The Desolation of Smaug's Dynasty

            Two big-ticket items right in time for the holidays. You know, Christmas, where businesses of all shapes and size tries to bilk us for all the money we have earned in the last few months. I love Christmas, and I love giving gifts to others, but what I don’t love is being told that my love needs to be measured in the dollars and cents I spend on a person. The whole holidays season, from Halloween to New Years Eve, seems engineered to reinforce what has ultimately become a big wealth redistribution opportunity here in America.

            So, in the grand tradition that is holiday movies, this year we were treated to The Desolation of Smaug. I was a big fan of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. As a sword and sorcery fan, I felt that his vision of Middle-Earth finally brought the romance and vitality of my favorite genre to the screen. Too often, filmmakers can twist the visual aspects of a fantasy movie into a caricature that simply serves as a visual means of making fun of the fans. Unfortunately, that was precisely what Guillermo del Toro’s vision of Middle-Earth was – filled with cartoonish costumes for his dwarves and a world unlike what we saw in Jackson’s films.

            Typically, I am a fan of collaboration. A partner in crime often inspires our creativity, while also providing us a peer editor that keeps things in check. The original movies demonstrated the power of collaboration between Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens.

 Unfortunately, Smaug wasn’t the powerhouse collaboration it could have been.  Del Toro definately has a look that he wants to present in his movies, it is all about visuals for him. Middle-Earth could have definitely presented del Toro with some meaty places for his visual aesthetic. After seeing Pan’s Labyrinth, I was certain that Smaug would be a treat. But, what can be expected from someone that said: “I was never into heroic fantasy. At all. I don’t like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits — I’ve never been into that at all. I don’t like sword and sorcery, I hate all that stuff.” (Salon.com 04/2008). First rule of making a fantasy film, you don’t hire someone that hates the genre to make the movie.

           

            Bringing in Jackson and his crew to write and direct came too late to salvage the movie. We are left with dwarves that look wrong (often in the movie I was distracted by poor makeup and thinking to myself that the worst contestants on Face-Off could do a better makeup job than the folks that did the dwarves). Beorn looked equally horrible and unbelievable as the skin-changer. And Tauriel’s ears looked like poorly worn Vulcan ears that are favored at conventions by cosplayers on a budget. I will say that the giant spiders of Mirkwood did squig me out a bit and I did have to look away to fight my arachnophobia, which I couldn’t say of Shelob.

           

            Beyond the visual aspects, the story and storytelling in the movie was atrocious. Tolkien provided us with a story that can easily be broken into three acts, each capped with a battle that provided a certain level of emotional resolution, before taking us into another crescendo. Act One provides us with the battle with the Goblins and Bilbo’s test with Gollum, Act Two would conclude with the death of Smaug and Bilbo recovering the Arkenstone, and Act Three would resolve with the Battle of Five Armies and Bilbo returning home. While I find Tolkien a bit long winded at times, one thing I can say is that he is a great storyteller and this goes hand and hand with the timelessness of his stories and the world of Middle-Earth. Instead of following the storytelling blue print laid out by the original, Jackson insists on jumping on the Hollywood bandwagon of movies that know they are the middle film – The Matrix Reloaded, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Catching Fire – and provides little to no resolution for the story elements presented in the movie as a ham-handed means to attempt to attract followup vewiership of the third installment.  

            Certainly moviemakers will take some liberties with storytelling. In the case of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, the liberties improved the writing and overall storytelling presented in the book. However, most fans of the novel will always prefer the book to the movie. This isn’t necessarily because they are literary purists (though that can often be the case). Often, though, the writer presents his material exactly the way he or she wants it to be – for example Tolkien never presented us with a Dwarf and Elf romance because in his Middle-Earth, they are difference species (not merely different sizes of the same race, they are completely different and biologically incompatible). Yet, to fill the “woman in the middle of a love triangle” trope that is ubiquitous in movies these days, we are given Tauriel who can’t help share doe-eyed looks with Kili and Legolas. Apparently, the only emotional role this character archetype is capable of experiencing is deciding which boy to take to prom, or which supernatural baby she’d like to bear. Of course, Tauriel was created solely for the movie and had the opportunity to provide a view into a race of elves that Tolkien hadn’t provided us much information on and instead, they used her to simply be “a woman in a man’s world” and making her simply a romantic interest, which cheapens the character overall.

            I have mentioned several times since seeing the film that I am ready for this one to also fall into the other recent storytelling atrocity of splitting the last movie in half “because there is just too much to go into one film.” This comes from my fear that they will attempt to front load the drama of There and Back Again as Jackson will need to deal with the climatic death of Smaug at the beginning and lead us into the epic Battle of Five Armies. My prediction is that we will get two movies There will be three hours dealing with Laketown fighting off Smaug while and Back Again will feature a three hour blow for blow slug-fest that will culminate in the Tauriel and Kili’s marriage which will be reminiscent of Arwen and Aragorn’s wedding at the end of Return of the King.

