Reel Thoughts - What (I think) makes a movie good

Firstly, this is strictly my personal opinion. Film is a form of art with visual, audial, linguistic and literary dimensions. It is not something that can be objectively measured for quality; the closest thing we mere humans can do is arrive at some loosely defined limits, structures and expectations when appreciating other people's art work.

Collectively we might arrive at some consensus as to which elements we react positively, and that we declare as 'good'; I feel that this is much more so in the case of movies. Films that tend to ignore these limits and expectations are in fact closer to self-expression than most Hollywood productions, hence they get the label of "arthouse" films (this is not to be confused with "independent" films which may still follow the Hollywood standards and genres in filmmaking, but simply not financed by big studios and distributors).

Unfortunately, I don't have the time or experience to explore the much wider and fascinating world of arthouse films, and most people are more interested in what's "now showing" in the theatres anyway, so I will only talk in terms of Hollywood-esque films and their appeal, design, influence and content to the mainstream audience.


Films are good if they appeal to both their target audience and their unintended audience. 

Animated films have become increasingly abundant, popular and successful at the box office in the past two decades. While when talking about successful animation studios, Pixar always tops the list nowadays, both Disney and Dreamworks have caught up considerably with some recent films. Some examples I can think of in this category includes Kung Fu Panda 2, Megamind, How To Train Your Dragon, and most recently Wreck It Ralph.

However their success is not in appealing to the children, but being able to attract people from all other age groups as well. Why are teenagers, young adults, parents and even elderly people watching these light-hearted, simplistic G-rated films that were intended for your kids or younger brother/sister? A closer examination shows that while these films are simple enough kids can follow, they are often littered with adult-directed humor, cultural references, and at times even evoke the childhood in us and engage it with wonderful nostalgia hidden in the film.

Films that I consider good should be a good movie to watch even if it's not your 'thing'. They should cater to their intended audience, be it teenage girls or war novel lovers, fantasy geeks or trekkies, but not be so exclusive in its production and delivery. In-world jokes are great but if they are a prerequisite to enjoying the film then it is what I consider a film-for-fans; a movie that is only marketed and sold to its followers (e.g. Twilight).

Having said that, I do have films which I love despite being a film very few would appreciate as extensively, and this I refer to Joss Whedon's "Serenity", which was a barely-broke-even film made for the diehard fans of his short-lived space western TV show Firefly. When my dad saw this film he thought it was a decent movie but didn't like it because there's so many characters and history to the world that he doesn't appreciate as he never saw the show. So to me, the intended audience, Serenity was a great film, but to my dad it was just an okay film.

A film that appeals to their targeted audience is important, but I believe it is really good if it can appeal enough to a wider sphere of people, even to some limited capacity.


Good films have a strong vision and convincing design

When I say design, I refer to all aspects of the film: the design of the characters, the design of the sets, the design of the costumes, the musical design and even the design of the dialogue.

I'll bring up Star Wars, because despite how forgettable the plot to the prequels are, every time I hear those iconic orchestrated musical numbers, it evokes wonderful memories of the original trilogy, the scale and sinisterity of the world we are being immersed into, and the drama which often is more pronounced in the music than on the screen. One of the good things about the newer Star Wars movies is set design, which because they had a much larger budget, was possible.

Yes most of it is CGI, the actors were basically in a green room most of the time, but the worlds that the characters had to travel between were distinct. They were thematic, and most of the time well-suited to their expected role in the film. I can tell where I am in their universe through each scene in the film, though I couldn't care less what's going on with the characters as I'm just waiting for the fights scenes most of the time.

Visual design is very important because it is the first thing we the audience see. Once those colors, shapes and layers enter our eyes it establishes our expectation for the rest of the film. We are programmed to connect certain types of atmospheres with emotions, like darker settings is to evil, or orange/red color filters is to passionate love, or washed out grey, green and blue is to medieval cities or some dirty ghetto.

The original Willy Wonka film did this particularly well by contrasting the plain ordinary world with the whimsical colorful candyland that was inside his factory. You really do feel like the characters have crossed into another dimension and are pleasantly surprised by how contrasting the real world is with Wonka's world, though the reason he had that scary tunnel was kind of awkward.

