Review; The Hobbit

Remember that feeling when you walked out of the Phanton Menance, and thought, what… the fuck… has Lucas done to me… and the great Star Wars was forever ”made dirty’ somehow?

This film was as bad as that feeling.

So awful…

To put this newfound drive to type into context, let’s take a step back for a second and think about The Hobbit the children’s story. This timeless tale has a what can perhaps accurately be described as a “middle-class” chap living by himself. I say middle class because he’s well-off, but not ostentatiously so. He’s soft-handed, literate, and gentile. THEN! Into his comfortable life intrudes a wizard and a mess of bumbling dwarves. These interlopers weave a tales of an unknown and terrible evil resident on the other side of the freaking world, and somehow, miraculously, this wee man finds himself on an adventure to defeat it.

In a nutshell, it’s awesome. The hobbit finds himself up against all kinds of unknown horrors, fighting and fleeing in turn, and all the while being sheparded by Gandalf the Grey. The dwarves are hopeless, and constantly getting themselves in untold troubles. But, somehow, it all ends up OK. The wee hobbit proves himself to be something of a hero, and everyone pulls through.

Now… Peter Jackson takes this timeless tale, one that I loved as a child, and does cynical, unspeakable things to it. The tale is distorted, which you expect in a screenplay, but distorted to the point that it has an only passing resemblance to the mood and myth of the original book. In a way, he has taken this piece of my childhood, and twisted and wrung every last drop of blood from it, with every microgram of that blood being converted to cash for his masters at Time Warner. This charming, subtle tale becomes an empty vessel, a simulacrim of a story; a bombastic, over-directed, ham-fisted, over-and-just-plain-poorly-acted, overproduced, awkward, frankenstein of a movie that is little more than an excuse to drape scenery against a cinema screen.

And somehow, hidden within this 3 hour abomination of a movie are some gems. The scene in which Bilbo contests with Gollum is fantastic. Gollum is incredibly engaging, scarey and sympathy-inducing all in one. The Goblin King is actually not so bad.

But the rest… the rest is nothing less than outright ridiculous.

Some specifics:

• The Dragon. Smaug is, as stated, an unknown evil. A tale to scare children at night. The story leaves this monster until the very end, when our hero must face it entirely alone. The story arc is a slow climb to meet this immense horror. But… BOOM! There he is in the very first scene. One great-big fuck-off dragon right there. Ignore that the back story of the dwarves should be something of a mystery. Ignore that their true natures should be gradually revealled. No. Just drag that money shot right out front, because that’s what will keep the punters coming back for another 6 hours of this unadulterated tripe.
• The Dwarves. One of these doesn’t even look like a dwarf. In fact, he just looks like a short, handsome bloke like one you’d see slightly over dressed in town. The remainder scale all the way upwards from what a cartoon dwarf should look like, to a dude with nothing more than a groucho marx nose, to a King who looks nothing at all like his father or grandfather. Then there’s them all being kick-arse warriors. Seriously, what? Half the time their goofing off being swept up by trolls or falling through walls, and the rest they’re performing feats of magical strength against Orcs than weren’t actually in the book.
• Radagast the Brown. What can only be described as the pod-race of this embarrassment of a film.
• The White Orc. The most impossibly gratuitous character in the history of cinema. The sole reason this albino freak exists is to drag out the length of this movie, and eventually enable Time Warner – and Jackson – to make more fucking money. He adds nothing to the story. Nothing. Nada. Zip. There are some scenes with his running about and doing things – even the back-story on Thorin Oakenshield is tenuous at best – but mostly he’s a great big critter running around in daylight when every Tolkien Fanbois worth his mithril knows that ORCS DON’T GO OUT IN THE DAY. And the fanbois are what this abortion of a film is supposed to be about.
• AND HE’S A FUCKING ALBINO. AN ALBINO ORC. AND HE DOESN’T HAVE LOTION ON. The burns must be terrible.
• The scenery. I know the intention was to showcase some New Zealand, but… in one scene where the company is running from the impossible outdoors orcs the cast runs through something like 3 entirely separate bits of scenery-featuring-rocks. They don’t even resemble one another except in passing… and this is all over the space of a few hundred metres at most. It’s crazy…
• The soundtrack. Good lord I was glad I wasn’t in an actual cinema being bombarded with that crap. So, so, suicide-inducingly-awful. It was like someone locked a small symphony in a smaller room, and wouldn’t let them out until they made something, anything. A testiment to an attempt to make this dog bark.
• But, it was very pretty.

