred a straightforward adaptation. My main complaint about the first film was that the things that were added didn’t add anything that wasn’t already in the original story (see my review of the first installment). Same complaint here as well. There is a love triangle subplot between Legolas, Kili and some girl elf who wasn’t in the book. This was given too much screen time. I realize Peter Jackson and co. wanted to have this to appeal to females dragged into the audience by their boyfriends, and to give a more human touch to the fairy tale world, but I think I could do without Peter Jackson’s fan fiction.

Nick: Although it was a love triangle, it wasn’t as melodramatic as recent triangles we’ve been forced to sit through. The she-elf is forced to look away from Legolas, which helps her romantic glances towards the dwarf Kili. She is also not considered special in the elf world while Kili makes her feel like one-of-a-kind. The film does a good job not laboring on this for too long considering that the screentime is around three hours.

Dustin: There was too much going on toward the conclusion. You had Kili suffering from a poisoned arrow shot to the leg while another dwarf searched for some herb that could save him, Bard the guardsman in jail, Legolas and the girl elf fighting orcs in Lake Town, all while the dwarves tried to force Smaug out of the Lonely Mountain in an overlong scene that reminded me of the Griswolds trying to force the squirrel out of their house in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

Nick: It’s like the end of a book chapter when all of these things are not summed up so it makes you anticipate reading the next chapter as soon as possible. Though the film should have summed up more and left some things till the next film. The first film did this, with one climax and one anticipating Smaug. This climax reminded me more of The Matrix Reloaded where it builds up so much then ends with basically saying to be continued. Both franchises were made the same way, with the two sequels being shot at the same time. When the film ended (for both movies) the audience groaned being annoyed with how much was still yet to be summed up.  The first Lord of the Rings franchise was better at having a large conclusion at the end of each film while leaving enough still yet to be done for our adventurers.

Dustin: For me, none of this stuff was in the book, and I knew what would eventually happen, so I was thinking, Can we just fast-forward through all this?

Nick: I’m happy I didn’t continue reading the book. Maybe the book would be more endearing to me if I’d read it as a child.

Dustin: I think so. I was 10 or so when I first read it. Seems like most people I know who’ve read it as adults didn’t much care for it. I felt that way reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as an adult. L. Frank Baum didn’t know what he was doing. The movie was much better.

Oldboy

Dustin: 3 of 5 stars Nick: 3 of 5 stars Average: 3 of 5 stars (Woozy canary)

Dustin: Oldboy is a Spike Lee film based on a Korean film based on a Japanese manga. It’s a mystery/revenge tale about a man who has been locked up for 20 years by a mysterious jailer and has 48 hours to discover his jailer’s identity after being suddenly released.

Nick, your take?

Nick: The remake of this film had been planned for years, originally with Steven Spielberg directing and Will Smith starring. Since the first mention of the remake I have been dreading the day of its eventual release, but what I saw was not that bad. Though I’m not much of a Spike Lee fan and the adaption was written by Mark Protosevich, who wrote my least favorite adaptation, (yes AGAIN!), I Am Legend. Spike Lee’s Oldboy recreates the story taking out more unrealistic scenes that occur later and adding scenes at the beginning showing the hero’s destructiveness as a drunk before being imprisoned.

Dustin: Spike Lee was a more logical choice to direct since he has a Korean name: Lee. He did embellish a bit on the Korean film, but didn’t add much or improve on it. I didn’t much care for the main character, Joe’s (Josh Brolin), early scenes as a drunk douchebag. It made him hard to sympathize with. In the Korean version, the character, Dae-su, is shown to be the typical, pot-bellied Asian businessman who can’t hold his liquor and acts like a boy. He was a bit more realistic and sympathetic.

Nick: As I don’t know the lives of Asian businessmen, Oh Dae-su seemed like a douchebag to me, but in less screentime, which is always better. While in Spike Lee’s Oldboy, the scenes make him almost inhuman with how much doucebaggery is shown. Gets drunk, hits on business associate’s wife, gets drunk, gets drunk, gelijits drrrrrrrunkk. It’s worthless, but at least Lee tries to throw in scenes and take some out while still keeping the theme of the original story and characters.

