In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit

Rating: Null/10 (26 January 2015)

John Tolkien wrote "The Hobbit" in 1937, an epic adventure set in the mythical world of Middle Earth. Director Peter Jackson would adapt the novel in 2012, turning it into a series of three feature films.
The first film in the series, "An Unexpected Journey" (2012) stars Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins. Bilbo's a hobbit, a pint-sized creature with giant feet. Bilbo joins a band of dwarfs, a funny group of bearded warriors led by King Thorin (Richard Armitage). Thorin's journeying to Erebor, where a giant dragon, Smaug, lords over an ancient dwarf kingdom. Thorin wants to reclaim this kingdom. To do so, he must kill Smaug.
Tolkien's dwarfs, borne of twelve tribes, each banished from the same homeland, were inspired by the Israelites of the Old Testament. Conforming to old Jewish stereotypes, they are thus greedy, big-nosed and obsessed with money, gold and meticulous bookkeeping. These are attributes which hobbits, good natured and humble, do not possess. Indeed, Bilbo was assigned to this quest by the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) precisely because hobbits are less prone to the temptations that befall others.
Nothing much happens in "Journey". Despite its gargantuan running time, the film simply watches as our heroes amble from point A to B. Along the way they randomly encounter various monsters, whom they battle or flee. Like Jackson's original "Lord of the Rings Trilogy", the film's plot mostly feels like an excuse to pile one battle or sub-quest upon the other. As this is what epic fantasy literature has essentially always been like, and as Jackson obviously adores his source material, the film's arbitrariness never becomes too troublesome. Jackson's touch is mostly light, playful and personal.
"Journey" ends with Bilbo discovering a magical ring. This ring, created by the Dark Lord Sauron, was designed to corrupt the inhabitants of Middle Earth and so push the world into utter chaos. With Middle Earth's various factions at war with one another, Sauron hopes to descend, conquer and reign supreme.
The second film in the series, "The Desolation of Smaug" (2013) opens with our heroes fleeing Sauron's goblin armies. The film's thin plot once again finds our heroes battling arbitrarily conjured up CGI monsters. Assisting them are a group of elves, led by the elf warriors Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) and Legolas (Orlando Bloom). Essentially vain fashion models, elves look down upon all other creatures in Middle Earth. Scratch their pompous facades, though, and the elves reveal a compassionate and sacrificial streak. With the grace of ballerinas and the combat skills of Jackie Chan, Legolas and Tauriel risk life and limb for our heroes.
"Desolation" is packed with cool sequences. Jackson treats us to a battle with giant spiders, an escape from an elf encampment and finally a journey into Laketown. A cross between Venice and a Medieval village, Laketown brims with fun set design. Here our heroes meet Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans), a member of a human tribe ravaged by the dragon Smaug. "Desolation" climaxes with Bilbo and his buddies journeying into Erebor and confronting Smaug, who sleeps upon mountains of gold. Awesomeness ensues.
The last film in the series, "The Battle of the Five Armies" (2014) finds King Thorin retaking Erebor, only to find human and elf armies at his doorstep, all demanding their fair share of the treasures stored within. As King Thorin is a greedy jerk who increasingly craves power and wealth, Thorin refuses to listen to their demands. When dwarf reinforcements arrive, complete with hilarious Combat Pigs and Multi-Purpose Armoured Mountain Goats, Thorin feels he has the military forces necessary to safeguard his selfishness. His confidence doesn't last long; Sauron has also sent a mighty army to conquer Erebor. God dammit Sauron.
At its best, "Five" portrays Middle Earth as a feudal hellhole in which different tribes fight petty battles for land and gold. Gandalf, the wise wizard, wants Middle Earth's citizens to band together, to share, to unite against Sauron, but suspicions, greed and quasi-racist animosities keep elves, humans and dwarfs apart. In the end, it is the humility of the hobbit, a bizarre interspecies love affair between elf and man, coupled with Gandalf's subtle scheming, which draws the inhabitants of Middle Earth together. They're tentatively united in a kind of pluralistic, multi-ethnic mega-army. But as Tolkien was a bit of a nutty Christian, his material's critiques of "power", "corruption" and "greed" nevertheless ultimately boil down to a kind of Biblical apocalypticism. The solution is always mass murder, killing is glorified, and conflict is always a Manichaean thing in which the good guys struggle against the bad guys (the hyena riding goblin slaves, the violent Easterlings, the elephant riding Haradrim, all with racial connotations which Jackson mostly softens), who must be exterminated as they are innately evil creatures who differ in appearance, behaviour and opinions.
Aesthetically, Jackson's trilogy is spectacular. Jackson offers some serious mountain porn, turns cross-country hiking into a Wagnerian spectacle and his FX work is at times impressive. It takes a certain type of genius to adapt Tolkien in a manner that isn't ridiculous.
On the downside, Jackson's battles too often neglect more interesting political and tactical jousting in favour for bad CGI rag-dolls and endless hack and slashing. With mega-worms and giant troll catapults at your disposal, why focus on repetitive sword-fights? Considering the length of Jackson's Tolkien outings, it's also amazing how empty his characters are. With Jackson, there are never any substantial relationships or conversations, love affairs are unconvincing, friendships are exclaimed but never seen, and all the film's "human drama" is treated as perfunctory filler. What the films mostly care about is running and carnage. Escaping these tendencies are Gandalf and the hobbits. Epitomising a kind of Arendtian "banality of goodness", Jackson highlights their ordinariness, their lowliness, their lack of possessions and ambition, which makes them uniquely suited to assuming positions of the highest responsibility and power.
8/10 - See "Ran" (1985).