Impressapointing — “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”

by Gabriel Valdez

When I tell you The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is the least of director Peter Jackson’s six Middle-earth epics, it’s a lot like saying milk chocolate is the worst kind of chocolate. Any way you cut it, you’re still getting dessert.

By this third Hobbit film, our halfling hero Bilbo Baggins has accompanied a band of dwarves to the Lonely Mountain in order to reclaim their homeland. This sets off a chain reaction that draws human refugees, armies of wood elves and dwarves, and vicious orcs and goblins to the riches of the mountain stronghold. Five Armies is mostly one continuous battle scene including plenty of 1-on-1 duels between heroes and villains of every species.

In his earlier Lord of the Rings films, Jackson centered his fight scenes on the actors’ performances. There were heaps of CG visual effects in those films, but the actors were always the center of the battle. The Hobbit trilogy has used CG stand-ins in its battles more and more, and Five Armies takes it to another level entirely.

This reliance on visual effects often lets Jackson create energetic, whirling action scenes, the kind I usually compare to a Rube Goldberg machine. Some viewers will like the CGI duels more – they’re flexible and allow clever situations like felling a tower to make a bridge, then battling across it as it falls apart. Personally, I prefer the earlier duels that involved more live action participation. They might not include whirling cameras and crazy shots, but they did feel more personal and more desperate.

The first two Hobbit films also had great humor, focusing on the dwarves’ slapstick behavior when eating, sleeping, or fighting. The novel The Hobbit is more youth-friendly than Lord of the Rings and these moments were ways to translate the humor of the book into the film without taking the novel’s large story detours. Unfortunately, there’s not as much of that here. Five Armies has its notes of mirth, but less than its prequels. It’s also dire at points, but not nearly as apocalyptic as the Lord of the Rings films. It sometimes feels caught in the middle, but at the same time, these are terrific co-franchises to get caught between.

Make no mistake, Five Armies is impressive. You will see sights and visuals you won’t find anywhere else. You feel the fantastic in the fantasy – the elf king rides a war caribou (I’m sure it has a beautiful name in the books, but I’m calling it a war caribou), dwarves ride armored hogs on the battlefield and mountain goats up steep cliff faces, and the orcs boast war bats and giant, tunneling worms. That’s not even mentioning the huge, majestic eagles or a dozen other moments.

Some images will stay with you, others will play with the cliches you expect from fantasy movies and, as always, Jackson finds a way to sneak two or three quick, experimental sequences into his classical framework. These asides have always been my favorite moments in his Middle-Earth movies, and truly shine when depicting a mad hallucination or a magical stand-off.

Five Armies is the Transformers entry in Jackson’s Middle-earth saga: it exists to show off its action with a minimum of story. The first Hobbit was an uneven, yet loving, character study. The second Hobbit was the travelogue of the bunch, full of life and texture that stuck the viewer into its world like few films ever have. This third one is the most rousing of the bunch, but I can’t help but miss the focus on character and place that made the others feel so vibrant and important. Some of this may be added back in the special edition re-edits Jackson does for all his Middle-earth films. In this theatrical release, Five Armies feels slightly dulled – it lacks the sense of awe and the nuance for bittersweet storytelling that I’ve come to rely on from Jackson.

While Five Armies fails to evoke the full range of emotion that its prequels and the Lord of the Rings trilogy do, it still boasts more experimentation and emotion than most other action films. It’s a good film, and it’s must-see big-screen territory if you’re a fan of the franchise. It’s just a notch down from greatness – which is what I’ve come to expect from this world – and it doesn’t compare to the capstone that Return of the King gave to the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I’m harsh on it because of what’s come before, but I absolutely enjoyed watching it. It has tense action and great performances. It just doesn’t feel absolutely complete.

(On that note, this is my favorite trailer and it’s remarkable in that half of the shots in it aren’t in the final film. That special edition is going to be interesting.)

Does it Pass the Bechdel Test?