Dustin: I got the feeling these scenes were added to make Joe’s transformation and repentance a little more satisfying. But I don’t really feel they were needed. We can just see him a selfish, flabby man and don’t really need to hate him at first.

Nick: The transformation in the original is much more satisfying and low-key when it comes to acting. Joe’s role is elevated to the nth degree when it comes to acting and reacting. Always a grimace, plea or snarl.

Lee’s version does nothing that is superior to the original, but does what needs to be done in order to create a somewhat worthwhile recreation of someone else’s work of art from the same type of media. Keep the theme, characters, genre, and change the scenery while putting a new spin on the story. There are a lot of Easter eggs for fans of the original. I’ll just say angel’s wings, octopus and a tongue.

Dustin: I liked some of Lee’s embellishments. Samuel L. Jackson was welcome, what with his constant use of “mother fucker.” There was also a good moment when Joe is hallucinating and he sees the bellboy from the poster in his room come to life (Spike Lee’s real-life brother). But this version didn’t differ enough from the Korean version to justify its existence other than to appeal to audiences who want a revenge/mystery story, but don’t want to read subtitles.

Nick: What did it need to change in order to justify its existence?

Dustin: I can’t say for sure, other than this film didn’t really find a voice of its own. I’m just not sure an American version needed to be made. And if it did, it should have been different enough to stand alone. I sort of think of this version as a supplement to Park Chan-wook’s film. There have been other remakes that have been good on their own, Sergio Leone’s remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo as A Fistful of Dollars comes immediately to mind. And Yojimbo was adapted from an American detective novel, Red Harvest (a little-known fact I discovered by chance while reading the novel).

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING SECTION CONTAINS SPOILERS

Dustin: I think it’s time to talk about incest…

I have to say the original came as a shock to me with the revelation of the villain’s motive and the hero had inadvertently slept with his daughter. There are a few similarities between Oedipus Rex and Oldboy. They are both mysteries that involve a ticking clock element, they both have a revelation of an incestuous relationship at the end. I think it’s shocking someone would attempt it today, when a small group of right-wing fanatics rates and censores American films.

Nick: It’s just one of my favorite endings because of how out of left field it is, though in Spike Lee’s version I felt it was much more apparent as there are more scenes of her growing up as a child into an adult and giving so much coverage to this one incident for 20 years on the same channel seems way suspect to me. One thing they changed was how he was convinced that this girl in front of him could not possibly be his daughter.

Dustin: I think we both agreed the incest could have been handled a little more deftly here. I cocked my eyebrow and I heard you laughing in the flashback where the father goes from room to room and his kids are like, “Father!” and immediately start undressing. That scene shouldn’t have been funny, but it was.

Nick: It was hysterical. My favorite was the son (eventual bad guy) who smiled so brightly when his father came in the room and enthusiastically tried to drop his pants. The son was about 19 in this scene.

END OF SPOILERS

Dustin: There was another problem with this film that sort of hurt it dramatically, which is that this subject matter is pretty unrealistic, and is better set with a touch of fantasy, but this film established itself in the real world. The passage of time was shown with news events from the past 20 years Spike Lee considers to be significant: Bill Clinton elected to a second term, 9/11, George Bush prematurely declaring “Mission Accomplished,” Hurricane Katrina, Obama elected to a second term. When Joe is released from his jail, we clearly see he has an Apple iPhone (the shot ensures we see it is an Apple), and they rely too heavily on Google for the preliminary search for the bad guy. These real world elements clash tonally with the content and theme. The Korean version omitted real world references, and by simply being in Korean, we are given enough distance to suspend disbelief. We are denied that in this version, and it doesn’t work as well.

