On Marking the Death of Analogue with The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

With The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001 – 2003) Peter Jackson created a world that juxtaposed realism and fantasy with great skill. This accomplishment waned a little as the films progressed until The Return of the King (2003) was a CGI extravaganza, that relied less on the real world locations of the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), arguably the best of all the Middle Earth films.

With the increased use of CGI Jackson was able to stage hugely impressive battle scenes. Impressive as they are they lacked the intimate that made Fellowship so successful. This pattern seems to be being repeated in Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, although in slightly different ways.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) had the charm and the danger of Fellowship, and while it was aimed at a younger audience, it was engaging and fun cinema. The middle part of the trilogy, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is far greater in scope than Journey, covering great distances and many, many characters. It is in the latter that the problem lies. We spend little time with the majority of the dwarves, the most of whom are scenery. Other characters are shoehorned in and these are important characters whose significance will come to light in the final part, but here they are so thinly drawn that there is little attachment to them. How can we care that Bard slays the dragon, vanquishing his family’s curse, if Bard has less than twenty minutes screen time?

The Desolation of Smaug becomes like the latter Lord of the Rings film, an experiment in technology. And what Jackson has achieved is groundbreaking, but also highlights the slow death of analogue. The cameras that Jackson has developed for this film result in what can only be described as hyper-realism. The image (even in 3D) is so sharp that it is uncomfortable. It is far closer to what we expect from BBC HD nature documentaries than what we are used to from film. This is unsettling because the actors are presented in such vivid details it feels intrusive. More positively, the CGI blends with the image and is therefore incredibly impressive, especially Smaug who is close to, but not quite as successfully rendered as Gollum.

From a film lover’s point of view this sharpness of image is difficult to accept. The grain of film is missing and that grain and Hollywood shine are what made cinema so magic. Cinema is about suspension of disbelief, but that does not mean that the image has to become hyper-realistic. Advancements in technology are important and necessary, but surely they can be balanced with a more traditional look. 

Side note: The 2D version of the film is a far more authentic cinema experience, aesthetically. Yet the problems in pace and pitch remain.