And that’s about it. I say don’t see this film. Don’t go to the cinema and piss away >$20. Don’t hire it from the video store. Don’t talk about it with friends because you’ll get “that look”.

My advice? Someone told me once not to give money to bad buskers, and don’t clap for unfunny comedians, because it’s like giving bread to seagulls: you only encourage shit. If you really must see this “then borrow it from a friends collection”. The studio doesn’t deserve a cent more money that what New Zealand has already given them.

 

Tahi Bay

Herd stood on a low ridge overlooking the chaos in the Ocker’s camp and waited. The slingers and archers were harrying the Ocker pickets, running in to loose stones or arrows then darting up and away. The Older Man wondered if it had always been like this. This love for war men have. The friendships blood-soaked battle engendered. He wondered if the Younger Man would make it through the day unscarred and unscathed. Indeed he wondered if he himself would.

He’d seen war in his own youth, when the Ockers turned from trade to piracy and the coasts became unsafe for man or beast. He remembered the cadence of the small battles and the terrifying, glorious thrill of it. He remembered the exaltation of throwing the Ockers back into the sea and the sand soaked red and rust for weeks. The endless tales of exploits and bravery of the Herd in the face of the Ocker terror, of dodging great war axes that split shields and arms like kindling, of luring Ockers into traps to be crushed with boulders, or to fall in pits. The joy of surviving the onslaught.

And he remembered the endless biting hunger, and the starvation when the crops couldn’t be brought in, or were burned. And the death of kin and kind. And what they had to do to survive.

Yes, men had always loved war. And always would. Because despite the misery, the heartache, the horror; moments like this enthralled generation after generation.

He pulled his helmet lower on his brow. The men had started to chant. “Hah! Hah! Hah!” their weapons knocking their shields, or knocking spears and spear-throwers. The blood was rising. The Ockers would be gone soon.

Parker stepped from the crowd, raised his arms for silence and the Herd obeyed, the gathering roar dropping to the occasional shout. He points to a Tawa Man who steps forward, two poles raised in the air, a head spiked on each. The Tawa Man drives the poles into the ground, the grisly tongues of the heads lolling towards the camp on the beach.

“Men of the Herd!!” He shouts, “They came again! The murderers came again! Came to take your children! Came for raping and murder! Came for our crops, or stock! Come to kill us all!” He pauses, “Will we let them take it?!”

The Herd roars its dissent, a hundred voices raises to shout abuse at the Ockers, who seeing the threat are gathering in the front of their ships, a short line forming, a wall of shields. Parker raises his arms again.

“We are Men of the Herd!” shouts Parker, his voice rising to fever pitch, “We remember! We remember that THEY are the children of the Lying God! THEY are the children of Deniers! THEY lit that fires that drowned the World! THEY brought the death to us!”

The Herd roars again, men stepping forward to charge the Ockers, barely restrained by Parkers hold on them. He raises his spear, points to the sky, his eyes wild with anger, bloodshot, his body quivering with rage, “IS THIS LIFE?!” he bellows

“IT IS DEATH!” The Herd screams, the men are shaking, waving spears, holding shields above their heads.

“IS THIS LIFE?!”

“IT IS DEATH!!! ”

“IS. THIS. LIFE?!!”

It is death.

 

A reflection, on the day of Christian’s birth

As a child I thought myself special, the way children do. I grew up in a town of mediocrity, so being only a little above mediocre I naturally assumed I was somehow gifted. Lately thought, I’ve been reflecting back on a comment by one John Wright, of Tyler Texas. He said, “When I left Arp I thought I was a genius.” Now, if you know Arp, it’s a tiny place, so anyone with 3 degrees of gumption would reasonably think themselves a cut above.

Over the years I’ve done pretty well. I breezed through school, I succeeded in getting an AFS scholarship, then was extremely lucky to have someone arrange sponsorship for me. I then did sufficiently well at uni to get a scholarship to a decent Aussie varsity. Now I have a square job and a fabulous family, and we’re paying off our own home. Just middle of the road stuff, right?

