The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Review

So Thursday night, I celebrated the release of the final Hobbit movie, and indeed what looks very likely to be the final Middle-Earth movie directed by Peter Jackson, in the best and most epic way possible: by watching the first two films at the cinema back to back straight before watching the midnight showing of Five Armies. Yes, it was a lengthy watch to say the least, but totally worth it. I’ll be reviewing The Hobbit as a whole later on, but for now, I’ll focus my thoughts on the concluding instalment.

The film begins directly where the 2^nd film left off, and I do mean directly: Smaug attacking Laketown. I always thought that was a rather odd ending for the previous film, especially since Smaug is pretty quickly dealt with in Battle in the first ten minutes. It almost felt like having only the first two thirds of the Battle of Helm’s Deep in the Two Towers before showing the rest in Return of the King. Right after the resolution of the Smaug storyline, it becomes clear that Thorin, now that he has finally reclaimed his treasure, is becoming more and more obsessed with it, and to be honest, I think showing the start of his greed would’ve made a much more suitable cliffhanger to Desolation of Smaug.

This film has the title of The Battle of the Five Armies. I think it’s no exaggeration to say that this, bar the beginning of Smaug and the resolution of a couple of other important threads, is almost entirely what the final instalment is about, with the first half of the film being focused on the build up to the battle as the armies start to meet and the second being the battle itself.

The build up is pretty good, as it mainly focuses on Thorin’s greed and his growing obsession with the gold he now possesses. It’s not only putting a strain on the friendships we’ve seen built up over the trilogy, but his jealous possession of the treasure is leaving a lot of people pissed off, including the men, women and children of Laketown due to so many losing their homes in the opening ten minutes, and the Elves, because the woodland King wants his jewels back. (Seriously.)

I really enjoyed this part of the storyline, not just because it was a great part of the novel that I loved seeing adapted on screen – namely, seeing one of the ‘heroes’ not be perfect and lose sight of what’s important, a storyline that as a child was just fantastic stuff to read and as an adult, is still a fantastic story now – but also because it’s a great allegory of greed and how destructive it can be, something that feels even more relevant than ever. Amongst all of this, themes of loyalty and the true meaning of friendship are explored, and there are great moments of humour, too.

After all of this build up, we then come to the Battle itself. Now, this is a battle that really didn’t take too much time in the original novel – perhaps about ten, maybe twenty pages at most. In this film, it takes at least a good, solid hour to show. Now, if this hadn’t been handled right, this could’ve gotten old real quick. But I’ve gotta be honest: if there’s one thing that actually makes me think, “Maybe splitting a novel 300 pages long into 3 films wasn’t too terrible an idea”, this battle is it. It is absolutely amazing. Peter Jackson pretty much established himself as a master of fantasy battles on-screen in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and this battle just might be his greatest one yet, which is really saying something.

For one thing, he really knows how to mix things up at exactly the right moments. Sometimes, this could go from focusing on the larger scale to something a lot more personal, sometimes, this could cut from the battle itself to quieter moments of drama, or even just bring a whole new army in at the worst/best moments. No matter what he does, he knows exactly how to pace things out, know when to make things painful or brutal to watch, or, in some cases, just plain fucking awesome.

Now, this is something I have to describe about not just the battle itself, but of other key moments, particularly early on focusing on Gandalf at Dol Guldur. If there was ever going to be a ‘Most Unbelievably Fucking Badass Moment of Middle-Earth” award, the Battle of the Five Armies is pretty much the closest thing to that. Seriously, every fucking major character (or even one played by Billy Connolly, which is just fucking awesome by itself,) gets a moment of pure fucking badass at different points in the film. Just when you thought, “Holy crap, that was awesome!”, another character comes along and makes you go, “What the fuck? Holy fucking fuck, that’s badass on a whole new level!”, and then another character comes along that makes you go, “You...have...got...to...be...fucking...kidding!”

I’m saying a lot about this battle not just because it takes up a huge part of the film, but also because it’s definitely one of the more impressive pieces of effects work I’ve seen this year. Sometimes, when a film just keeps throwing CGI at you just for the sake of explosions or destruction, it becomes less impressive and more boring to watch. Battle was different. Watching it felt like being a kid again, and that’s not something I can say of many films this year. It’s something that makes me want to see it on a big screen at least one more time due to how impressive and genuinely epic it really is.

