trailer critic: Hobbit part 3

[calimac]

Chapters 14-17 of The Hobbit are the darkest, most serious part of the story, and since they'll obviously be the center of Hobbit III, The Battle of the Five Armies (why the Five Armies?), it'll be the opportunity Peter Jackson has been waiting for to do what he does best, or, more accurately, to do what he does most.

I find little to poke fun at in the Part 3 trailer, unlike my reactions to the last one, but what I do find is a lot of repeats of Jackson's Greatest Hits shots.

0.02. Film logos floating through space! OK, that may be new to Jackson, but it's a direct steal from George Lucas's classic "paragraphs in space."

0.15. The character-study shot with a battle going on in the background.

0.24. The scene that looks like a matte, whether it actually is or not.

0.28. The helicopter shot over people walking across a mountain.

0.28, simultaneously. The Tolkienian lyrics set to the dreariest, gloomiest tune possible.

0.33. The dimly-lit majestic interior.

0.42. The foot shot.

0.48. The majestic interior that's gloomy even though it's full of gold.

0.57. The army that looks and moves as if it's made of tin soldiers.

1.03. The auto race.

1.06. The really badly-done CGI critters.

1.14.  The voice that echoes impressively even though there's no cause for it to echo.

1.16. The single-combat warrior.

1.19. The general exhorting his army from a height so far up they wouldn't be able to see him.

1.24. The appearance of a character who doesn't belong in this movie.

1.26. The ridiculous bridge.

1.32. The general exhorting his army in a voice so quiet they wouldn't be able to hear him.

It's true that The Lord of the Rings repeats much of the plot of The Hobbit, but I never get the feeling of "been there, done that" when reading the books. But that's all over this movie.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

We have films we want to see, now that Comic-Con is over, so perhaps we'll be exposed to the same trailer. But we're leaning toward not bothering with the third installment. The first was a big disappointment even given our low expectations, and the second would have been a bigger one had the first not forewarned us.

Peter Jackson seems to have reached that level of commercial success where there is no longer any restraint on his typical vices. Rather like what happened to Robert Heinlein after Stranger in a Strange Land, who was my first example of this phenomenon—but I'd say that Jackson started lower and fell further.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I am so very tired of Peter Jackson's tropes.