This section helps us discuss one aspect of movies that we’d like to see improved – the representation of women. Read why we’re including this section here.

1. Does The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies have more than one woman in it?

Yes. Cate Blanchett plays elf queen Galadriel and Evangeline Lilly plays the elf warrior Tauriel. Peggy Nesbitt and Mary Nesbitt play Sigrid and Tilda, the two daughters of human hero Bard. Sarah Peirse plays Hilda Bianca, a villager of Laketown who is supportive of Bard and critical of the old regime.

2. Do they talk to each other?

Barely.

3. About something other than a man?

Yes. Tauriel helps evacuate Bard’s family when Laketown is attacked by the dragon Smaug.

Note that four of the five women in the movie are invented specifically for the film series. Jackson has always had a feminist streak in his films, even if many of them center around bands of men.

Tauriel’s an Elven captain, and a better fighter than nearly everyone else in the film. (She also gets the best live-action fight choreography.) Fans complain that she was invented for the franchise simply as a love interest, but that’s clearly backseated to her function as a warrior. Without her, there wouldn’t be a single woman taking part in the film’s central showdowns. It’s also worth noting that, while a dwarf and elf pine after her, she’s too busy with the war to let it get in the way of her decapitating orcs.

There’s also a moment when the women of Laketown, after being told to bunker down in a chapel, rally to save the men of the town. This is not in the book either. Jackson (and the screenwriting team of Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Guillermo del Toro) made additions to Tolkien’s material in order to give women more agency in the fighting.

Also, Galadriel is a beast. There is no joy in this world that quite compares to seeing her one-shotting an orc. In fact, there’s a moment that consciously evokes the modern fantasy trope of the fainting lady lying in her knight’s arms as he protects her – except in this case, Galadriel’s the knight, and the fainting lady is the most powerful male character in the franchise.

Jackson later inverts another fantasy trope, of the male warrior avenging the death of his woman through self-sacrifice, except this time, the gender roles are reversed.

It may not be the best example of passing the Bechdel Test on technical terms, since women barely get a chance to talk to each other here, but when you compare Five Armies to its source material and take into account Jackson’s consistent reversal of fantasy cliches, you have a movie that makes a very meaningful feminist effort in its storytelling.

Simply put, the writing team’s additions pissed off diehard fans in order to put female role models on the battlefield. That’s worth commending.

Women in the film save men more often than they are saved, and they are as brave and effective as their male counterparts. It’s also worth noting that the Elven army is mixed gender. You can’t really tell with the dwarf army because, as Viggo Mortensen reminded us in The Two Towers, they all have beards – and we never get to see the armies up close except for a few key characters.

Other issues of diversity, such as the fact that every main character is white, are real issues. How much of it is the racial makeup of New Zealand and how much of it is bias, I couldn’t tell you. I’ve got to imagine there’s a greater presence of Maori, Polynesian, and Indonesian populations Down Under than the casting here shows, and it is off-putting that the only place for these actors to go is in portraying the evil orcs. I am no expert on New Zealand and Australian ethnicities, however. It might be something to ask writer Olivia Smith one day.

Insofar as the treatment of women goes, I really do have to commend the changes Five Armies makes in order to create more feminist agency and narrative importance. That’s not to say it couldn’t have gone further, because it could have. But it does go much further than the vast majority of other writers and directors would tempt with the adaptation of such sacred source material.

Silent All These Years — Why Scarlett Johansson Needs to Play Hannibal Lecter

by Vanessa Tottle

Gabe asked me to write a second opinion on Under the Skin. Back in April. Here it is:

“One day, I’d like to see Scarlett Johansson play Hannibal Lecter.”

That’s as far as I got.

I couldn’t think of anything to say that Gabe hadn’t already, and then he rubbed it in by interviewing Michel Faber (the author) like some big show-off.