One more but no less important question: how well does this instalment work as both the final instalment of the Hobbit trilogy and as, let’s face it, a prequel to the Lord of the Rings? Because while the Hobbit was written first, being split into three movies plus moving the focus occasionally outside of Bilbo’s and the Dwarves, as well as being made after the adaptation of the sequel had quite the impact on movie and geek culture, meant that we always had to expect more than a few deliberate nods and ties to the other film trilogy. This was something that was pretty much confirmed right from the opening scene of Old Bilbo and Frodo in An Unexpected Journey. So, as a conclusion to one trilogy and a bridge to another, how satisfying is it?

As a bridge, I’d say it does it just right. There’s plenty of nice hints and foreshadowing of what’s to come, especially in the Dol Guldur sequence, without quite overdoing it. And this is what makes it satisfying as a conclusion to one of my favourite stories in its own right. Because The Hobbit wasn’t written as a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, it was written as very much its own story that, by the end, didn’t really need a sequel (it says something of Tolkien’s brilliance that he not only wrote a sequel based on one of the tinier aspects of the story, but wrote a sequel so brilliant that they actually decided to make the movie version of that first). And while a film version of that story was pretty different, in some ways, (not so much the story itself but how that story was told), the final instalment remembers to focus on the really important things, by the end. Not on the return of an enemy to Middle-Earth or the importance of a magic ring, but on how a character who had led a simple life comes back changed through his experiences, and how much his adventures and, far more importantly, the friends he made along the way, meant to him. And nothing highlights this more beautifully than the final scene at the end. I won’t spoil it for you, but it will bring tears to your eyes.

9/10

Future Shock: The Story of 2000AD Review

Just got back from a UK premiere screening in London of this documentary. This is one I've not only been excited about for a while (perhaps appropriately, the most excited I've been about any feature since Dredd), but also something I strongly suspected wouldn't get a particularly wide release, especially as there's no actual release date for it. So I was so happy that I was able to get a ticket for it (with a Q&A with not only the film's producers, but also two men who worked heavily on the comic, including creator Pat Mills. Being only metres away from fucking legends was so awesome). Add to that a packed screening with an audience that clearly enjoyed themselves, and you've got one happy fanboy!

Now, onto the documentary itself. As I said, I had high expectations for this documentary, but even I was incredibly impressed at just how in-depth it all was. At approximately 2 hours long, the documentary covered a great deal of the entire run of the comic, including its creation in the 70s, its incredible high volume of originality, excellence and influence in the 80s, its shocking lows in the 90s, and its return to form and brand new highs in the 00s to now. Also covered in all of this is the comic's influence on American comics, especially the creation of Vertigo, as successful 2000AD writers and artists like Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrisson and Dave Gibbons came to the attention of DC.

What really helped make the documentary so interesting is that so much of the material comes first hand from so many people who had worked directly on 2000AD, and all these interviews are hugely and refreshingly honest about everything. Yes, there's a lot of praise for the comic and how influential it was, but there's also a lot of points made regarding 2000AD's views on creative ownership which a lot of writers and artists are clearly pissed off with, or how terrible some decisions in the 90s truly were.

I think what makes this documentary worth watching is, more than anything, the story it's telling of an underdog, of a comic that was so unlikely to last as long as it did that it had the "futuristic" title of 2000AD. Even with fucking awful publishers, censorship issues and a declining British comics market, it's clear that a lot of people who worked at 2000AD had a lot of fun, not just despite the difficulties they had to face but even because of them. There's a lot of love and passion by everyone interviewed (including Anthrax member Scott Ian, who seems like a big kid when talking about his love of the comic), and it comes across well.

If there's one slight niggle I have with the documentary, it's a tiny one, and something I perhaps wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been done so well at the start: namely, just a little more context of the times the comic went through. We got plenty of information and footage of what 70s Britain was like and how its numerous problems influenced the creators particular punk style for 2000AD, it's just a bit of a shame that this didn't carry on for the rest of the documentary, as it really helped make it incredibly clear how much of a product of its culture 2000AD was when it started. But like I said, this is a tiny complaint.

Honestly, this is a documentary I'd recommend to anyone, whether you've read any 2000AD or even if you've never heard of it. It's an incredibly in-depth feature that's honest, refreshing, and even at times absolutely fucking hysterical (seriously, I lost count at how many times we in the audience laughed our arses off because of an anecdote or very strong opinion of a writer or artist), and while I doubt it will get a wide cinema release, I hope others can check it out asap. 10/10

Predator Versus Judge Dredd Versus Aliens Review

As cool a title as that is, two things should be kept in mind: one, it’s actually two different stories in one volume, with each story featuring Judge Dredd dealing with each of the two monster icons separately, and two, one story is clearly better than the other.