Character design would be the next most important design aspect. I find that most people like the characters that are either a pillar or a revelation within the story. I better explain. A pillar character is one whose personality and triats we are fully aware of, we know and understand their motivation and desires, and for most of the film they don't change because that is "who they are". You see this a lot in TV shows too, like Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory, or Homer Simpson in The Simpsons, or Masuka in Dexter. They are our refuge for something familiar and predictable, often in a story that is evolving at a fast pace and constantly challenging or changing our perception. They're not always comic reliefs like the ones in the short list of examples, but they tend to make us feel safe, like even when the world ends at least we can count on them to be them.

On the other hand, a revelation character is one who we don't know much about at the beginning, but over the course of the movie we gradually find out more and more about them, sometimes in step with them discovering more about themselves as well, and during the climax of the film we find out the most important facts, which greatly impacts the resolution of the film. We see this a lot in character-driven stories like Cobb in Inception, Wolverine in the X-Men series, Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk, and Po in Kung Fu Panda 2.

A revelation character has the exact opposite impact on the audience as a pillar character. They challenge our preconceptions about the admirability or despicability of their actions and attitudes, they make us curious about how their journey will pan out. They are often at the center of the drama or conflict, and often are the cause of it too, and they keep us invested in a film that may be otherwise formulaic or uninteresting.

The absence of the pillar and/or revelation characters does not immediately ruin the film, but certainly increases the difficulty of maintaining audience engagement. Some good films give you everything about each character, which tend to be somewhere along the spectrum of the pillar and the revelation, and is more of a "lets mix them in a beaker and see what happens" type of experience. Buddy cop movies, crossover films (like The Avengers) are like this. You already know what each character is like, you already are to some degree invested into each character, and the ensuing chaos they must face together builds and breaks them, thus developing them further, refining or enlarging their traits, and not always for the better, which is what draws us further into their conflict.

In a way the pillar and revelation character are the extreme ends of the character design spectrum, and I would argue that a good film needs characters that fall on different parts of the spectrum. If they're all pillar characters the story or challenge they must overcome needs to be really interesting or the ending/resolution will be too predictable (e.g. Power Rangers, Twilight, Transformers, Care Bears), but if they're all revelation characters it leaves the audience no time to breathe or relax because there's too much at stake and the outcome of the film may be too unpredictable for the comfort of the viewer.


Good films influence the viewer.

A film which challenges a viewer's preconception about the world, educates them about moral grayness, or simply opens their eyes to the perspective of a minority group they've overlooked in the past, is doing something good. However it doesn't always have to be positive, and it doesn't even have to be useful, it just has to influence us somehow.

Many future-oriented films speculate about what might become of Earth in the near or distant future, either through a post-apocalyptic or post-enlightenment scenario, and more often than not human nature or human action is what caused the downfall of civilisation in the past, or its downfall in the future. These films, while being fantastical in nature, generally serve as a warning of the path we are travelling on right now and its dire consequences. Sadly few of them succeed.

Animated films are also another stronghold when talking about timeless tales and movies with influence, such as Disney features in the 90s and Pixar/Dreamworks in the present (e.g. Wall-E with environmentalism, Up with human stubbornness, Kung Fu Panda 1 & 2 with free will vs. predestination). Films that are not only entertaining but teach our kids important lessons definitely are worth the trip to the cinema.

On the other hand influence can be oriented around an individual rather than a genre. Some great directors such as Quentin Tarentino, Christopher Nolan and Mark Scorcese are also influential because they have each mastered and refined certain elements of the film medium, and thus any of their production would carry their signature. When we see any film by them we can immediately identify their fingerprints. For instance, Tarentino's Django Unchained has been dubbed by many critics as the slavery edition of Inglorious Bastard due to the same level of brutality, how bare and honest a portrayal of the era and environment his characters are immersed in, and the abundance of beautified violence and gore throughout the film (the reason I bring this up is because I just watched Django...so yeah another review coming up soon ^_^).