I recently came across my aborted article, and you know what? Days after the release of female celebrities’ naked photos across the internet, endearingly nicknamed “The Fappening” cause 4Chan and Reddit can go fuck themselves (I’m sure they already know how), I finally figured out why I want to see Scarlett Johansson play Hannibal Lecter.

Power.

Gabe’s been pushing for more women in protagonist roles, and he gets a little confused when something like Guardians of the Galaxy comes out. For all its awesomeness, it has a green-skinned Zoe Saldana kicking a few aliens before the guy from Parks and Rec has to save her twice. Congratulations, we got 20% of the protagonist share. That’s half what the movie gave to anthropomorphized wildlife found in your backyard at midnight.

There’s a common misconception when we talk about more movies with better parts for women. We’re not saying that this should be a requirement for EVERY SINGLE movie. Neither are we saying that there need be a quota or regulation placed on the entertainment industry. All we’re talking about is raised expectations and the changes a more aware audience can effect.

Lawrence of Arabia is implicitly about T.E. Lawrence’s homosexuality. It was made in 1962 for approximately a bazillion dollars, so it couldn’t really be about Lawrence’s sexuality in any explicit way. It had to be intimated to the audience. It achieves this in part through its all-male speaking cast.

John Carpenter’s The Thing is the best horror movie ever filmed and it doesn’t have any women in it. Since the horror in it is a fleshy Freudian conceit for men’s fear of possessing and being possessed through sex, full of snapping extendo-vagina monsters, phallic emasculations, and male pregnancy metaphors, it wouldn’t work as well if it wasn’t full of bearded, 80s uberdudes drinking, gambling, and watching porn. Besides, Mary Elizabeth Winstead came along in a prequel and proved a woman could blow shit up just as well as Kurt Russell.

The point is we aren’t saying that all movies lacking or minimizing women are terrible. We’re saying there are simply far too many of them. We are never saying that we want old ways of making movies to go away. We only want those old styles to be better balanced with new ways of writing, casting, and making movies that have thus far been resisted by a backwards entertainment industry.

I even like – hell, love – Guardians of the Galaxy. But there’s no denying they missed a big opportunity with Saldana’s character Gamora. While the men are away killing nameless henchmen by the thousands and getting a crack at the big bad, Gamora is cordoned into a one-on-one against the only other woman in a lead.

Others have written about needing more female leaders portrayed in movies, and I agree. But you know what else I want to see? I want to see women playing all those powerful character roles we reserve exclusively for men. Which brings me back to Scarlett Johansson and Hannibal Lecter. I want to be terrified by a woman in the same way movies tell me I should be terrified by a man. That’s the real power on-screen.

I want to see Cate Blanchett in Training Day telling Kerry Washington that King Kong ain’t got shit on her. I want the evil general in however many Avatar sequels they’re filming to be played by Sigourney Weaver (they’re bringing her back as a new character anyway, why not the bad guy). I’m not scared of a shouty, musclebound crew cut who looks like he soaked up too much California sun, but if Sigourney lowered her voice in anger, I wouldn’t be able to look elsewhere. I want the new Star Wars villain, the inheritor of Darth Vader himself, to be a woman. And you know who could put Daniel Craig’s James Bond in his place? A terrorist mastermind Helen Mirren.

The real staying power on screen belongs to the iconic villain. Do you see kids borrowing their parents’ bathrobes to dress up as Luke Skywalker every Halloween? No, you see them spending time and money buying and making costumes so they can be Darth Vader for a day. They understand the villain represents power, and icons of power last the test of time.

Marvel’s making a Black Widow movie with Johansson. That’s a great step, and I applaud them for having it scheduled to launch shortly after their 10th movie centered on a white guy named Chris. Way to get on that.

Now make a movie where a female villain is something other than a male villain’s henchman with daddy issues. You just got wallpaper performances out of Guy Pearce, Chris Eccleston, and Lee Pace, and they’re all great actors. Meanwhile, Karen Gillan killed it in Guardians despite limited screen time.