Nick: In the original I believe that they also show the passage of time but from events all around the world, like the fall of the Berlin Wall. But let’s talk about what is considered a phenomenal sequence from the original when Dae-su walks down a corridor and sees it filled with his enemies. This might be one of my favorite fight sequences with the camera staying on the side creating a 2-D world while he fights his capturers. Every now and then he has to take a breath because he is getting tired and all this while he gets hit and punched with a knife shoved in his back and he actually feels the pain of all this while he trudges through to what could be seen as the end of a level in a video game. The new film tries to recreate this with actual levels, but fails to create its own virtuoso scene. I was hoping Lee would try something new.

Dustin: I think that kind of sums up the consensus. We keep waiting for something new, and it hardly delivers.

Would you recommend Oldboy?

Nick: It’s not worth the money, but if you’ve seen the original and you want to go see a fucked up movie with lots of blood then it’s for you. If you haven’t seen the original, I suggest streaming the movie or borrowing it from me (if you’re in my neck of the woods) and skipping a film that tried but ultimately failed to create something worthwhile.

Dustin: I’d actually recommend Lee’s Oldboy for those of you who haven’t seen the original. I envy you for being able to go in fresh.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Dustin: 3.5 of 5 stars Nick: 3.5 of 5 stars Average: 3.5 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is the second installment in the Hunger Games trilogy. It picks up one year after Katniss Everdeen has survived her ordeal in the last-man-standing battle royale of the first movie. Her willingness to sacrifice herself rather than give in to the rules of the game have given people hope that frightens President Snow. She has become too iconic for her own good, and must be eliminated.

What did you think of Catching Fire?

Nick:  Vast improvement over the original, and maybe the first movie that I enjoyed more than the book. The film gives a greater depth to the world outside the actual events of the Hunger Games, which is more terrifying to me than the games themselves. The Hunger Game in this film is more enjoyable as you don’t have a director who uses his technology to sap every motion out of every scene when the plot itself is daunting enough. When the character that reminds Katniss of her sister dies in the first film there’s this over-long scene of her freaking out while the score is blaring and the diegetic sound is muted. There are many instances of over-dramatic techniques applied by Gary Ross (The Hunger Games), a director I love compared to Francis Lawrence (Catching Fire), a director I abhor as he made my least favorite book adaptation of all time with I Am Legend.

Dustin: I liked the world of the movies as well. Both movies did a good job setting up the dystopian near future of America. This movie went more into that than the first did, and I really liked this movie up until the Hunger Games part, where they might as well have said, “Here we go again!” The tone leading up to the games this time around is a bit more depressing, but I didn’t like the “Been there, seen that,” feeling I got during the games. (Exacerbated by the feeling that I was seeing it for the third time, having seen Battle Royale long before.)

Nick: Battle Royale is a movie that’s so enjoyable it annoyed me when these books first came into the limelight. Suzanne Collins said she had never heard of the graphic novels nor the movie before she had crafted her stories.

Dustin: I find that very hard to believe. Just writing in the genre, she should have come across it. But the fact that they both take place in a dystopian near-future, feature kids participating in a televised fight to the death with rules to the game, plot points, overall structure and ending, I feel like The Hunger Games was blatantly plagiarized.

In Battle Royale there was a rule where certain sectors would become inhospitable at a certain hour. That rule was missing from the first movie, but comes in here. And by the time she wrote the second book, she should have been aware of Battle Royale, even if she supposedly hadn’t heard of it when she wrote the first one.

Nick: One thing about the series that is bothersome is the love triangle. In general, I’m not a fan, but depending on the story it can be utilized to great strengths. While in a story such as the Hunger Games it seems so trivial compared to what they face from the outside world. When so much screen time is taken to set up the romantic entanglements it takes me out of the story the creators are trying to craft.

Dustin: I agree the love triangle was an unnecessary element. So much is going on, it’s not needed. And it kind of gave me a Twilight vibe. Two hunky guys competing for the female protagonist, while coming off as puritanical and platonic.

