"The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" [Jackson, 2014].

[karamazov.]

Corny and stupid as hell, obvs. Under the circumstances, though, I kind of enjoyed the ridiculousness of it, btwn. the Billy Connolly, gay elves, etc. [48 fps frame-rate is cool too]. PJ means well, I'm sure, and he's just having fun exploring more of Tolkien's universe, and derping around, but at a certain point into sitting through more half-assed cgi shit, meaningless battle sequences, and such, it kind of hit me what it was like for me to read the book as a kid, and, even more, that, unlike LotR, it was genuinely intended as a -children's- book:

A hobbit is a simple, childlike creature, and our diminutive protagonist, Bilbo, functions to orient the child-reader through the narrative, as he quietly and courageously learns to navigate through a world much too large for him, and at first very incomprehensible. This becomes even more profound given the rest of Tolkien's mythology as he developed it over his life, because we learn exactly -what- is at stake, and how large the consequences of the actions of this child substitute are, as he plods along, trying to contribute his small part to making the universe slightly more noble. So, in conclusion, it seems to me that there's something about the spirit of "The Hobbit" that PJ is missing here; there's something incongruous about applying ftmp his same LotR mold to this series of films. Maybe now that he's done, he'll make a solid melodrama like "Heavenly Creatures," or someshit. Anyway, while PJ was already pissing all over Tolkien's mythology, would it have -killed- him to have more non-white people in these movies? idk.