The Hobbit - The Battle Of The Five Armies (2014)

And so Peter Jackson's epically-padded adaptation of a 300-page children's book into three two-and-a-half hour films comes to end with a concluding chapter that is essentially (as the title suggests) one giant battle.

And, yet, oddly, I found The Battle Of The Five Armies the easiest of the trilogy to sit through, quite possibly because it was just vignette-after-vignette of a massive fantasy battle.

It still suffered from dreadful sub-plot bloat:

• Thorin's "dragon sickness" - which started off as fascinating character development - got worse and worse until he had a fever-vision and then it suddenly got better;
• Any scene with Alfrid, the right-hand man of the Master Of Laketown, was just a waste of celluloid;
• Billy Connolly's Dain was a potentially interesting - if stereotypical Scottish - dwarf to throw into the mix, but then he disappeared from the action; 
• Whatever happened to the giant wormy-things that burst out of the ground and were never seen again? 
• What was the point of showing Beorn being parachuted into the battle if we never saw him again?
• etc  etc

The opening pre-credit sequence - the death of Smaug - should have been the finale of The Desolation Of Smaug and I really could have done without Peter Jackson's obsession with Legolas and his physics-defying stunts.

Moments like this tend to bring home the fact that you're just watching what amounts to someone else playing a very expensive video game - and sometimes the graphics aren't even that good.

Thankfully the misty, blur-o-vision that was so prevalent in the trailers doesn't seep in that often in the actual movie.

As much as I enjoyed the variety of fantasy races and monsters clashing, jumping around, killing each other and so on, for me, the most interesting part came with Bilbo's return to The Shire to find all his property being auctioned off - I could have watched more of that!

The hobbits are the most unique creatures in Tolkien's work and therefore the most interesting as they don't seem to fit comfortably with the rest of rough-and-ready Middle-Earth. That's why, if you're going to pad out a story entitled The Hobbit, I feel there ought to be more about hobbits!

Much like the Star Wars Prequels, I'm sure I'll come round to liking these three movies eventually, but they're never going to come close to Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings, which is a shame.

You have to wonder if The Hobbit might have been better treated as a single movie or maybe two, without all the spurious padding.

The book has stood the test of time without anyone feeling the need to write additional chapters and inflate it to the size of Lord Of The Rings, so perhaps there's a lesson there.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: What Was Gandalf's Handicap?

"...and knocked their king Golfimbul's head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment."

Back in 2012 I decided to reread The Hobbit, both to relax and mentally prepare me for Peter Jackson's new movie (An Unexpected Journey), and the thing that has immediately struck me (and probably explains why I stopped reading the book repeatedly after I grew out of my teens) is just what a clunky writer old JRRT is.

He may be a world-maker, language-crafter and mythology-weaver without equal in the realm of fantasy writing, but even if we ignore the odd similes that refer to 'steam engines' and 'pop-guns', or the fact that Bilbo has a clock on his mantlepiece, or that the 'terrifying' trolls are called Bill Huggins, Bert and Tom (these are the same trolls that turn up as petrified scenery in Lord Of The Rings), there is no excusing the ridiculous sentence that I began this piece with.

Read it again and just think about it. Golf was invented in Middle-Earth, before the time of The Hobbit, and was therefore probably being played during the War Of The Ring!

Did I skip the chapter where Legolas and Gimli worked out their racial differences on the Anfalas greens? Did the war disrupt the scheduling of the Rivendell Open?

And talking of Rivendell, check out this fantastic piece of elfish verse:

"O! tril-lil-lil-lolly
the valley is jolly,
ha!ha!"

And I'm only three chapters in. Makes me almost miss Tom Bombadil...

I adore the world Tolkien created, the life he gave to the creatures and races he peopled it with, but I just find the actual words he uses to tell his stories so laboured at times*.

The Hobbit is an easier read than Lord Of The Rings, of course, because it's written for children, not even young adults, but children too innocent to groan at awful puns and cheesy rhymes.

But surely I can't be the only one who has difficulties believing the world of The Hobbit is the same world that Lord Of The Rings takes place in?

