Book to Film: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Contains spoilers

This time last year, I was more excited about the first Hobbit film than I was about Christmas itself, and despite mixed reactions to the film, I was pretty satisfied. This satisfaction did not prevent me from being quite nervous about the second film of three based on a short book. Promotional material and internet rumours got me worried that Peter Jackson and his team might be getting carried away with their own storytelling, neglecting the book that they were adapting. Were my fears justified? Perhaps a little. The Desolation of Smaug is certainly the weakest installment of the series so far, and the bad bits were every bit as bad as I had feared. But these were fewer than they could have been, and did not affect my enjoyment of the film as a whole.

When you are adapting six chapters of a book into a film of nearly three hours, you'd expect each chapter to be fully fleshed out, but the scenes at Beorn's house are rushed through at top speed, which I found to be an incomprehensible decision. The most memorable part of this chapter was completely cut, which disappointed me, as was the fact that Beorn was not, nor did he resemble, BRIAN BLESSED.  I also thought, even taking into account that he is a huge man in the company of dwarves, the proportions were all wrong, and they looked strange and unreal on screen together. Still, the actor owned the part for the short time he was on the screen.

The story really got going in Mirkwood, the eerie forest that would gladly lead the company to their doom. This is where The Hobbit benefits from having been made after The Lord of the Rings: If one Shelob is horrid, then many are worse. I had wondered how the film would get around the problem of speaking animals, which we have not yet encountered on the screen. This was neatly shown by being a result of Bilbo's enhanced ring-senses. Martin Freeman is superb in this scene, and you really feel his horror when he realises what his desire for the ring can drive him to: a frenzy of spider-slaughter that may have saved their lives, but which was powered by the One Ring and not his own mind.

I missed the Elves' enchanted feast: in the film the enchantment of Mirkwood was stated to be because of the power of the "Necromancer." As predicted, the Elves' warrior aspect was played up, over their otherworldliness, though Elvenking Thranduil was deliciously, reassuringly creepy. I would have enjoyed seeing more of the Elvish feasting in the film. In a way, Noelle Stevenson's "Randy Thrandy: Racist Party Dad" is closer to how I picture the Elves of the book. The antagonistic Legolas was amusing to watch; a younger, hotter-headed Elf-prince than the one we've come to know.

Legolas: "What's this? Some goblin mutant?" Gloin: That's my son, Gimli.

Fans of Legolas' stunts from Lord of the Rings should be pleased with this film; they are as awe-inspiring and sometimes hilarious as ever.

And then there's Tauriel: a hot-headed young Elf-captain who kicks all kinds of buttock. If only that was all. My friends and readers probably know what I'm about to say, and I'd rather not even acknowledge this part of the film, but I feel I must.Frankly, I would prefer to have no female characters in the film at all than a two-dimensional one, and certainly I could do without one whose main role in the story is for the purposes of romance where no romance should be-o. I enjoyed the first scene between Tauriel and Kili, but it was better implied than overindulged, and it came across as overly sentimental, predictable and sloppily written. But my objection to the inter-species romance goes beyond "Ew, gross" or "It's not in the book and therefore did not happen." I felt that it made Arwen and Aragorn's romance in Lord of the Rings less remarkable and rare, as well as diminishing the power of Legolas and Gimli's friendship sixty years later. And that's all I shall say on the matter. Just no.

The scenes at Laketown were rounded out; I feel in the book of The Hobbit you don't get a lot of time to look around the settings or meet the characters. We get to know a bit more about the character of Bard who will prove important in the future, and also to see the poverty of the town in comparison to the master's lavish living. Stephen Fry as the Master of Laketown was wonderfully disgusting, with a greasy ginger wig and moustache, and his servant/spy could probably have been related to Grima Wormtongue: slimy, sneaky, despicable. Yes, there was an additional subplot added in here, but it was along the lines of the Elves at Helm's Deep or Aragorn floating down the river and being kissed back to life by his horse, unnecessary but inoffensive. Although, come to think of it, that entire subplot was there only to advance the aforementioned dreadful romance. Hmph.