Nick: It’s also so obvious in the sense that when Katniss volunteers and then Peeta is called why didn’t Gale just volunteer in his stead. It would make more sense if the man was chosen first, but that’s not the case, and the way Gale is crafted he could have volunteered, so in my eyes it’s his own fault when Katniss goes for Peeta. Totes Team Peeta! Just kidding, they should all die.

Dustin: This movie, up until the Hunger Games started back up, was a very good sequel and continuation of the first movie. A lot of little touches were appreciated. For example, in the first movie, Peeta tosses a loaf of bread to Katniss when she’s stuck out in the rain for some reason. The scene was shown several times to establish their relationship. At the beginning of this movie, Peeta is cutting bread and offers some to Katniss, but she refuses, which has a foreshadowing feel to it, but is subtle.

Nick: Is it foreshadowing or a reference to how she now has so much money and food that she doesn’t need handouts anymore? By the way, they never mention in either movie the winning district gets food if their Champion wins, which is why its called the “Hunger Games.”  

Dustin: There was a line in the first movie where Katniss tells her sister, “Don’t accept their food.” I thought maybe the more food rations you get, the more times your name is entered into the Hunger Games drawing and the better your chances of getting picked. But that was something I connected in my head. The movie shouldn’t make its audience work like that. I have a feeling the filmmakers took for granted how popular the books were and assumed the audience already understood certain things.

Nick: You thought the dystopia was well crafted in the original and yet you have this complaint. In the original, all the characters in the dystopia weren’t well explained beyond Seneca Crane. Effie Trinket and President Snow (Chancellor, Supreme Leader, Fuhrer) are much more fleshed out and given a chance to show their wonderful characters, as well as newcomers Jena Malone (Johanna), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Plutarch), Jeffrey Wright (Beetee) and Amanda Plummer (Wiress).

Dustin: I didn’t really question the Hunger Games title until you brought it up just now. I just thought I had it figured out and moved on with my life. I did think the dystopia was well done in both films. You had the clueless elites in the Capitol who binged and purged while people in the Districts were starving. They were wealthy enough to have the luxury of wasting their lives on celebrity worship. The commentators for the games were creepily similar to sports commentators before NFL games today, how they examine the minutiae of players’ performances, and it all looks so ridiculous juxtaposed to people slaving away in coal mines and eating squirrels and soggy bread.

Nick: But they never expand or grow. There are more people and more scenes explored in the Capitol in the new movie, and gives each character a voice. Even Stanley Tucci gets to have a negative reaction when the contestants all hold hands. That gives him more character because now we know he believes in the regime and is afraid of what Snow’s reaction to the gesture will be.

There were a few scenes of overdoing the drama. Like the very last shot when Katniss is told some dire news and she looks into the camera, or maybe one of the first scenes where she has an episode of PTSD when she kills an animal, even though she had been killing animals all day she freaked out because now it’s finally getting to her.

Dustin: I actually thought the PTSD was well done, having grown up with someone who had the occasional ‘Nam flashback, it rang true to me. I remember my dad opening a canister of Pillsbury biscuits, and when it popped, he threw the canister, jumped back five feet, screamed and covered his ears. It reminded him too much of a grenade.

There were some things set up in both movies that never payed off. What was with the cat hissing at Katniss in both movies? Probably something from the book that didn’t get fleshed out. Then in this movie, there was the creepy woman who had her teeth filed to sharp points, but she barely appeared after that. She was set up as a very scary villain, and then was quickly written off.

Nick: The woman with sharp teeth and the bald dude showed up at the end of the games and disappeared along with two of our heroes but will presumably be back for the last installment.

Dustin: While I thought The Hunger Games was uncomfortably similar to Battle Royale, and both, to a much lesser extent to The Most Dangerous Game, or John Leguizamo’s The Pest, the dystopian world and the character of Katniss as played by Jennifer Lawrence kept me engaged despite the plagiarized story.