Change up the formula. Write more heroic women, but while you’re at it, write more powerful women who want to rule the galaxy, too. That’s why I want to see Scarlett Johansson as Hannibal Lecter one day.

“Can you hear them, Jesse Eisenberg? Can you hear the silence of the lambs?”

And Jennifer Lawrence can make you put the lotion in the basket while she dances in the skins of dead men.

How’s that for a Fappening?

Not Enough Good Words — “How to Train Your Dragon 2”

I’m told by some older critics that we’re supposed to lead our readers for paragraphs on end about whether a movie is good or bad. I’m told we’re not supposed to use superlatives like “masterpiece.” Then I’m told, “Criticism’s a dying art.” Maybe it’s because we’re spending all our words building suspense over whether a movie’s good or not.

So let’s get this out of the way first and foremost: “How to Train Your Dragon 2” is good. Really good. One of the best American animated films good. I’d even call it a “masterpiece.”

That last paragraph is 35 words. That’s how quickly a critic can tell someone if a movie’s good, and I was being wordy. I’m much more concerned with why and how a movie’s good. In a film like “Dragon 2,” what does it communicate to your children? How does it reflect on our world?

“Dragon 2” picks up where the first “Dragon” left off, with a society of vikings having domesticated dragons they had once feared and fought. Everyone has one now, and dragon racing is the new sport. The pioneer of this new society, young Hiccup (voice of Jay Baruchel), is uncomfortable with the concept of becoming his village’s chief. He would rather explore the world beyond his village’s borders with his dragon Toothless.

This is the only family film I can think of that centers on two amputee heroes – Toothless uses an artificial tail fin and Hiccup has a prosthetic leg. Toothless’s bond to Hiccup often reflects that of a service animal. In a country engaged in wars for the past 13 years, I applaud “Dragon 2” for including heroes like these. Instead of being stigmatized as too damaged, we can look up to them as we might any other role model.

The movie stresses acceptance in a number of ways – including dragons, previously feared as too different or threatening to the Viking way of life, has made Hiccup’s village of Berk stronger, more efficient, and happier.

As he maps the unknown world, Hiccup encounters dragon trappers. These men work for the warlord and dragon slaver Drago, but they are harassed by a mysterious stranger they refer to as the Dragon Thief. She frees as many dragons as she can. Hiccup will doubtlessly meet her, and she proves to be one of the strongest, most unique female characters I’ve seen in a cartoon. His introduction to her above the clouds is a haunting, otherworldly scene, the kind we don’t expect from cartoons but that can burn itself into our minds as an iconic moment in cinema.

“Dragon 2” folds mythology of all kinds into its story and its visuals. There are epic battles aplenty, but there is loss, too. In contrast to many of our blockbuster films, loss in “Dragon 2” is permanent; there’s no “retcon” to take away its sting and – in true mythological fashion – it can come at the hands of your most trusted friend. Children can handle this; death used to be a staple of the fairy tales we told. Handled properly, it can create both an emotional moment and a lesson in growing up. Testing our reactions to the loss of loved ones in fiction is one of the many ways we eventually learn to cope with it in our real lives. It’s one of the most primal reasons we tell stories – these are crucial lessons that need to remain in our fiction.

And the visuals…there aren’t enough superlatives in the world. In 2-D or 3-D, this is a feast for the eyes. Visual consultant Roger Deakins, who boasts 11 Oscar nominations as a cinematographer for films including “Skyfall,” “True Grit,” and “The Shawshank Redemption,” plays with color and shadow in a way that makes you feel as if you’ve glimpsed past the pages of a true Norse epic while still maintaining a cartoon sensibility.