As before, the best parts of this film are those that come straight out of the book, and after the Elvish and Laketown diversions, the film got back on track when Bilbo went inside the mountain and came face to face with the dragon Smaug. The slow reveal of the dragon was magnificent. The gold moves over here to reveal a dragon's eye and head... then, as Bilbo tries to hide from Smaug, the gold moves over there and you, with Bilbo, come to realise just how huge this beast is. Voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, Smaug is gloriously hammy, but terrifying as well. You know that he could swallow any of the heroes with a single gulp, and his snout comes way, way too close for comfort.The telltale orange glow through his belly before each exhaled inferno gives his victim a few seconds to feel terror with the knowledge of inescapable death. I was very impressed by this addition to the dragon mythology. As with the last film, the most powerful and impressive scenes were those acted by Martin Freeman and an actor in a motion-capture suit.

I am still unconvinced that The Hobbit really needed to be made into three extra-long films. Though I didn't really lose concentration, a larger proportion of this film than others were, well, padding. Last time I called it character development, extrapolation, filling in the details, but this time I don't think any of those words are as accurate as padding. The film is not two and a half hours of story, but is filled out to match the others in length by extended battle scenes, stunt sequences and unnecessary subplots. There was one long sequence towards the end when I though to myself, "I have absolutely no idea what they are doing, but let's just go with it." Turns out they were trying to give Smaug a golden crown a la Viserys Targaryen; a very very stupid decision of the Dwarves. If they'd read A Game of Thrones properly, they'd know that "fire cannot kill a dragon." But it can make him very, very angry. And an angry dragon is not a good thing to have around.

The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian

Airline pilot Chip Linton's life changes forever when he is forced to crash land his plane into a lake. Had it not been for a boat disturbing the water at just the wrong time, it could have been done relatively smoothly, but instead, thirty-nine people died. Chip survived. Several months on, still devastated by the accident and suffering PTSD, he moves with his wife Emily and twin daughters Hallie and Garnet to a new home: a big, old house in an out-of-the-way village in a different state.

But there is no escaping from the past. In the basement of their new home, Chip finds a door sealed with thirty-nine bolts, and the significance of this number - the same number as victims of the air disaster - is not lost on him, and its presence taunts him. But when Chip takes an axe to the door to reveal... a boarded-up coal hole, it is his own ghosts that are freed from their prison, in an ambiguous mix of ghost story and psychological horror. The Linton's house seems to serve the same purpose as The Shining's Overlook Hotel, a dark, creepy place with a sinister past, which makes already damaged people much, much worse. Like the best Gothic settings, this house is not merely a place where the action happens.

The strangeness is not limited to the house, however. Many of the Lintons' new neighbours are not quite like other people. Many of the women spend all their time in their greenhouses tending herbs, baking vegan food and mixing up herbal remedies, and they all seem to have names like Sage, Anise and Clary. The other people in the town shun them, even fear them, though they seem friendly enough, taking a keen interest in the twins and welcoming them into their new home. But they know too much, and seem to have their own purposes for wanting the new family to join their circle, and as the Linton family spend more and more time with the "herbalists," Bohjalian evokes a creeping sense of claustrophobic dread.

The Night Strangers is a vivid, gripping read, though a very dark one. Much as you may hope, there is an inevitability that the book won't have a cosy ending. In fact, it is not until the epilogue that the outcome of the climactic scene is made clear. I found myself re-reading in case I'd missed something, but no, the last chapter left the characters' fate unclear. Half The Shining, half Stepford Wives (with a strong seasoning of magical herbs), The Night Strangers left me feeling deeply unsettled.

A Feast for Crows–George. R. R. Martin

Spoilers for previous volumes, may include minor spoilers for this one.

After the rollercoaster of shocks and plot twists that was A Storm of Swords, book four of A Song of Ice and Fire is a quieter, more contemplative instalment. I understand that in his planning of the series, Martin originally intended to skip straight to five years later. It shows. Most of A Feast For Crows concentrates on the reactions to the events of the previous volume, introducing characters who will presumably become key players in the game of thrones, and moving people to where they need to be. Politics feature prominently, but most of the people we’ve been following have been killed off and replaced with new, unfamiliar names that are hard to keep track of.

