Braindead (1992)

 "I kick arse for the Lord!"

I utterly adore this film with all my heart. It is, of course, absolutely nothing like a cerain trilogy Peter Jackson would later helm. Said film may evoke the New Zealand landscape spectactularly but, well... the cast is as follows: the Hobbits consist of two Americans, an Irishman and a Scotsman. Aragorn is Norwegian. I could go on. 

But this film is very New Zealand.

This film is gory in exactly the way non-gore fans like myself prefer: comedically. And it fulfils the comedy enormously Yes, we end with a splendid, extended, zombie set piece, as we may well espect and want. But this film is New Zealand genius.

The zombies, including the zombie baby (it's a nuce sequence), look superb. No CGI here: it's 1992.  Have sime stop motion instead.plus the verbal wit is superb. Really superb.

The acting is sublime. Let us mention in dispatches Timothy Balme, whom I know not from anything else. The kung fu priest is hilarious, but there are so mmy genius linres. The '50s setting wasn't necessarily essential, but it adds depth: it works. The script ks comedy genius. The gore is... and I choose the adjective with care... hilarious. This superb New Zealand fim has a serious claim to being the greatest zombie film ever made.7

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

"The eagles are coming!"

So. I finally find three and a bit to complete the trilogy, a feat possible only during the Chrimbo limbo at a time when the little one is ith the in-laws. And yes, my disgracefully pretentious beginning was indeed a reference to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf... no, stay with me. This blog post won't dissolve into pretentiousness, I assure you. I've had a bottle of wine, honest...

Tolkien was a scholar of Old English, and of other ancient Germanic tongues and heroic culture. This all, of course, was perverted for racist reasons- the most racist reasons imaginable- by Hitler's twelve year reign of unspeakableness. A millennium of Germanic literature must be held to exist on its on terms and not be defined by these monsters- as Tolkien himself makes clear in his response to the impertinent question from a Nazi publisher as to whether he has "Jewish blood". Ingeld and Beowulf may have lived in what we called the Dark Ages, but they must not be tainted by the far greater barbarism of the Nazis.

So, that aside... well, obviously, this is superb. The same stellar cast aside from the usual touch of plywood from orlanso Bollom, wit even John Rhys Davies being a splendid actor in spite of being a right wing conspiracy theorist twat; superb visuals and battle scenes that enthrall even me, perennially bored by such things; the narrative splendidly remixed for cinema in a way that works well dramatically. There may be no Scouring of the Shire, and Aragorn's use of Kinsfoil may be neglected somewhat even in the extended edition, but it's good not to have quite as many endings as in the novel.

What strikes me, though, more than either of the other two instalments, is how much the ethos of the film- that is, the defence of Gondor against the orcs and not the boring Frodo subplot, less dull by far than in the novel but still dragging- owes to the emotion and noble warrior passion of Anglo-Saxon poetry, which is not exactly about romance or daffodils, homoerotic overtones aside. Although Elrond’s words to Aragorn being in iambic pentameter may not be quite contemporaneous with this- but Tolkien’s literary bent is reflected in the dialogue, for which we should be grateful.

The film, and indeed the trilogy, is a triumph. Even though Christopher Lee isn’t in this one.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

“I’ll have no pointy earer outscoring me!”

This is probably my least favourite of the trilogy but only because it’s the middle one and therefore the least dramatic. It’s still awesome and features the extraordinary Battle of Helm’s Deep. Never mind that Mrs Llamastrangler asked halfway through if they’d walked far and had to be told that it featured scenes of brisk walking, jogging and even a bit of horse riding..

The main problem with LOTR after this point is, of course, that all the exciting adventures of Gandalf, Aragorn etc are contrasted with the crushing fullness of Frodo and Sam walking very slowly towards Mordor in hundreds of pages of never-ending prose where very little happens. Peter Jackson, quite sensibly, cuts all this down rather a lot while expanding on the good stuff. It all looks superb, of course, and makes you want to go to New Zealand, and it’s all brilliant for the same reasons as the first film. The same cast continues to be magnificent for the same reasons, with the honourable additions of our newly introduced Rohirrim characters- Bernard Hill as Theoden, Miranda Otto as Eowyn, Karl Urban as Elmer and of course Chucky himself, Brad Dourif as Wormtongue. Rohan looks magnificent, the return of Gandalf is perfectly shot and the rejuvenation of Theoden is a joy to behold. And the Ents look extraordinary.

