The Slight Irritation Of Smaug

Rating: 1/10 (3 January 2014)

As a LOTR fan,familiar with The Hobbit in literary form since I was a child, When I first saw Fellowship Of The Ring as a teen I was so excited thinking,I really hope someone makes this as a full movie prequel one day..So imagine if you will, my excitement when it was revealed they would in fact be making The Hobbit series. Ater the first, slight let down but still quite true to form.. I clicked on the trailer for this one with huge anticipation- and sadly, this is where it all fell flat.
I just want to point out before going further, that I am the first to defend book to movie format from critics who carp on that there are too many differences blah blah and call for artistic license if something is stated to be "based on" the book and have always made exceptions for this one as well. However,if this film had veered off from day one,it would be less disappointing and I would accept this rule more. That said, the trilogy is very true to Tolkein's form for the best part and that feeling of relief that Jackson and Co had not gone uber-Hollywood back then has sadly died in a pile of ash suited to Smaug himself. Jackson, who gets all mad at people for for using a the Hobbit name/references in an unrelated manner seems to have almost done the very same ironically - he uses the name "The Hobbit" and some characters/places,yet this seems to be where the similarity ends.
So, back to this trailer then, well my first thoughts were: 1.why,is Ed Sheeran singing the music? I love the guy's music but really? is this a Disney movie now? what happened to the beauty and seriousness of Enya and the likes? The style kind of fits the film but it's too pop like. 2.Do we really need a female elf? (unknown male in the book..) Her existence is all too transparent:eye-candy for the boys,some fluffy girl power with pointy ears and a pretty face for the girls. As if that's not bad enough, there is this sickly and horrifically Twilight-esque love triangle between her, Legolas (who also technically does not exist currently..)and a (albeit the only looker) Dwarf? 3. The pronunciation of "Smaug"(the terrible-come-stock dragon style villain for this movie's name sake) got me stumped as they insist it's "smowg" but even hal the film crew call him "smorg"(I always believed it to be pronounced as Smorg (soft augh sound)-though I could well be wrong) 4.Even in the trailers, the spark seems duller and the dialogue more user friendly- by which I mean a kid could have written the script it seems.So this from the off had me concerned to say the least.
So why?- I believe the answer would be, the female teen and young adult male fan-base. sod the main audience who have followed the franchise for decades, they no longer count it seems, it's all about grabbing the kids for a GTA style graphically violent, poorly scripted, rushed FX overkill of a movie.It's nice they have included the youngsters more and all, but why at the risk of the context? This film franchise has still attracted kids in it's true form ( I was a teen first viewing it with many others around us in the cinema) so why alter it's style so much now? I guess due to the way things are generally marketed these days.
Mr Jackson, a 200 million dollar budget- what prey tell, convinced you that you had to CGI a HORSE? Not to mention everything else around? Rushing over parts of the book that are more than relevant and would have been enough to fill the full movie had it been a reasonable hour and a half long say.I am not happy about this but of course, the reason is clear once again- it's to get to the Jackson style "romance" and action sequences that are somewhat bordering on loosing all credibility now. And, just how much of an ego maniac ARE you to have to play a cameo at the start? personally I'd be ashamed to even lend my name to this travesty- let alone my physical presence for all to see. I am so saddened that this beautiful trilogy has finally succumbed to the Hollywood style so near to reaching it's closure. As someone who could not wait to see this film originally, I feel I'd have been better spending my time sticking pins in my eyes for almost 3 hours.
So to sum up, some good parts- yes there were but they were so brief I could barely remember them. Some effects were true to the original but mostly not. It was nice to see the cast but even Gandalf- and I NEVER believed I'd say this- seemed to bumble his way through the storyline like he was on drugs or drunk though I very much doubt this to be due to Sir Ian. And Smaug-He is internally full of fire, how would molten gold HE melted,kill him??No,unsurprisingly it won't- but, Dwarfs are so smart, yes? Terrible ending, of course classic "let's pay to watch the next one cliffhanger" "what have we done" is painfully ironic and would have been the best time for Jackson's cameo-as himself" Cue black screen and Ed Sheeran warbling " "I see Fire." Well,I was seeing red, but it wasn't fire.So, to you Mr Jackson I will say this (not that you will ever see it but it still feels nice to vent and all..)You could not have done this book more injustice if you had opened the spine in the middle, crapped all over it, ripped some pages off to wipe your backside then set the remains on fire. The End. ( And no,I won't be seeing the third unless he wakes from his literary coma and does much better to bring this round..)