Writer-director Dean DeBlois has crafted something deeply special, an exciting adventure that shows us “less able” isn’t the most accurate term, that celebrates inclusiveness, that treasures the tools of peace over war, that shows the kids and reminds the adults in the audience how we grow up, that works as a cartoon, an epic, a comedy, and an art film all in one. So, yes, it’s a masterpiece, but I told you that at the beginning. Why it’s a masterpiece, how it’s a masterpiece, that’s what will make it stick in your mind, what makes it so worth talking about, so worth celebrating. “How to Train Your Dragon 2” is rated PG for action and humor.

Elegant, Smart, and Classy — “The Monuments Men”

In Roland Emmerich’s global disaster film 2012, the wealthiest people and most important artwork have been preserved on an ark meant to survive the apocalypse. One scientist, played by the excellent Chiwetel Ejiofor, has a copy of an unknown novel that’s barely sold 500 copies. “This book is part of our legacy now,” he says. “Why? Because I’m reading it.” It’s a profound statement about art in a profoundly cheesy (but fun) movie.

What we carry forward, what we find defines our culture’s past, is the art we choose to let survive, and the art that makes it anyway. George Washington crossed the Delaware River to change the fate of the Revolutionary War not on a cold, moonlit night in 1776, but in a painting. That painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, is stamped and reprinted in the pages of every history book I’ve ever seen on the subject. Every day someone sees it for the first time. It gets dozens of historical details wrong, but it may be the single, most famous American image.

George Clooney’s The Monuments Men is based on a group of scholars who took on a thankless task as World War II came to a close. Nazi Germany seized collections of art from conquered nations like Belgium and France. The job of Frank Stokes (Clooney) and his team was to track down the art and return it to its rightful owners. Much of the art was initially transferred to Germany’s wealthy and elite. As Germany lost territory, it often destroyed these works. It was their way of claiming some momentary, spiteful victory in the face of imminent defeat.

Clooney is joined by Matt Damon, John Goodman, and Bill Murray as a rag-tag group of scholars-turned-soldiers who risk their lives to save this art. Cate Blanchett co-stars as a helpful Parisian researcher. The Monuments Men shouldn’t be mistaken for a movie about battle, however. There are encounters, but they’re episodic and usually take an unexpected turn. There are soldierly deaths, but this isn’t a movie about the horrors of war and what it makes men lose. This is a movie about the things we seek to save.

Clooney and Damon smartly diminish their own roles. Clooney gets some monologues, including a particularly good one opposite a captured German general, but as their band traipses across the French countryside, splitting up and reforming when needed, it’s the everyman qualities of Goodman and Murray that shine through. Murray, in particular, gives us the film’s best scene, and it’s sometimes easy to forget what a genuinely touching actor he can be.

The Monuments Men is a quiet film, but it’s not boring. In its own way, it’s intense. Clooney hasn’t directed many films, but when he does (Good Night and Good Luck, The Ides of March), he makes old-fashioned ones, heavy on story and character, laced with humor. What he offers as a director isn’t a particular visual flair, but rather a deep reverence for his subject matter.

The Monuments Men is better than I expected, an unassuming gem of a film that asks for, and earns, your patience. Thanks to the things that have lasted in our own culture, a poet constantly contemplates “The Road Not Taken,” Aretha Franklin constantly demands respect, and Dorothy is constantly finding her way home from Oz. Every time someone new sees or hears one of these and takes meaning from it, the universe of possibilities expands in their minds. We realize someone else understands what we’re feeling, and that we’re linked to other strangers who share that understanding. Art is how we make sense of the world, how we derive meaning from chaos.

That George Washington crossed the Delaware once to attack the British is a historical detail many will forget. But he didn’t just do it once. He is constantly crossing the Delaware River, every time someone looks at that image, and we are held to a higher standard because of it. This is what art does, and why despots seek first to destroy it. This is what Clooney so elegantly communicates in The Monuments Men. Is art worth a life? There’s no right answer. Is art worth a way of life? I don’t see how you have one without the other.

The Monuments Men is rated PG-13 for war violence and smoking.

A version of this review appears in the 2/13 edition of La Vernia News.