Make-believe that makes me believe we're all doomed

Rating: 1/10 (24 December 2012)

As an artist and a human being, I am truly appalled at this travesty. I mean, this is it! This is the movie that has finally inspired me to create a Bottom 100 Movies of All Time list! It was so offensive to me that I literally feel like I've lost a piece of my humanity. I mean, where do I start? It was one contrived circumstance after another. It was a hodgepodge of blandly-written caricatures thrust into ridiculous situations that were hopelessly underdeveloped, unexplained, and cartoonish (both the caricatures and the situations). It was one pointless Hollywood action sequence after another. It was a hurricane of inconsistencies and pseudo-profundities. And it was all built on a story that should've taken five minutes to finish. Literally, I could've made a five-minute short film with this exact plot, and achieved something far more compelling than this trash, without the aid of hundreds of millions of dollars and A-list filmmakers.
Let's start with the story: Bilbo Baggins goes back in time (60 years, to be exact) and recounts to Frodo the "harrowing" (more like mind- numbing) events of his first adventure with Gandalf. When he's back in time, and Gandalf comes to his door offering an adventure like nothing he's ever experienced before, he impolitely brushes him off. Later, after Gandalf has brusquely shown up at his door with a bunch of random, uncouth dwarfs and used them to invade his privacy and his home and pillage his food supplies and other belongings, he decides, "Oh, hey, maybe I really should go with them. I mean, after all, my life is a boring, pointless scrapbook of saccharine seconds, and I have nothing better to do or think about in the near future than my brainless, useless self, so...why not?" Then, they go on the adventure, which consists of one random, meaningless encounter after another and a series of strange, unjustified action sequences that never once manage to keep me in suspense. Then, the movie starts putting its caricatures into jeopardy over and over again with derivative, stereotypical fantasy creatures that very easily should've killed them every time. Of course, the writers didn't want their caricatures to have to deal with loss or their audience to have to deal with depth and uncertainty, so they just decided to save their caricatures' lives in some laughably implausible way every time they put them in danger. (I mean, that scene near the end where all the caricatures are at the bottom of that slope, by the edge of the cliff, and all the trees they were standing on have been ripped from the ground by the pack of vicious wolf-beings and knocked over, subsequently forcing them all to jump onto the last tree at the very edge of the cliff to keep away from the wolf-beings. Then, as the tree continues to fall over from the weight of all these caricatures and the wolves continue to advance on them, Gandalf suddenly remembers that he has magical powers which include a staff that can apparently light pine cones on fire. So, he starts grabbing pine cones, lighting them on fire, handing them out to the dwarfs like cupcakes, and throwing them down at the wolves, which of course conveniently starts just enough of a fire to drive the wolves back and separate them from the helpless dwarfs, while not starting enough of a fire to just kill everyone. Then, later on in the scene, after one of the most ridiculous revenge-hero ego-trip battles in film history, the tree continues to "almost fall off the edge of the cliff and kill everybody". Wow, such originality! Then, just before they die, a bunch of huge birds that Gandalf apparently called with whispers to a butterfly swoop in and save them.) Okay, who cares? Anyone? Show of hands? I'm hoping none of you are dumb enough to fall for this blatant, pathetic excuse for a money-grab by Peter Jackson and the rest of his merry band of Hollywood thugs. Seriously, if you are, seek help. Fast. Or end up getting caught by those creepy men with butterfly nets who've been chasing you, and spend the rest of your life in white pajamas. Your choice. The point is, this movie had no story. It had no character development. It had no life. And anyone convinced otherwise is just plain idiotic.
Now, for the cinematography. It was magnificent! The idea of filming it in 48 frames per second was a stroke of genius by Peter Jackson. But my praise ends there, as it should.
As for the music, it was copy-and-paste "composition". AND IT WAS ALREADY MEDIOCRE THE FIRST THREE TIMES AROUND, WHEN HE USED IT FOR THE LOTR TRILOGY! There's nothing new here. Some of the instrumentation is slightly different. One of the themes is expanded upon a little. But that's it.
And now, for the ending: OH DEAR GOD (that I don't believe in): Why (if you do exist) do you have to let your creatures be this stupid? Please, can you explain it to everyone, 'cause we're all waiting? This movie's ending is an insult to the nonexistent intelligence of the general American public! It's not even an ending! All it is is a set-up for a sequel, meant to do absolutely nothing but entice the witless, inane, unsuspecting popcorn glutton to shell out another fifteen or so bucks for a ticket, another twenty or so for concessions, and yet another fifteen or so for an unwitting friend, date or family member to tag along. They literally just stand there, look out at the horizon, and identify the far-off mountain as the dwarfs' home that everyone's supposedly fighting for (in the worst pretend story-line EVER). And what do we learn is the point of that two hours and forty-five minutes? Absolutely nothing!
Nice try, Hollywood! Not all of us are as dumb as you'd love us to be.