This is of course also true with actors/actresses. When I see Johnny Depp, Cate Blanchette, even Kirsten Stewert (sigh I know, Twilight), no matter what role they're playing I always remember them by their most iconic character. Okay before I get eggs hurled at me for implying something positive about Twilight I better clarify; not all good films need to influence us in a positive way, but not ALL films with influence are good. Some stinkers like Catwomen, Battlefield Earth, and again the Twilight saga are equally impressed into our memories and no matter how hard we try to forget them they will forever haunt our subconscious.

Regardless of where the impact or influence comes from, a film that can leave us with deep impression of the characters, the style, the music, the story or the message, is doing something right even amidst a mountain of not making sense or being bland and uninteresting. Many of the 'greatest films of all time' as well as 'worst films of all time' have significantly influenced their generation, working their way into our culture, our humor, our very identity, and some even continue to influence the curious youth who may accidentally stumble on an older classic by chance.

They form the bible of cinema, because they can survive the test of time and competition, and no matter how many other films we bombard ourselves with, we just need to hear that iconic song (e.g. My heart will go on -> Titanic), or hear someone utter that line (e.g. "I"ll be back" -> Arnold Schwartzenegger), or see that face (Leonardo Decaprio character -> Leonardo Decaprio) and our minds can only wonder back to the world of that film. A film that leaves us with good memories even after 10 years of seeing it definitely has something good about it.


Good films has good content.

When I refer to content I am talking about the actual meat of the movie. The plot, the dialogue, the action, the things you see happening.

I left this last because often I find most moviegoers don't really remember most of the film after a week of seeing it. They can remember the music, the actors, some catchy lines or iconic scenes, or maybe the overall feeling of the film, but when it comes to the plot and complications, few actually can hold a conversation about it without a quick rewatch.

However, as a person plagued with eidetic memory when it comes to movies, I can play the whole film in my head. And when I experience a film I experience more than those peaks and troughs, or the general emotions. I also experience everything in between; the expository dialogue, the less important character interactions, the filler scenes. So a story that doesn't make sense or doesn't flow well over the course of the film tends to throw me off even if it does have an epic climax or a particularly good scene.

You know a film has problems if it doesn't keep you engaged during the entire film. For example, with Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2, I was practically asleep the first two hours, until we got to that epic climax which woke me up briefly, but even as I wrote that review all the scenes ridden with pedophilia and weak romance keep disturbing my train of thought. The Hobbit had a similar problem, though it was more a pacing and padding issue than an entire section of the film being bad.

In my opinion, a film should be as long as it needs to be, but no longer. I feel that with the recent resurgence of film franchises, movie producers feel guilty they take so long to produce each film in the franchise, often releasing each film in the franchise with 2-4 years gap in between (contrary to urben legend, it's not just a marketing strategy, expensive films do take a long time to produce while pleasing all the shareholders). So to compensate, they also produce a movie that is longer in running time. If I have time this weekend I might actually do some proper research and sketch up a graph to show the upward trend in movie run times.

While a movie that runs for longer means we get more 'stuff' to watch and thus appears to be more worth our money, if those extra minutes are not substantial or effective in keeping us invested, then they might as well not be there. You're just wasting both the audience and the cinema's time. Again the most recent culprit of this to me was The Hobbit, which should have been a 2 hour movie. God I hope they don't have an extended edition to this.


I can safely say that if a film can satisfy these four criterion of mine, I would almost always consider it a good movie, but on the rare occasion I do fall in love with a movie which ignores these standards, and delivers a critical and box office flop, but perhaps a satisfying film for any lover of crap. This is why I have on my list of favorite movies things like Commando, 300 and Bee Movie. They're not very good movies, but I love them because they know what they are and don't try to pretend to be anything else, giving the most of what they've got and giving it with all their heart. And in a way that's also good. :)

Review - Wreck-it Ralph (2012)

Okay so a few days ago I ranted extensively about The Hobbit, so lets move onto the better and final film I saw in 2012: Wreck-It Ralph. To fully appreciate how grateful I am for this movie's existence, we need to travel back a few decade and look at other movies based on games.

