Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Hobbit 3

Took the girls to see The Hobbit: the Battle of the Five Armies this afternoon, the last in the hugely profitable series. 
Of course I had my Tolkien phase as a young teenager and read both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings while staring dreamily at Roger Dean sleeves - though not to the level of obsession. The po-facedness of Middle Earth was happily brought down a peg by reading Harvard Lampoon's irreverent Bored of The Rings and watching the not-very-good 1978 animated film. 
It took a surprisingly long time for someone to have a serious go at putting Lord of the Rings on the big screen and Peter Jackson's epic undertaking was, well, epic - and warranted being spread over three films. 
But the three-part Hobbit has been a shameless enterprise, spun out to extract as much money as possible from a book a quarter of the length of its sequel. Was it any good? Well, if you like CG and endless battles it just about passed muster, but I was bored throughout. Even the fact that we saw it in 3D didn't save it.
Stand by for The Silmarillion in four parts starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. I'm joking. I think.

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