For starters, where are all the golf clubs?

* As a side note to demonstrate how contrary I can be, I absolutely love listening to the audiobook of The Silmarillion (I have both the Martin Shaw and the Andy Serkis versions).

The Hobbit - The Desolation Of Smaug (2013)

One of the main things to take away from The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug is that it is infinitely better than its predecessor (An Unexpected Journey).

While, at two-and-a-half hours, it still feels padded, it also doesn't feel as though you are just enduring it in the hope that the next part of the trilogy is better.

Gone is the juvenilia of An Unexpected Journey (no naff musical numbers or English-speaking trolls) to be replaced with a more consistent tone of all-out action. This feels like it's part of the Lord Of The Rings universe.

Of course, it does suffer the curse of the "middle film" - as most trilogies do - in that it starts in media res and ends the same, not with a resolution but a powerful cliffhanger that should guarantee your return for the final movie.

For a large part of The Desolation Of Smaug, the story is split between the dwarves' continuing mission to reach and reclaim Erebor and Gandalf's investigations into the machinations of the mysterious Necromancer of Dol Guldur.

But both segments move the main plot forward and are equally engaging, visually and mentally.

Two major action locations stick in my mind: the most alien-like encounter with the spiders of Mirkwood (which leads to the dwarves capture by the wood elves) and the climactic confrontation with Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, who also lends his vocal chords to the Necromancer).

I had feared that the dwarves escape from the wood elves would turn into a proof of concept promotional video for a barrel ride attraction at the future Hobbit World theme park, but the sequence is nicely broken up with other distractions.

The padding comes in with the added elements, like the bizarrely unnecessary 'love triangle' involving Legolas (Orlando Bloom), Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) and Kili (Aidan Turner), one of Thorin's band of hardy adventurers.

Even Laketown, which is wonderfully atmospheric in appearance, comes across slightly Discworld-y in the presentation of its internal politics and generally paranoia, as encapsulated in the central performance of the Master of Laketown (Stephen Fry) who acts as though he stepped out of a Terry Pratchett novel or Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast.

His toady assistant. Alfrid (Ryan Gage) is sadly little more than a less-than-successful recycling of Grima Wormtongue.

However, for all its weak points, The Desolation Of Smaug is worthy of repeated viewings - although possibly not as regularly as The Lord Of The Rings - even if only to marvel at the wonderful array of monsters on show.

The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Although I now class Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings as one of my favourite movies, I wasn't overly impressed when I first saw The Fellowship Of The Ring at the cinema. There were too many long shots of people in fancy dress walking through fields and the narrative didn't flow that well. It was only when I saw the extended, director's cut on DVD that I began to appreciate the majesty of Jackson's ambitious enterprise.

So, I suppose there's every possibility that one day I will come to love to An Unexpected Journey. But I can't see it being any time soon.

One of the major problems I have with it (beyond being way too long) is it is simply isn't The Lord Of The Rings. Although there are moments of brilliance in this first, 169-minute segment of The Hobbit, it lurches from broad comedy to grim dourness with very clumsy footing.

It also becomes very clear that the source material is a book aimed squarely at very young children, with its alliteratively-named dwarvish troupe of adventurers, anachronistic sporting references and trolls named Burt and Tom.

On one hand we have the orc war-band speaking in sub-titles, then we have the trolls and goblins speaking English.

There's no sense that this is a real world, something which the original three movies achieved effortlessly.

There are scenes - such as the gathering of big-wigs at Rivendell - that feel wholly enmeshed in this world we have grown to love, but then there's the stupidly-named trolls (one also uses a handkerchief) and other moments of juvenilia, that I know are from Tolkien's book, but still don't tally with the flawless verisimilitude of Middle-Earth from Lord Of The Rings.

The rabbit-drawn sled I can let slide (I have a soft spot for rabbits), but the preposterous stone giants: why, just why?

Although there's some meaty exposition up-front, the film starts really slowly with the dwarves arrival at Bag End and the whole set-up for the plot (could have done without the "That's What Bilbo Baggins Hates" song that came dangerously close to tipping this piece over into high camp).