Unlike the superhero genre which officially entered mainstream hollywood in the early 2000s, there was never the same level of success for games. We had stinkers like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, the Pokemon movies (except the first one), Double Dragon, The Super Mario Bros Movies, Tekken, King of Fighters etc, which while not terrible and can be kind of fun to laugh at, was way over the top and poorly adapted the game from which they were based on. Then you also have the infamous productions by Uwe Boll such as Alone in the dark, BloodRayne, Farcry and The Third Reich. And finally you have the straight to home video masterpieces with limited or no theatrical release such as Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Tekken: Blood Vengeance.

Perhaps the only ones that come even close to moderately decent are Tomb Raider and Prince of Persia. So when Disney decided to give it a go, I was not very enthusiastic and nearly opted to skip the film altogether. But then while travelling in Hong Kong some friends decided to watch it together, so I ended up seeing it anyway. And am I glad I saw it!

First of all, I need to address a secret about this film which I think most people who saw it were somewhat upset about: lots of the familiar arcade game characters (like the ghost from pacman, bowser from Mario bros) that you see in the trailers, well that's basically their only scene. Most of the story isn't really about them and is more focused on fictional games that never existed.

However I was quick to forgive this when what followed was not only 90 minutes of fun dialogue, clever references, visual wonders and memorable characters, but also a surprisingly believable and compelling story about the life and death of arcade games and its characters.

In some ways this film is like a summary of many jokes and parodies and fan productions about the video game characters which has been flooding the internet for a long time, but I was taken aback at how convincing and human these characters were, and how invested I got in the development of the story. The characters had depth, their relationships were genuine, their struggles identifiable, and aside from the villain being slightly one-note, I think this was the video game movie everyone wanted to see for decades. If only they do it this well for my game (which by the way is Runescape)!

Spoilers ahead!

The most interesting character to me in this film was Ralph. While I've seen his character story in other reincarnations before, I think this is the first time I've witnessed it in a movie for children. When Ralph destroys Vanellope's racecar to stop her from running a race which might result in her deletion, I was on the edge of tearing up a little bit.

The message about how protecting someone you love may involve destroying their one dream and losing their friendship is not only a harsh one, but also a brave one. Sometimes to be the hero, one must be the villain in the eyes of those they are trying to save. While being Disney everything works out in the end and they reconcile, but when seeing this scene I was reminded of Watchmen, another great movie which offers the same decision. I don't know how well the kids would have reacted to that scene, but even if only the adults grasped it I think it's a welcomed development.

Another great scene was the backstory to the Sargent Tamora from Hero's Duty. I just couldn't stop laughing at the harshness and extremeness of the way her past was programmed. And it's really fun that these character recognize that their reality was constructed by some game designer, and yet they still convey the same emotions about things they know never really happened. I think Tamora was meant to be a parody of the more modern FPS shooter games representing the brute, harsher genres, but still human and for the most part believeable. But did they really have to stir up a forced romance with Fix It Felix? That story arc just made me feel awkward as their chemistry is about as strong as Katniss and Pete from The Hunger Games.

While praising so much about this film overall, I do have one major issue (aside from the nitpicks) with this film, and that is the behavior of those game characters who mistreat Ralph and Vanellope. For some reason The other racers in sugar rush are very bland and reminiscent of poorly designed high school bullies. They are just mean because they are programmed to be mean because Vanellope is (at the time) the glitch, the weird one, the outcast.

Prejudice is an important lesson for children but the film's portrayal of bullies are surprisingly extreme and oversimplistic; there isn't much exploration behind why they are mean to her. The only rationale is that their memory of her as a princess was erased so they are not aware she has rights to participate in the races. Does that immediately warrant hostility and segregation? The same could be said of the civilians in the Wreck-It Ralph game. They know Ralph is only the bad guy because he's programmed to be a bad guy, so again are they just programmed to be jerks to him?

I guess the intention is to warn children not to act like that, because it hurts other people, but as an adult we know that there are often more than meets the eye with bullies; often they are bullied themselves or have other personal issues and need to be addressed separately. I guess this additional character layer would make the movie too hard to digest for kids who are still learning how to spell "discrimination".

Apart from that, I really enjoyed this movie. It is living proof that the video game genre has not yet game overed. The ending song was also surprisingly catchy, and every scene and dialogue mattered. It was a satisfying movie and I hope to see a sequel in the near future.