As for the Battle of Helm’s Deep, I’m not usually good with extended battle scenes, with their visual nature and lack of dialogue, but this kept me gripped with its twists and its turns. It’s an awesome finale to an awesome film. Is it just me, though, that finds it a little odd and jarring that Frodo is treated as a “master” by Gollum and as a boss by Sam essentially because he’s the country squire, something which may have been unthinkingly normal to Tolkien’s generation but looks decidedly odd now. But the class politics of LOTR are perhaps for another day...

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

"Nobody tosses a dwarf!"

This is only my second viewing of this or, indeed, any of this magnificent trilogy. And, yes, with an appropriate nod to YouTube's How It should Have Ended (watch it for LOTR), it's magnificent. The three sodding hours actually passed very pleasantly.

The Lord of the Rings is an odd book, or trilogy, however you’re counting. I’m glad I read it at twelve, appendixes and all; I enjoyed it very much, but I fear the charms of its 1,200 plus pages would have likely eluded me if I’d been any older. Written by an Old English academic- I once cited an academic work of his while writing an essay on Beowulf- and intended to create the Germanic and Finnish myths he so loves, it isn’t a style of writing we’re used to in modern times. These days we have a literary genre called “fantasy”; that wasn’t so clearly the case at the time, and indeed The Hobbit was written for children. One odd thing about Lord of the Rings is the huge change from children’s pride in the shire to epic narrative for the rest of the novel but it is, of course, a work of genius.

So how does Peter Jackson film such a book? Well, brilliantly. His native New Zealand is a magnificent setting, and his cast is superb- Ian McKellen May stand out, but Christopher Lee is utter perfection as Saruman. Yet just as important is the magnificent direction and the scene that, for me, stands out is Christopher Lee’s performance in the scene where we discover that Saruman has betrayed Gandalf- the scene is a perfect synthesis of actor and camera as the extraordinary subtleties of Lee’s performance are echoes perfectly by the movements of the camera.

Wisely, Jackson does a faithful adaptation without cutting corners and, indeed, takes things from the appendixes to flesh out the narrative- particularly in an expanded role for Saruman which helps with the plot at this early stage but also, with Sauron himself being just an eye, giving a face to what the Fellowship is fighting. Seeing the Shire on screen makes is stand out from the high fantasy surrounding it: it’s odd to see a British work of high fantasy that features American crops such as tobacco and potatoes- or perhaps the “weed” is something else? It would make a lot of sense.

There’s one thing I don’t get, though. What’s so special about Sean Bean’s “One does not just walk into Mordor?” It’s a fairly nondescript line so why all them memes?

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

"There is even talk... Of an election!!!"

It's hard to say much about this middle part of the trilogy without rehashing things I've already said about the previous film, well-made and good though the film is. Again, it's overlong but gets away with it. And again it's good in the same way as the Lord of the Rings films were good, but less likely to attract the attention of the academy due to lack of novelty.

Not that I mean this as any kind of negative criticism, but this film is more of the same, a splendid turn from Stephen Fry aside. Again, we have the parallel stories of Smaug's gold and the "Necromancer" actually being Sauron. The latter of these two plot threads is essentially what pads out the film, along with a greater emphasis on the dwarves' culture and history (they aren't just after gold, as they essentially were in the novel) and fleshing out the nature of the city of Dale. And then there's the Elven stuff, and Legolas. There's even a bit of political allegory, given the isolationist and Neville Chamberlain-like policies of the Elven king in the face of an obvious Hitler analogue

(Legolas, is, of course, a Wood Elf. Fitting, as there's always a touch of plywood to Orlando Bloom's performance. Boom boom.)

Probably the highlight of the film is Bilbo's awakening of Sauron. Which not only looks amazing but is absolutely made by the excellent voice work of Benedict Cumberbatch. It's odd, of course, to see him paired in this context with Martin Freeman, his erstwhile Baker Street chum, but these scenes are superb. 

It's a superb film, really, and the ending has you on the edge of your seat. At least, it does until Ed bloody Sheeran opens his stupid mouth...