For the first time, there are chapters titled with more than just a character’s name: “The Prophet,” for example and “The Reaver*” These chapters are for the most part focused upon new settings: The kingdom of Dorne (where Princess Myrcella is being fostered) and the Iron Islands which we have seen briefly from Theon’s point of view in Clash of Kings (which reminds me – what has happened to Theon?) This ambiguous titling seems to be testing that readers have been paying attention.

Several of the main characters from earlier in the series are not even featured in A Feast For Crows – Tyrion is absent, as is Daenerys, Jon Snow is only seen briefly in passing, while Arya and Sansa only get a few chapters each. Both of these girls have taken on new identities, and the book itself has started to refer to them by their new names, as if to indicate that their old lives as members of the Stark family are being erased.

The main focus of the story is on Cersei Lannister, ruling as Queen Regent as her son Tommen is only eight years old. Cersei’s development as a character has been well-handled, really interesting but unpleasant. She started off as an Ice Queen, later revealed to be a pawn first of her husband, then of her father and even her teenaged son. With all three of these now dead, and with her relationship with her twin brother Jaime growing more and more fraught, Cersei has finally reached the position of absolute power that she’s always dreamed of. For the first time we see from her point of view, and it becomes abundantly clear that she does not have the first clue about ruling a kingdom. I suppose that, being a woman, she was never expected or intended to hold such power, nor taught the game of thrones as a player. Instead of ruling, she spends most of her time obsessed with engineering the destruction of her daughter-in-law Margaery Tyrell. As a girl, Cersei heard a prophecy that she would be replaced by a younger, prettier Queen, and as such she will go to extreme lengths to rid herself of Margaery. And yet, surely it is clear to the reader that this young Queen of prophecy is Daenerys Targaryen, not Margaery at all.

Next up: A Dance With Dragons, which is another book split into two volumes for the paperback. I understand it returns to the characters who were not featured in this book – hurrah for the return of Tyrion, Daenerys et al. I wonder if there will be any mention of those who featured but briefly in Feast For Crows, or if I have to wait for book 6 to be published. So many of the characters’ stories ended on unsatisfactory notes – I want to know what happens next!


*The word “Reaver” made the Browncoat in me run away screaming. It’s a strange word to see out of the Firefly ‘Verse.

Movie Monday: The Hunger Games

Contains spoilers

As I'm sure I don't need to tell you, The Hunger Games has been one of the year's most eagerly-anticipated films, and is surely the biggest book-to-film adaptation since the final installment of the Harry Potter series. (Breaking Dawn, part 1, by contrast barely registered on my radar.) I'm probably the last blogger to write about the film. The blogosphere has been buzzing since the first casting, with countdowns galore and every bit of news examined under microscopes. We've all been holding our breath for this film - but with such hype, could it possibly live up to expectations?

I'm going to come out and possibly make myself very unpopular, but for me, no it didn't. It was a good film. Some parts were very good indeed. But the book had taken such a hold of my imagination that the film just could not match up.

The casting was flawless - well, nearly flawless (Donald Sutherland as President Snow was good, but not how I imagined him.) I had no complaint with any of the actors. Even, perhaps especially, the youngest members of the main cast, were many times better in their small roles than the stars of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Leading the cast was Jennifer Lawrence, who was Katniss Everdeen. Considering how much of the book is made up of her internal monologue, Lawrence was able to convey much of this without saying a word. Her eyes! I could not fault her for a moment, expressing just the right amounts of toughness, tenderness and attitude.

I loved Cinna: the sole calm, sane, genuine person to see
through the hysteria of the Hunger Games.

My favourite parts of the film were the scenes shot in the Capitol. It was fascinating to see it visualised, with the weird costumes, and the mixture of science-fiction city and Hollywood. The film highlighted the jarring contrast with the cruel reality of what lay in wait for the tributes with the way it was being presented to the audience, which made me think of the endless adverts for the London 2012 Olympics we had to sit through beforehand. This is sick, I thought. The fact that we, too, were sitting here watching, for entertainment, a film about people watching kids killing each other for their entertaiment, brought me one stage closer to the reality of Panem. It was fascinating, and very well done, but uncomfortable viewing. I think it it hadn't been uncomfortable it would have failed.