8.5 out of 10


Extra Nitpicks

None! I think I've covered everything I can remember.

The Hobbit - An Unexpected Disappointment

Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

I apologize for my recent silence as I was travelling and enjoying Asia and decided not to bring a laptop with me, so I didn't get a chance to write up my thoughts on recent blockbusters. But I did watch two films while on this trip: Wreck It Ralph (just before Christmas) and The Hobbit (just after New Year's). I really enjoyed Wreck it Ralph but today I am here to talk about the other one, the one that nearly ruined one of my very few good memories from my high school years.

After spending about 3 days cooling myself down (both from the heat wave hitting New South Wales, and a rare frustration turned into flame ignited by this film), I think I am now calm enough to talk about The Hobbit (Part 1) without resulting in a heat-filled fanboy-driven rage to pummel this film into the depths of Moria. I rarely use words of profanity when expressing my inner frustration or annoyance at something, but this movie was disappointing enough to make me mentally project a pile of stool swirled like a McDonald's soft serve cone placed on top of the film reel. In short, this movie was SHIT! (I promise not to use any more profanity from here on).

Okay, so The Hobbit wasn't really that bad as a film in itself. If you ignore the climate and level of hype in which this film was produced and released in, and pretended that The Lord of the Rings never existed, and ALSO pretended that the previous trilogy had nothing to do with this film, The Hobbit would be decent stand-alone flick. The character-driven story was strong, the cinematography was gorgeous and the monsters and creatures were very interesting to watch even if they did seem genetically engineered to be bad guys, and so when they were sliced and diced we've been conditioned to not pity them, but man it was fun watching them getting sliced and diced and creatively knocked off the bridges and ledges!

Having said that, I had three basic problems with this film in itself:

• the film dragged on way too long. Indeed the slow pace allows the audience to breathe A LOT between key scenes as well as provide a lot of build up for the climax. Unfortunately, what they did was basically interleave a Discovery channel documentary of New Zealand and some cool action segments  done by some final year computer graphics students. Based on the plot contained in this film, it didn't need to be nearly 3 hours; some scenes contributed nothing to the resolution of the film, and more importantly, some characters, despite being given notable screen time and dialogue and interactions with the main character (Bilbo), I still don't remember their relationship with anyone or why they mattered in this mission except that they volunteered. And that's after spending 3 whole hours watching almost nothing but them! So yeah, I'm sure the film could be edited down to 2 hours and still have the same impact on the audience, maybe some nice Youtube producer and release "The Hobbit abridged".
  
• the fighting/chase scenes were too fantastical. (semi-spoiler) Earlier in the film it is established that most of the dwarves in the company were not skilled fighters or even young, yet in the ensuing chaos with the trolls, goblins and orcs not only do they perform maneuvers and combo play which was complete flukes, improbable, and practically unbelieveably lucky. Given the degree of danger and risk they took in each fight scene how can it be that nobody died? I know this is a high fantasy so anything goes, but it was just too hard to digest that nobody even got a scratch until the climax of the film. Granted you're happy to see the protagonists survived, but couldn't you have at least killed off one of the 'other' dwarves? I realise I sound a bit sadistic saying this but for me, if they cannot create the drama or tension through the conflicts, then they should resort to death of a dispensable team member.
  
• I can't remember anyone's names (except Bilbo, Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield). If you watched the trailers of The Hobbit this is particularly prominent, since you hear Gandalf rapid roll calling the drawves in the company at one name per 0.5 seconds until Thorin's name, which is read with some degree of vocal and visual grandeur, kind of like "this is the dwarf you need to pay attention to, the rest are not important". And you can also see this in the film, because majority of, if not all the character developments were invested in these three characters whose names and personality you can remember. Honestly all the other dwarves just felt like comic relief, or just to fill in the numbers so that it's not as empty on the screen.

As a standalone film, I'd rate The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey with 6.5 out of 10.


Spoilers from here on!

The reason The Hobbit really boils my veins is not because it betrayed the book from which it was adapted or The LOTR trilogy, but because it worked too hard to try and retain the style, the atmosphere and the continuity. And again it's not because they tried, but because they FAILED.