Then even once the adventurers get going there's a diversion for the audience to visit the nature wizard Radagast The Brown (Sylvester McCoy) which, while visually interesting, takes about quarter-of-an-hour to show us something that Gandalf tells Elrond et al in a couple of lines.

And so it goes on, in fits and starts.

Just as you think the pace is picking up, something will pop up to slow things back down again and the plot doesn't really get flowing until the final act - namely Bilbo (Martin Freeman) playing the 'riddle game' with Gollum (Andy Serkis); the dwarves escape from goblin town (which in a sense is just a replay of the Fellowship escaping Moria, but with wooden bridges replacing stone); then the fight with the orcs; and finally the arrival of the eagles (which is handled very well, as it isn't explained because we know exactly what to expect when we see Gandalf talking to the moth he has captured).

Do have to wonder though why the eagles couldn't carry our heroes a bit closer to their final destination?

There are also odd moments where - given that technology has presumably moved on quite a bit since the Rings films - some of the special effects jarred; there's some quite noticeable green-screening which is always a good way to kick you out of the moment. Is this a side effect of Jackson's use of a higher frame-rate to shoot the movie?

While the director's cuts of all three parts of Lord Of The Rings are long, they flow gorgeously and never feel like a chore, but the two hours 42 minutes (plus about seven minutes of credits) of An Unexpected Journey really felt like a marathon.

It was certainly rewarding once we crossed the finish line, and the final shot of Smaug waking up was worth its weight in gold - but then you have to realise we're only a third of the way.

Perhaps the narrative will flow better when we can watch all three pictures back-to-back and see the full vision that Jackson is bringing to this tale.

There's clearly been a lot of backstory added (from Tolkien's other work) to build up the story of the Necromancer and create a bridge to The Lord Of The Rings and I can't help wishing that more emphasis had been put on this and a scalpel had been taken to the actual story of The Hobbit to strip it back to its core elements.

Pilgrimage (2017)

Set in 13th Century Ireland, Pilgrimage sees Spider-Man (aka Tom Holland as naive young monk Brother Diarmuid) and The Punisher (aka Jon Bernthal as The Mute) team-up in a violent Medieval action-strewn road movie.

They are members of a party of monks tasked by The Pope with transporting a mysterious relic from their isolated monastery on the west coast of Ireland to Rome, as it is believed to have the power to sway the Crusades in favour of The Church.

Naturally, things don't go well.

Heavy on atmosphere, the film is a meditation on the power of faith in the face of adversity and superstition, but also a warning of the dangers of blind faith.

Told in multiple languages (ie. Irish, French, and English, with a smattering of Latin), Pilgrimage clearly demonstrates the ethnic diversity of the Middle Ages, something not always addressed in period films.

It also means plenty of subtitles, which I know puts some people off.

With Ireland torn apart by Celtic warbands battling Norman invaders, the monks are forced into an uneasy alliance with a Norman baron who offers to guard their caravan in return for absolution.

The ever-reliable Richard Armitage (of The Hobbit, Hannibal, Robin Hood et al) shows up as the baron's son, the sinister knight Raymond De Merville, who's working to his own agenda.

Although there are some brutal fight scenes and a splattering of gore, I'm not sure why Pilgrimage merits an 18 Certificate, we've all seen far worse in movies with lower certificates.

Pilgrimage feels like a small film, despite a large (all male) cast and wonderful, evocative Irish landscapes, portentous weather, and mist-shrouded scenery; it's the kind of film that actors make between Hollywood blockbusters.

Ultimately writer Jamie Hannigan and director Brendan Muldowney do a great job of focusing on the central message they were trying to impart, but at the expense of any greater depth.

Neither tragically poor or epically fantastic, Pilgrimage is a film you come away from thinking 'that was okay', and then move on to whatever's next in your queue.

Noah (2014)

Although I'm not a religious person, I've always had a soft spot for film's based on Biblical stories for some reason, but Noah is the closest yet to crossing over into my usual playground of epic fantasy or science-fiction.