            Overall, Desolation of Smaug left me feeling desolate. Not only was three hours of my life taken from me, but I was also liberated of about twenty dollars. Hollywood cheapened the classic-ness of Tolkien’s films by providing us a film that fails to tell a coherent story and is filled with both visual and literary missteps that changed the theme and tone of the original piece in an attempt to improve their profit margins. This lack of care on the part of the filmmakers leaves me feeling manipulated and ultimately abused by their greed.

            This same manipulation is akin to my feelings about the yo-yo decision-making on the part of A&E. I was once a naive fan of television reality, believing that pro-wrestling was the epitome of reality.  My understanding of reality has been shaped by the crashing understanding that most of what we see and hear is manipulated, orchestrated to manipulate us. Even our American news media aren’t the most accurate, often leaving us to get our big news from foreign sources.

            I have to admit, when I heard the story of Phil Robertson’s article, I got caught up in the emotional current in the LGBT community. How dare he put me and my husband in the same list as terrorists and drunkards and say that our love for one another is akin to bestiality or promiscuity. After the initial visceral reaction to this level of narrow-mindedness, I took a step back and thought about what the man was saying. And, unlike many members of the LGBT community, I don’t feel that Robertson was really comparing them as being the same activity. Instead, he was grouping sins together and this is very similar to the teaching in most churches. Even the Catholic Church’s position of “love the sinner, not the sin,” still recognizes that the act of homosexuality is a sin. And ultimately sin is sin. They are not for man to judge one another on, and even early in the interview, Phil seemed to be trying to make sense of things. The statements he made about homosexuality aren’t intolerant. He didn’t say that he hates people because they are homosexual or that he hopes they die or anything else. He said that sin is sin and it is rampant in our world. I would agree. All around us, we see people being evil for the sole sake of being evil. Greed, anger, and hate are all sins as well and our American landscape is colored with all of it.

            In the wake of the interview, I saw places like Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr filled with true intolerance. Hating the man for what we said, twisting his words to turn people against one another, and rallies behind anti-Christian and anti-Gay causes. Neither of these things actually demonstrates tolerance. They demonstrate hypocrisy. They show the idea that we will only show tolerance to you if you agree with us. That isn’t tolerance. Tolerance is agreeing that some people have ideas that we don’t agree with, but they have a right to that idea and even voicing the idea – as much as we have a right to disagree with them. Tolerance comes from respecting one another’s differences in opinions.

            Now personally, I feel like the entire fiasco was manipulation of the American people. First, Phil Robertson acts the same way during filming of his show. He certainly doesn’t strike me as the person that censors his ideas while the cameras roll. He even admitted that many of the things that he wanted shown get edited out of the shows. Now, as an employee of A&E, Phil also would have either needed to get permission to give the interview or, more likely, his employer set it up. I doubt that A&E told Phil to act a certain way during the interview and to avoid certain topics. Most likely, they encouraged him to just be himself. And, the writer of the article knew precisely what topics would be most tantalizing to write about. This wasn’t simply a Q&A session that was printer verbatim. It was an article crafted from the interview and the time the writer spent with Robertson. His job is to write a good story that will pull people into the article and ultimately sell magazines and get people onto their website.

            This starts the second part of the debate – Did A&E act within their rights as employer when they announced that Robertson would be placed on an indefinite hiatus? Of course they were. He is their employer and anyone that has a job should know that if you say something that they disagree with the employer has a right to terminate their employment. Example, if a customer service representative tells a customer what they really think about them and uses profanity, chances are that CSR will be looking for new employment. Additionally, the timing was perfect. The week of December 22, Duck the Halls: A Robertson Family Christmas’s sales increased 22% compared to the previous week, according the Nielsen SoundScan numbers. Like it or not, this “just before the holidays” hullabaloo came at the perfect time when people’s wallets are open. And, we have been taught that money is one of the best ways to support a cause. According to Bloomberg, Duck Dynasty has generated $400 million in merchandise since March 2012, when it first came on air.

            As predicted, A&E and Robertson have come to an agreement, and Phil’s indefinite hiatus definitely only lasted nine days, just long enough to capitalize on it. While there are plenty of people that have pledge to never watch another episode, there are others that had never really heard of the show that will now watch it until it eventually goes off the air, all because of the power of social-media, and our ability to drive a sound bite into viral status.

            Just like Desolation of Smaug, I feel abused by the director of this little stunt. Emotionally, I feel that Jackson manipulated me into liking his movie because it is an adaptation of something I love. I feel guilty for disliking the movie and feel cheated that it didn’t live up to expectations. These same emotions are echoed in my reaction to Phil Robertson and A&E. I wanted to dislike Phil Robertson for what I originally heard in his message. I wanted him to pay for what he said and felt validated for agreeing that A&E should terminate his employment. But just as the contrived ending to Smaug left some of my fellow moviegoers chomping at the bit to see the next installment, the Duck Dynasty folks manipulated millions into feeling like they needed to buy in order to show their support and solidarity for Phil Robertson’s right to voice his opinion. In both cases, we are simply the victims of their greed.