In all honesty, I think this film followed the book more closely than Lord of the Rings did. However book and film are completely different mediums. A friend of mine said after the movies that she "prefers books because it allows her to imagine more". I totally agree, but I prefer movies for a different reason: I like studying other people's imaginations, and I see film adaptation of books as either a faithful re-imagining of the original author's intentions or a re-imagining by the director only loosely following the premise or characters from books. In my experience when directors try to re-imagine things it doesn't go awfully well.

Who is the intended audience?

For those who aren't aware, The Hobbit was a children's book, unlike Lord of The Rings, which was actually written for adults decades later in Tolkien's career. The stories in The Hobbit were much more episodic, simplistic and with a much smaller scope of the world than we saw in the subsequent books. You could argue that The Hobbit was more suitable as a mini-series on television, but no, Peter Jackson decides to try and make it as epic and as exciting and dramatic as Lord of The Rings to appeal to the adult audience.

Granted it is a fair enough desire, and the mainstream audiences would love him for that if he did it well, but I think he worked too hard to keep in as many elements of the book in the film while trying to keep the stakes at the same level as LOTR. I keep hammering this comparison because I am trying to say that The Hobbit SHOULD NOT BE LIKE Lord of The Rings.

You can see this awareness by the producers from time to time in the film, such as the sporadic musical numbers, which are word for word from the book, and for the most part very lighthearted and whimsical. You can see this difference with the jokes and comic relief by the side characters as well. You can even notice this in the fight scene which are more like a boy daydreaming their own epic "final battle" scene but without the concept of consequences. And that is why the action is more intended for children; they are inconsequential except to move the dwarves closer to their destination I guess? This explains why no one important dies or even gets hurt, because the only concept kids can digest at this point is running around, doing push ups and using weapons. They aren't ready for things like war gaming or ruse or sacrifice. I think the deepest concept taught in this film was courage and the value of home.

Then you have these other moments which try to be serious, like the prologue about the background of Thorin and the dwarves at Erebor, the meeting at Rivendell, and the internal conflict of Thorin, which, I'm not going to lie, is very convincing and powerful. But if you interleave these serious moments with the gentle easy-to-watch scenes which are directly adapted from the book (like the 3 mountain trolls), you just can't concentrate as a viewer. Your expectation of how they shoot the next arc keeps getting shattered and you just give up caring about what's going on. At least that's what happened for me.


Characters and Cameos

This leads to another major problem: being mostly a faithful adaptation of the book, what was the point of showing us characters that weren't really in The Hobbit? The biggest of these would be Lady Galadriel, and I actually know why she was introduced. Hollywood films needs gender balance. There are zero main characters in The Hobbit that are female. None of the dwarves are female, none of the wizards are female, even the bad guys are all...guys! It is kind of similar in Lord of the Rings where the entire fellowship are male, though to their credit they didn't have to invent a character, but instead amplified the few existing female characters in the book (Arwen, Galadriel, Eowyn) to have a more prominent presence in the films, which worked in the film's favor.

Galadriel is not as strong a character in this film. She has this tiny romantic cocktease with Gandalf, holds his hand briefly, then poof! You don't see her again for the rest of the film. And in the book, she is nowhere to be found, so her presence in the film is purely for the purposes of the trailer. In terms of the plot you didn't really need her at all. She figures out Gandalf is hiding something he found, and then he reveals it. I'm pretty sure he was going to show that sword anyway, and beyond that little bit of telepathy she contributes nothing to the film, except making the female presence in the film from 0% to 1%, and in the trailer from 0% to 15%.