While I haven't really studied the Great Flood myth, I'm pretty sure I'd have remembered rock giants (fallen angels bound to the Earth by rock and mud, resembling elemental creatures from The Neverending Story or The Hobbit) helping Noah build his Ark.

Darren Aronofsky's take on the story certainly owes as much to Tolkien as it does The Bible - occasionally even straying into B-movie sword-and-sorcery territory - with its surfeit of magical items and mysticism.

Russell Crowe plays a surprisingly misanthropic and nihilistic Noah, a vegetarian action hero who believes The Creator wants to wipe all humanity from the planet and his job, and that of his family, is purely to shepherd all the animals to the new, post-Flood world and then die out, so the innocent animals can run free.

Noah has visions of The Creator's genocidal plans to obliterate his failed experiment from the Earth - like a child with an Etch-A-Sketch shaking his messed-up picture into oblivion so he can start again from scratch - and so sets about building the Ark, to preserve the creatures of the land and air (the fish have to make their own arrangements).

However, having grown a forest from a seed left over from The Garden Of Eden and recruited the rock giants to help with the Ark building, Noah attracts the attention of local warlord and one-dimensional bad guy Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone), who decides he's going to take the Ark to save his meat-eating people (they believe they gain 'strength' from eating the flesh of animals) from the coming deluge.

Naturally Noah and the giants have something to say about this.

Along for the ride are Noah's wife, Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), his sons Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman) and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll) and Shem's lady-friend, Ila (Emma Watson), who is barren until magically cured by Noah's grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins).

Noah's kids quickly realise that their dreams of repopulating the Earth after the Flood are slightly flawed as the men outnumber the women in their group and the only women are their mum and Ila, who is - at that point - infertile.

What passes for a romantic sub-plot essentially involves Ham running into the nearby community, grabbing the first woman he meets - a girl called Na'el (Madison Davenport) - and deciding she'll do for a wife (still a better love story than Twilight, though).

As a brief aside, I can't help but guess that whatever Tubal-cain's followers were getting up to must have been some really nasty stuff if the Creator was so determined to wipe them all off the face of the Earth, but is totally okay with what's happening here at the moment (e.g. Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, the continued rise of the Right in Western nations etc)

Once the Flood comes, Tubal-cain stows away on the Ark for the better part of nine months (again, I don't remember this from Sunday School), with the aid of Ham, surviving on an all-you-can-eat buffet of slumbering animals (presumably he ate the unicorns, dinosaurs, dragons etc and those cute armadillo/dog creatures that we saw early on in the movie).

There's a lot that isn't explained in Noah (and perhaps that's not a bad thing, actually). For instance, the TARDIS-like capacity of the Ark to hold two of every species is hand-waved (perhaps, as they were all sleeping, Noah's brood stacked them neatly like containers in a warehouse) and I don't get why the sloughed skin of The Serpent from the Garden Of Eden is an artefact for Good?

And when you look at the surviving unit of humanity at the end of movie: just who is going to father future generations and repopulate the planet, anyway (without getting into icky, incestuous inbreeding territory)?

Conversely there are some clever ideas in there, such as the Flood waters rising out of the Earth, which kind of circumvents the physical impossibility of sea levels rising to such a degree all around the world - and presumably that was where the water returned to, when the Floods receded.

But for all my ribbing of the various plot holes (many of which, of course, are carried over from the source material anyway), Noah is an impressive feat of movie making,  a powerful and engaging film even if you are not of a religious bent.

Aronofsky has brought his usual visual eye to the story giving it an epic, fantastical feel that (almost) transcends its specific religious origins (The Flood myth is found in many early cultures anyway and the ark probably has its origins in Babylonian stories that pre-date the Bible).

I don't know Aronofsky's personal views on religion, but Noah manages to be thought-provoking but not preachy with Noah himself being a complex and interesting character, of a far darker temperament than you might expect, channelling some mighty Old Testament fury not normally associated with the builder of the Ark.