So nothing I have done is exceptional. In most ways I’m just kind of ordinary. Just a tad over mediocre in every way even to this very day, and sometime I’ve worried that I missed a trick. And I ask myself why I’ve never been hugely successful in my career? Why have I never been hugely successful at anything? I do plenty of “making it just fine’, but have never done anything spectacular.

And then today I find myself talking to a friend about his daughter. It’s not my place to talk about her challenges, but let’s just say that she’s a sick little girl. When I was talking to him, I wanted to begin to talk about my own “internal rearrangement” and how lucky I was not to have gotten sick when I was a child (a medical professional Uncle tells me many children with misaligned internal organs can have a pretty hard time). Fortunately I my New Year’s resolution a couple of years back was “It’s not all about you Che”, so I bit my tongue.

Reflecting on the conversation this evening, I realised that my life has been special. Special because despite all the many, many impediments placed before me I have always been above the curve of “OK”. And what struck me is that the gift I have been given is normality. Of all the awful things that could have befallen me? None have. My life has merely being a little above mediocre, and well inside the range of the everyday. But, considering the many pitfalls life has presented me, and which I have avoided, normality has been a great and special gift.

And you know? That is a great comfort to me.

 

Tahi bay

The Older Man looked up to see the Younger Man smiling broadly as he walked out of the bush and towards where he sat with a friend from Jonsville. They’d been discussing the grazing in the hills towards the south, and joking about the predilections of the Karori herders to relieve the tension.

“What that?” he asked as the Younger Man sat, indicating what looked to be a large round Ocker shield.

“Lucky me” replied the Younger Man, “Parker says I landed a stone right on the crown of this Ocker headman. Maybe kill him outright! So he tells me to keep this shield we take from two Ockers the Tawa Men kill.”

“A good morning!” exclaimed the Older Man, now returning the broad smile, “You did good!

“Two Ockers those Tawa Men kill?!” He craned his neck up a little to try see past the Herders milling around the field, but couldn’t see parker near his bivvy, “What Parker thinking now?”

“Dunno. Those Tawa Men are flensing the Ockers, and probably put their heads on spears…” He looked around expectantly, “Any food left?”

The Older Man reached around behind him and brought out some potato bread, and stopped to look at the shield.

“You know,” he asked, “that shield is very big for a wee man.”

The Younger Man smiled again, and reached over to take the bread. “Would probably make a good swap for a handy buckler tho, I reckon. A buckler is more suited to a slinger than blademan?”

“Probably… Hey, why those Tawa Men flensing those Ockers?”

“Parker’s idea,” said the Younger Man past a mouthful, “The wind is South, so they’re gonna roast the meat, let the smell head down to the Ockers. Later,” he gaffawed, “they chuck the bones over the dunes, scare them fuckers half to death!”

The Older Man returned a chuckle, “You better eat up, the women all headed back up to the Pa this morning. Some saying enough of the Herd is here, so we muster on Tahi Bay this afternoon, get stuck in tomorrow.”

“Good thing I got you a real big shield then.”

 

Tahi Bay

It was a dull ‘thud’ that made Kevvo turn. The Big Man was slumping sideways in the kind of fall that said either blind drunk or stone dead. The yelling started shortly after, with men pointing towards a low run of dunes, hauling up shields, and looking to him for permission to advance. Confused, Kevvo took a step towards the dunes, and looked, stunned at one of his crew falling in front of him, a stick of some kind embedded in his neck. A man was shouting “Shield wall!! Shield wall!!” and a huddle began to form around him, the occasional cracking noise audible above the din. Ducking under the wall Kevvo heard another ‘pop!’, and over the shield bounced a stone half the size of his fist.

Kevvo looked around. It was barely first light, with many of the men still wiping sleep from their eyes as the slow rain of stones bounced off the clustered shields. Occasionally another stick would fly through the air and lodge itself in a shield, or if lucky, an exposed foot or arm. Cautiously, Kevvo glanced past the shields he was hiding behind. He caught a glimpse of something on the dunes, and his second peek out he saw it, a boy twirling what looked to be a leather strap.