Another character I don't really get why they kept him in is Radagast, the brown wizard. This character was kind of important, but the way he is introduced was very clumsy. When Bilbo asks about the other wizard, Gandalf only mentions two despite there being 5 in total: Saruman the White (whom the audience already knows from previous films) and Radagast the Brown. Why didn't he mention the other two? I WANT TO KNOW WHO THEY ARE!! It's kind of ironic because Jackson keeps in a lot of scenes which are inconsequential or irrelevant to the plot, and only serve to let us enjoy a wider view of Middle Earth as he sees it. Then it shouldn't be that hard to just throw in a couple of quick scenes to show who the other two wizards are and what they did. (By the way, the other two wizards' names are Alatar and Pallando)

The final issue with characters I had was basically the entire company of dwarves except Thorin and maybe Balin. Like many who saw the movie. I couldn't remember who was who or even their names in no particular order or assignment. Now you could argue that there are too many characters which is why we can't remember. But lets do a real head count here for all the characters of some importance in The Hobbit as opposed to, say, Fellowship of the Ring (theatrical release only):

Fellowship of the Ring: Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, Arwen, Elrond, Galadriel, Ringwraiths, Gollum, Balrog (The Shadow), Bilbo, Uruk Hai and of course Sauron => 18 characters, 16 of which most people recognise immediately with their names and/or photo.

The Hobbit: Bilbo, Gandalf, Thorin, Balin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dori, Dwalin, Fili, Gloin, Kili, Nori, Oin, Ori, Smaug, Gollum, Azog, Radagast, mountain trolls and that goblin giant. => 21 characters, 10 of which most people can recall for various reasons.

Fellowship of the Ring had slightly less characters we had to be concerned about, but more of them leaves a lasting impression on us, not just right after we leave the theatres, but whenever we see our friends share photos with LOTR memes like Boromir's "one does not simply blah blah blah" or the actors in other films, we can immediately identify like "oh he played Frodo in LOTR!" or "oh she's hotter as Arwen in LOTR!"

Can we say the same for any of the dwarves other than maybe Throin and Balin? The rest are so generic dwarves I kind of feel bad that I don't want to see them in the film. I mean the acting is fine, but they are just not given juicy material to work with. If I recall correctly (which is hard when I was disinterested), less than half of them actually had any dialogue at all, assuming you don't count those songs they sung in chorus. Sometimes I even question if they're all there during a chase sequence.

P.S. Fellowship of the Ring was only 11 minutes longer than The Hobbit Part 1 in their theatrical release.


Bilbo and Thorin to the film's rescue!

Now having ranted quite a bit about what's wrong with the film, I will not deny credit where credit is due. Bilbo and Thorin does steal the show in this film. Like I mentioned earlier, this film is very character-driven, and very slow allowing the audience plenty of time to breathe and take in a scene. This gave us a lot of time to connect ourselves emotionally to Bilbo's struggles and Thorin's plight. Both of them are great performances, their relationship is very strong, and it's the only thing about the climax that I really found satisfying when Thorin hugs Bilbo and accepts him as a true member of the company of dwarves, and possibly a friend or brother.

There's so many scenes which just pans around a silent contemplative Bilbo which are so powerful because without saying anything Martin Freemen says a lot simply through his expression, his sudden jumps into actions. When you talk about the underdog, the Campbellian archetypal hero, Tolkien really hits the mark with this character in the book, and so does Jackson in the film. In fact the only reason I would watch the next two films is to see Bilbo's growth and his developing relationship with Thorin.

Gandalf is fine, but he's not as epic as in LOTR. He always seems to have an ulterior motive, doesn't tell people what he's up to, and even at times looks like he is unsure of what he's doing. But believe it or not, this was in the book!

So yeah, when you have the greatest fantasy film franchise of all times being the benchmark for this film, it's hard not to be disappointed. I heard about some controversy with this film using 48 fps, but honestly I didn't notice it except the scenes with Gollum, which actually makes him scarier but also more human at the same time, so it's kind of a plus in my books. And I am curious enough to see the rest of the films for two reasons:

• Bilbo and Thorin are great characters and I want to see how Jackson finishes their story off.
• This first film already covered HALF THE BOOK. How are they going to make two entire films (I'm guessing 3 hours each) from the other half?!?!?!?!? Don't tell me one film is just a big fight like in Return of the King! O_O

The Climatic Nitpicks!