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

"I have found it is the small things, the simple deeds of everyday folk, that keep the darkness at bay."

I have a sort of rule with this blog; no remakes before I've blogged the original, and no sequels or prequels before I've blogged the original. So technically I shouldn't be blogging this before blogging the excellent Lord of the Rings films but... ah well, just this once.

It's an odd beast, this trilogy. The Lord of the Rings were big, long and epic because the source material was big, long and epic. But here we have the first of three big, long and epic films based on, er, a children's book. And The Hobbit is very much a children's book on terms of both tone and content, with none of the political or religious content (strenuously denied, of course, by Tolkien) of The Lord of the Rings, although the tropes of Old English literature are present and correct, with a treasure-loving dragon straight out of Beowulf.

So we hit upon an important point; these films are only superficially an adaptation of The Hobbit. The story of Bilbo Baggins co-exists with extensive material dramatising and expanding the Middle Earth backstory as seen in the interminable appendices to The Return of the King to show us the tale of how Sauron slowly rebuilds his strength.

The Lord of the Rings films are superb, and justly are often present in lists of the best ever films. This trilogy will never be able to earn such praise, simply because it is more of the same. It is, nevertheless, good. Peter Jackson seems incapable of escape from the epic mode, so we were never likely to get the small, charming, intimate film that a straightforward 

adaptation of the novel might perhaps have given us. But I much enjoyed this first film. It's a massive exercise in fanwank which may perhaps alienate the children whom one might expect to be its audience, but I can't deny it's exciting to watch. I suspect the trilogy will end up being rather good, if not so Oscar-winningly acclaimed as the previous trilogy.

Right. That's the commentary out of the way. Let's spend the rest of the blog post on some (mainly) fanwanky bullet points.

* Martin Freeman is good in this, and The Office, and Sherlock, but his acting seems very dependent on some idiosyncratic mannerisms, doesn't it? Still, I suppose you can say the same of the likes of Robert Downey Jr.

* Two hours and forty-three minutes!!! This may be co-scripted by Guillermo Del Toro but at that length it's definitely a Peter Jackson film. Two more to go, too...

* Apparently this film has a huge rate of frame per second which is supposed to be really jarring. didn't notice.

* I saw this film while chomping on my wife's magnificent Italian meatballs, the best food in the word aside from her coq au vin. Just saying.

* The dwarves, obviously, come from wider Germanic myth but, in their exile from Erebor at the hands of Smaug, I wonder if there may be something of  the Wandering Jew to them. Probably reading too much into it, although I note the original novel was published in 1937, not a good time to be both German and Jewish.

* There's a long framing sequence; Ian Holm starts out narrating as the older Bilbo on the day of his eleventy-first birthday, and there's even a pointless cameo appearance by Elijah Wood as Frodo. All this sort of stuff elevates the bombast levels and tells us clearly that we're getting something Big and Epic and Not For Kids.

* Ian McKellen and the nonagenarian Christopher Lee are playing younger versions of their characters while being ten years older, and just about getting away with it. McKellen's performance, naturally, is extraordinary.

* Gandalf is an increasingly rare case in today's Hollywood of a character who smokes and isn't a baddie. 

* On the other hand, for a character who pretty much defined the modern fantasy wizard archetype as seen in D&D etc, Gandalf never does any bloody magic. 

* The best thing about the whole film is the song about "What Bilbo Baggins Hates". That is all.

* The Old English roots of all this are obvious, which should not surprise us as Tolkien was a great Old English scholar. The dwarves, with their feasting and drinking in halls, are Anglo-Saxons via a bit of Wagner. The riddles between Bilbo and Gollum are very Anglo-Saxon too. And I've already mentioned Smaug and Beowulf.

* Sylvester McCoy is fantastic and very Doctorish as Radagast, but then that's probably exactly how fanboy Peter Jackson wanted him to pitch his performance. Radagast is an interesting character; in D&D terms he'd be a druid and definitely not a wizard. I note, too, that Radagast is mentioned but never actually appears in any of Tolkien's works. Fanboy Peter Jackson is expanding the mythos.

* The film looks magnificent. New Zealand looks magnificent. The CGI looks extraordinary. This is a brilliantly made film.