“Them kids!!” He shouted to the men around him, and pointed to the dunes. The men in his huddle nodded, and cautiously they began to shuffle out of the camp under their protective wall. As their confidence grew they began to walk quickly, eventually breaking into a jog when they saw that their surprise visitors were, as Kevvo had said, only boys. Seeing the men starting to roar, and run, the boys bolted back over the dunes and out of sight. The Ockers laboured through and up the loose sand of the dunes and over the crest. The boys were running as fast as their legs could carry them down the back of the dune and towards a string of low trees that marked the edge of the bush, before disappearing into the foliage. One Ocker threw his spear towards a final retreating figure, but it lodged harmlessly at the edge of the trees.

“Stop!” Kevvo shouted, “Them gone…” he looked back towards the camp. A few more men were trailing slowly towards them while the remainder of the camp was in chaos, some tending wounded, others roaring at the surrounding bush. He could make out the prostate form of the Big Man, Jacko crouching near, perhaps inspecting the wound that caused the collapse. Kevvo looked back to see a couple of his men heading down to collect the stray spear.

One man, a Sinny-sider he knew to be brave but as stupid as a ox, was peering into the bush cautiously, his shield raised near to his eyes. The other man bent to pick up the spear when out of the bush a Herder stepped. A huge, brown man. He held a long bamboo spear that darted forward and down, slamming between the bending man’s shoulder blades. He collapsed in a heap while the Sinny-sider lunged forward, shield raised. The brown man roared, stepped outside the spear thrust towards him and seized the edge of the shield, tearing down and sideways as another brown man stepped out of the bush and stabbed with another bamboo. A short spray of blood soaked the two Herders before they  grabbed an Ocker each and dragged them into the bush.

The Ockers stood gobsmacked at the crest of the dune, before a third huge Herder stepped from the bush and shouted. Everyone ran.

 

Tahi Bay

He looked up from the fire to see the frame of the Tawa man leaving the copse and walking towards Parker’s bivvy. Outside the bivvy he crouched next to two other Tawa men, one of who rose and went under the woollen canvas. After a brief time Parker emerged and spoke to the three, scratching his beard and looking around the Herd. His eyes settled on the Older Man, and accompanied by the Tawa man from the copse, he picked his way across the field past the sleeping or prostrate forms. Parker sat next to the fire and asked, “What is ‘goal’?”

The Tawa Man leaned forward, “Nah, ‘gold’.”

“Gold?” replied the Older Man, “Dunno. Why?”

“This Ocker, he says, ‘keep you damn gold bastard’ many times before he pass out.”

“Gold?” He looks at Parker, “I never heard it.”

“Yeah.” Parker states as he stands. Before he turned away he looks at the Younger Man, “Get you and the slingers. Before dawn the Tawa men will take you near Tahi Bay.”

The Younger Man nods to Parker, who lopes back to his bivvy and crawls inside. Turning back to the Older Man, he asks, “What happens at Tahi Bay?”

“You wake them Ockers up boy. A few stones kill their sentries, make some noise. Harass them, make them jumpy. Works well.”

The Younger Man nods, then looks across the field to where some more Jonsville Men are sitting around a fire or sleeping. The turns back and asks, “Why these Ockers come here? Why not stay in their country?”

“You know the tales boy. They haven’t changed.”

“Tell them again so I remembers them well.” He smiles, “Who knows what tomorrow brings?”

The Older Man breaks a wry smile, and rising onto his aging legs, lifts his arm and raising his voice he says, “This is the Tale of the Harrowing! The Tale of the End, and the Beginning of all things!”

A few rise from other fires and walk nearer, and some who were lying closer sit up to hear. A voice replies, “The End, and the Beginning!”

He looks to the edge of the field and sees a sentry standing on a low rise, framed by the thousand souls of the departed rising to cross the bridge of the sky.

“There was a day when all people lived the lives of Gods. Their hearths were never crowded, their villages never dark. A day when food was plenty, and none went hungry. A day when sickness was no fear, when crops never failed. A day when death was a stranger to the people.

“On that day all grew old as a crone, all grew withered and grey, but all stayed strong of body and mind. The people grew older, and older, and older but they stayed mortal, and boredom was the great enemy. They called their young before them to always dance, to sing. Their lives were easy.