There were sooo many more things I could nitpick about in this film (which I already sort of have), but seeing how long this post already is I'll try to restrain myself to the one scene that really bugged me, and believe it or not, it was the climax of the film, where the company of dwarves had literally been cornered (at the edge of a cliff), hanging by a thread (a tree); symbolism at its subtlest. Here are my nitpicks with the climax of The Hobbit Part 1:

• That butterfly at the climax of the film. The amount of in-movie time between Gandalf whispering to a butterfly and the eagles coming to the rescue was less than 3 minutes. How on Earth did that butterfly get to the eagles so quickly!?!? In some of the establishing shots of the environment around them the nearest eagle camp must have been at least a few miles away. And butterflies, when they are inclined to race towards a destination, are clocked at a top flight speed of 12 miles per hour, or 25 miles per hour if it was a moth. This means a plain old butterfly would have at best, reached the bottom of that cliff in the time the dwarves had before the big moment where Bilbo mans up and saves Thorin. In fact, they didn't really need the eagles by that time anyway.
  
  These lack of attention to detail tend to bug me a lot because it doesn't give its audience much credit in using their common sense or doing basic arithmetic. Gandalf might as well just have shouted "Help!" in Eaglish. Middle-Earth eagles aren't deaf, and echoes from the mountains would've help transport a Wizard's call to them if they were in the neighborhood  which I assume is the only time the butterfly could've done anything to save the company.
  
• Why didn't the Hawks finish off the Orcs, particularly Azog (the big villain)? I guess he must be a big bad guy that deserves to return in the next film, though at this point I know so little about him except that he's bad and he killed Thorin's father and grandfather in the past. Villains with no personality, aren't they always great?
  
• That liar Lady Galadriel, she didn't come to help them! Earlier in the film as Gandalf was discussing issues with Saruman, Elrond and Lady Galadriel about the undead blade, Galadrial and Gandalf has this intimate scene where she says that "if you ever need help, I will be there for you" or something like that in an Elvish enchantress voice. So....where was the 'help' when the company was trapped in that cliff? No wonder the Dwarves have a prejudice against the Elves; they don't keep their promises or help their neighbours in their times of needs!
  
• Most importantly: Bilbo's ring was not used at all! Okay so in the book Bilbo didn't use the ring during this encounter and also you could argue he didn't want to reveal he had such a powerful ring, but wouldn't it be very sensible to wear this ring, turn invisible, and just slaughter the unknowing orcs and wargs? I guess it would be a bit anti-climatic like the army of the dead quickly ending the battle at Pelennor Fields in Return of the King, which is why this is a just a nitpick.
  
  I mean if I was Bilbo and I saw a friend (not to mention a king) in trouble I wouldn't care about 'courage' or 'respectability' and did the wiser thing of using what tools I have to my advantage to save his highness! By the way, the whole point of The Hobbit is watching Bilbo trade away respectability for wisdom and experience. Wouldn't this be a great time to, I don't know, show that?
  
• What do dragons want with gold? Haha okay this one is not related to the climax, but it is the setup for the whole story. Are dragons girls who just likes shiny things even if they serve no practical function (except to look good I guess). I mean it's not like dragons needs to BUY anything, or that they CAN spend it anywhere. Maybe they just want it because everyone else wants it too. So he just sits there for years and years swimming in his pool of gold like Scrooge McDuck? (Suddenly I can picture a TV spin-off called Dwarf Tales) o_O

So yeah, the film really doesn't hold up when you compare it to its predecessors. But what did you expect? Peter Jackson is a great film director with a portfolio of film genres more diverse than the cast of Star Trek, but attempting to make 3 high fantasy epic adventure films, each 3 hours long, from 1 children's book that I could read in less than 8 hours? Why would he bother such a feat? In a word: money! Haha

But I guess I still have to be grateful for the existence of this film, after all I did want to see The Hobbit on the big screen. I simply wished that they made the theatrical version shorter (and back in 2004/05 when Christopher Lee was still fit enough to do a bit of action and raise his voice). Seriously it's like this film I saw was already the extended edition with all the deleted scenes kept in. I would've felt as good about Bilbo's character and understood the rules and stakes of Tolkien's world without having to watch over-indulgent scenic shots and pans of the Southern Alps, and certainly had fonder memories of this film if I didn't spend half the film waiting for shit to happen. Sigh. At least there's lots of movies to look forward to this year!

But I now know not to have the same level of expectation for Desolation of Smaug as I did entering this film.

Tolkien Fans' rating: 4 out of 10.