I won't spoil the effect for you.

I loved the Girl On Fire dresses. The first was awesome, though rather what I had expected. The second, on Caesar Flickerman's show, I was not expecting. I had seen clips and photos of Katniss in her red dress, but had managed to be unspoiled for her big twirl, with her skirt looking like flames. That was stunning, breathtaking.

My favourite scenes were the assessment, in which Katniss, disgusted that the gamemakers weren't even watching her, fires an arrow straight at their table. I loved Effie Trinket's horrified reaction afterwards, and worry about her "bad manners."

I had been sure, reading the book, that I would lose interest during the games themselves. Great, long scenes of Katniss, alone, with little interaction with any others, surviving in the woods, shouldn't interest me, but I kept my attention. During the film, on the other hand, I did find my mind wandering. Maybe it was because I knew exactly what was going to happen, or perhaps action scenes just don't interest me much. Without Katniss' narration, I felt disconnected from what was going on. We were watching as spectators, rather than as tributes. One way we did benefit from the lack of first-person-narration was that we were shown behind the scenes of the Hunger Games, watching the Gamemakers at work, the President discussing with Head Gamemaker Seneca Crane the politics of the Games, and the commentary by TV host Caesar Flickerman - useful for exposition.

Rue. Sweet, wonderful little Rue. 

I had wondered how on earth they would keep this true to the book and yet keep it as a 12A certificate (PG-13 in the USA.*) The violence was shown very fast, with jittery camerawork, so that although you get a rush of images, they are too much of a blur to take in anything graphic. Still, with the relentless killing, the cast numbers ever decreasing, I felt heartsick. When I had sat through the tracker-jackers - without throwing up or running from the cinema (I am terrified of wasps) - Rue's death, Cato's murder of the boy who let him down as well as the occasion offscreen scream or thump of the cannons, and realised there were still 5 tributes left, I thought enough. 

So much is made of the "romance" between Katniss and Peeta, but in the movie, it seemed tacked on unnecessarily. Of course it was necessary to the plot, but because they spend so little time apart, I wasn't convinced in the slightest. It all seemed to come from nowhere, with the pair showing no sign that they even liked each other very much. They'd say the right words but I didn't see them as anything other than strangers who had recently become acquaintances. Katniss spent so much time alone in the arena that when she was reunited with Peeta, it seemed like they were meeting for the first time all over again. They hadn't a steady interaction to build up to attraction, even faked. Their task for Catching Fire? "Convince me."

Seneca Crane's beard. Come on!

As I felt when I first read the book, the ending was bittersweet. Katniss and Peeta's victory was a hollow one. They had survived, but nothing had changed and the world was as heavy and oppressive as ever. If this were a stand-alone movie, I would find it a very depressing ending indeed. Weirdly, the fact that the last scenes foreshadowed even worse to come were what saved it from being irredeemably gloomy. Things must get worse before they get better, after all.  I was very impressed by the added scene that showed the eventual fate of Seneca Crane (and his incredible beard!) It seemed so fitting considering how this futuristic, science-fictional world evokes the ancient civilisations. Clever.

Overall, The Hunger Games was a very faithful adaptation of the novels, but perhaps it was too faithful. I think that a film needs to complement its original material rather than copying it, in order to give it more depth and dimensions. Still, it was a well-made and thought-provoking movie. To actually see the youth of the tributes and hear the jubilant cheers of the Capitol citizens helped to bring the story to life. It was a dark, rather sombre film, even more so than I had expected from reading the books, but I think it had to be. This is not a story to be treated lightly, and the Hunger Games movie was intelligent and respectful of its source material, as well as a decent film in its own right.

*Apparently 7 seconds were cut from the UK edition. Those 7 seconds were apparently suitable for a 13-year-old to watch unaccompanied, but not a 12-year-old.