I remember reading The Hobbit in elementary school. I was a pretty
bookish kid, particularly for any kind of fantasy, and The Hobbit seemed
tailor-made for me. It felt old to me, as if it wasn't a story, but history of
a place that really could have existed, only told in the form of a gorgeous
fairy tale. I then read Lord of the Rings (which was an endeavor for a ten-year
old). I don't remember exactly when I saw the movies for the first time, but
they blew me away as no other movie could. They were heavy stuff for an early
teen-- lots of dialogue and exposition mixed in with some of the most brutal
fighting scenes I had ever witnessed (I hadn't seen Tarantino yet).
My love of LOTR continued into my 20's. I read the series a few
more times, tried to read The Simillarion (I made it through Ulysses but I can't
make it through that damn book. What gives?) I can't even count how many times
I've seen the movies. When I heard that Guillermo del Toro would be directing
the Hobbit movie, I was dismayed, but I knew that I shouldn't be. I loved the
Hellboy movies. The Hobbit was much more of a weird fairy tale, not the epic
that was Lord of the Rings. Del Toro could bring to life the ephemeral
weirdness of the wargs and Gandalf's magic. His creatures could bring an eerier
edge to the story. Where could it go wrong? For all the rationalizing that I
did to get myself to like the idea, I couldn't bring myself to it. Peter
Jackson was the man for the job. He brought the impossible to the screen. His
singularity would be missed, and there was nothing that could console me.
As you can imagine, I was ecstatic when I found out that he would
be directing. Everything was right in the world. What could go wrong?
Three movies? For The Hobbit? Seriously? That broke me. It's a
deft little fairy tale, for goodness's sake. I had to kick my rationalization
in full gear for that one: well, maybe Jackson is incorporating other stories
from Tolkien's canon. Yeah, that's it! It'll be awesome!
48fps looks like garbage? Well, I'm sure we'll get used to it.
People used to say bad things about color. I'm sure this won't be a big deal.
The story is too padded? Whatever. Critics just have a short
attention span (yes, I actually said this). It'll be good for us Tolkien fans.
Well, I finally saw the movie. It was... all right. It had
fantastic moments-- the scene with Gollum and Bilbo was so wonderfully wrought.
The final battle through the mountain was straight from my childhood fantasies.
They even brought out the Eagles. There was just so much in between that I
could barely stay awake (I did see it at 8 or so, and it had been a long day.
So there's that).
After spending some time reviewing all the things that could have
been better about the film, I stopped. In any way could this movie have
fulfilled my expectations? When I saw the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the
experience of reading the books was fresh. I was young and easily impressed.
Nostalgia was playing havoc with my desires.
Brooding over time makes it that much harder for me to be pleased
by something. George R.R. Martin is going to have to do a knock-out job for me
to be satisfied with the ending of A Song of Ice and Fire. When I
listened to the new songs from Vampire Weekend, a staple of my high school
years, I was pleased, but not overwhelmed with their artistry. They weren't any
better or worse than songs from their previous albums. I'm just jaded now, and
the wait for the songs had drained me of being overly excited about them.
Novelty is one of the few things that can profoundly move me now-- that's why
Beasts of the Southern Wild impressed me so much.
What's the solution to all of this? I don't know, but I don't
think it's lowering my expectations-- that might make me go see a Michael Bay
movie or something *shudder*. Art is going to have flaws 99% of the time, and
we need to accept that. Caution is what I see-- it's perfectly fine to be
excited about something, but childlike anticipation will only create
disappointment. As art matures, our expectations for it need to also. If we're
going to be giddy over something, let it be something new and unexpected. Then
we'll go back to our childhood.
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