“But old is old, and people still feared the great killer, the cold. And fearing the cold they lit fires to warm each other. Great fires in their hearths and fires on their paths to light and warm their way. Their great houses had stone walls and stone roofs, and hid they hid to ward off the cold, they huddled and feasted, watched their children and counted their days .

“And there the Lying God found them hiding, and he fed their fear of his brother the Sky God. Our God, the moody Sky who brings rains and winter hail. The people heard the Lying God, and they build their fires higher, and the smoke clouded the sky, and still he lied, and the fear became madness.

“But the Sky God, he saw smoke and worried for the people. Not knowing the tricks he brought light rains to wet the fire. But when he brought rain, the people heard the Lying God, and the fires were heaped higher and higher, and the the Sky God rained, then stormed.

“Soon, the water filled streams, then rivers, then harbours, and still it rained. Then waters began to rise. Slowly, slowly they came up, rising to the doorsteps, then to the closed doors, then to the closed shutters.

“The flood destroyed the houses of the people, destroyed the crops, drowned the animals. Feeling hunger for the first time, the old people saw what they had done. They thought they had been abandoned by the Sky God, and in their fear and anger they fell upon one another, first blaming, then hating, then murdering.

Then the first Ockers took to boats. The Harrowing was a wicked, dark day. The Ockers brought their Lying God to this land, and he ate our people in his hunger, emptying the souls of people and flinging them in the wind in handfuls, and like leaves in the Spring gales they were raised to the sky. It was the End of day of the old people…

“And now their souls walk from edge to edge of the sky every night…

“But without death, there is no life, and with the End came the Beginning. The old people were too weak to fight. When they were all dead and gone the young woke, turned on the Ockers together, drove them into the sea and ceased the killing.”

The Older Man, raised his arm again and pointed to the sky, “The End and the Beginning.”

A low murmur ran through the Herd, “The End and the Beginning.”

The Older Man whispered, “Is it Death? It is Life.”

 

Tahi Bay

The keeler came towards the shore slowly, depth sounders in the bow watching keenly for submerged ruins or other means to run afoul. The oars dipped slowly into the water in the familiar rhythm, and the mate could be heard shouting orders to the crew. With an audible heave from the slaves the boat leapt forward to beach itself, and some of the crew jumped overboard into the shallow and cold water to haul it ashore with heavy hemp ropes.

“Hoy!” Kevvo shouted to the skipper when he appeared in the bow, “Bin fishin’?!”

Jacko waved his arm dismissively, “Nuttin’! Them Herders stupid, an them women ugly!”

Kevvo barked a laugh, “Them fight?!”

“No more! Took two for slave. Some women, children in the lock-up!” He laughed viciously, “All quiet now!”

“Get meat?!”

“Some!”

Kevvo jumped down from his keeler and walked over to Jacko as the captain walked amidships, climbed into the cold water, continued to shout orders at his crew, and waded ashore. They shook hands gruffly. Jacko made admiring noises about the speed of Kevvo’s crew in building the palisade, and shouted back to his men to join the work when they had tethered the keeler.

“What them fires up there?” He asked, pointing south.

“Scout says a mob of Herders, all sit up there.” Replied Kevvo.

“Big Man think what?”

“Them come down, get theyself killed tomorrow, maybe day after?”

“Hah! Bet them even fights like sheep…”

Kevvo paused, “That bet, no-one is taking’.” Jacko looked at him sideways before gaffawing, then paused as the Big Man approached.

“Jacko! Liking this new huntin’ ground!”

“Dunno? Them grounds rich?”

“Fair few Herders up with them fires,” said the Big Man, indicating towards the smoke from the cooking fires blowing gently over the trees to the south, “all them fuckers gotta hearth somewhere.”

Jacko nodded. “Wanna go up, kill before them come down?’

“Nah, no hurry. Today, tomorrow… wait, an more get scared, more run, less killing. Then slaves them all become.”

Jacko nodded again, “Put all them working looking for metal an this gold?”

“Yup.  Maybe that storm in Tasman did us favours after all.”

“Maybe,” muttered Kevvo, “if this be Wellton.”

The Big Man’s eyes slowly moved to look at Kevvo sideways.