The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

The map within the frontispiece of this film should read, “Here There Be Bloat.” Again, the tidy little story gets the stretched out treatment. The result might be more impressive for someone completely unaware of the original book. Perhaps. For the long-time fan, the result is much more problematic. The initiated viewer is constantly aware of how much story stretching is going on, of how much of what he’s seeing is not in the original tale. That’s distracting, if nothing else, and negatively impacts the viewer’s experience. Ironically, then, this is probably a movie that one would only recommend to die-hard fans--exactly the people who will be most annoyed by the story manipulations. What’s done is done, but the “three movie arc” decision really was a huge mistake.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Boy is this thing bloated. As if there were any doubt, this shows that this is a story that could easily have been told in one movie; perhaps a long movie, to get every rich detail, but one movie nevertheless. Instead, out of obvious and pure greed, the producers decided to stretch the thing out into three movies, mostly by stuffing into the proceedings every drop of backstory and subtext that could be mined from Tolkien’s original tale. The burdens of that approach are apparent: a great deal of expansion on the tangential concern about the Necromancer (Sauron, for those who only saw the previous movies), none of which matches the tone of the actual, by-the-book story at all. The resulting film is discordant and needlessly uneven. But, then again, there are moments of brilliance here: the Riddles in the Dark episode is flawlessly presented, and the (first) rescue by the eagles is an amazing sequence. There’s no point in denying yourself, if you’re a fan; go ahead and watch this flick (and the upcoming two). Just don’t reward the greed by spending a dime on it; get the disc from the damn library.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

They got it mostly right, veering off from the hard and true only in little, forgivable touches. Most impressive of all, the spectacle never really overwhelms the "human" story; the emotions are present and true. A bang up way to end a three-year-long, wild and exciting ride.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

That PURR is perilously close to a MEOW. The movie still rates as a positive viewing experience, with brilliant visualizations, impressive scenery and composition, eye-catching battle scenes, wonderfully strong characters--including the astounding presentation of Sméagol-Gollum--and some very nice allegorical touches (I particularly dig the "Nature fighting back" undercurrent of the Ent storyline). Despite all of those pluses, there are a number of divergences from the written story which are distracting and disappointing; unlike in TFOTR, where the differences are more "complimentary," filling in the gaps in the narrative, this movie's alterations fundamentally change several characters and their motivations, uniformly for the worse. It's still a good movie, but it comes alarmingly close to being less than its potential.

The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring

Upon a second viewing I conclude that this film is indeed as good as I originally thought. The differences from Tolkien's story don't deviate so much as fill in the blanks. The only negative note: Cate Blanchett is awful as Galadriel.