First things first. I liked Predator Versus Judge Dredd, but there were a few key things that could’ve been improved that could’ve turned it from an interesting crossover into a great one. 

First, the world of Dredd could’ve been introduced better, as an introduction to the world of the Judges feels a little clumsy within the narrative. Obviously, there’s always going to be readers brand new to the world of Dredd, and certainly, you should find ways within the narrative to do that, as long as you can make it feel natural. Batman/Judge Dredd: Judgement on Gotham was a perfect introduction to the world of Judge Dredd because we were seeing it through the eyes of Batman, and as such, bits and pieces of the insanity of this world are slowly explained to him, and therefore a new audience as a result. 

For Predator Versus Judge Dredd, the introduction of the world is one I’m kind of against: the narrator directly telling and explaining to the audience everything about the lead character and his world rather than letting us discover it ourselves piece by piece. And that’s kind of a shame, because the writer is none other than John Wagner, not just the creator of Judge Dredd but a writer of so many brilliantly told stories within that universe at least. Which is probably part of the problem – he’s aware that there’s likely to be a brand new audience, no matter how small, reading this comic and checking out the universe of Judge Dredd for the first time, but he’s been such an expert at developing Dredd and his world for so long that trying to see from a fresh viewpoint might be difficult. That’s the only explanation I can see for why the introduction for that fresh audience isn’t handled well. It also doesn’t help that the only point of view from outside Dredd’s world is the Predator, and let’s face it, he’s not a character who’s likely to be put off from the insanity of Mega-City 1 – on the contrary, it’s partly that insanity that’s why he’s drawn to it.

Another problem I have with this story is that not a lot of characters feel like they have a great deal of depth. There’s not many characters we get to know very well outside of Dredd, Psi-Judge Schaefer (great-great-granddaughter of Dutch Schaefer from the original Predator movie) and, oddly enough, the Predator itself, so the violence doesn’t quite sting as much as it should. This is something I’ll cover more when I get to the Aliens part of the collection, but for the moment, while the violence is still cool, the overall story and world lacks the certain depth that so many of the great comic stories gives us for Dredd’s world.

One final, but much smaller criticism I have is the artwork. While it’s ok, I don’t think it suits the multi-coloured insanity of Judge Dredd, or 2000AD in general. In fact, the first thing I think of when I see it is more 90s DC. Perhaps not surprising really, considering that one aim for the crossover was undoubtedly to try and sell Judge Dredd to an American audience, but still, I think the artwork just lacks a certain charm that some of the more regular artwork of Judge Dredd has, even in the 90s.

Now that the key criticisms I have for the Predator story are out of the way, overall, it’s really not that bad a Judge Dredd story or a Predator story. For Dredd’s part of the story, it’s the classic Judge Dredd case: a perfect alien hunter arrives in Mega-City 1 and starts killing the Judges for sport – it’s up to Dredd to track him down and stop him. For the Predator, it’s a story set in Earth’s future and more than a hundred years after earlier visitors hunted in the jungles of Earth, both tropical and urban. Now another has come to Earth to try and find a new type of prey, especially one as highly armed and trained as the Judges. And that’s one key thing that makes the crossover worth reading: Dredd and the Predator are really suited to each other. Not quite as perfectly as the Predator and Aliens, but still a worthy fit. They’re both universes that are full of action and are violent as fuck, both protagonists (whether hero or villain) are very smart and very efficient at what they do, especially when killing their targets, and both are perfectly matched. It’s just a shame that it’s only a good story overall, when with just a few key improvements, it could’ve been a great one.

This is where Judge Dredd Versus Aliens: Incubus comes in. Not only do I think that this succeeds so much where the previous story failed, I think, reading Aliens immediately after Predator, it probably highlights everything the previous story did wrong in the first place.

First, there’re the characters, and I think it’s this key strength that simultaneously make it a great Judge Dredd story and a great Aliens story. In both universes, a big reason that made us fans fall in love with the universes as much as we did wasn’t just the violence – it was how much it stung. And why it stung was for a very simple reason: how much we found ourselves already starting to care about the characters. How much they felt like they had lives outside of their jobs (not something that was easy to do perhaps in the Predator story when the victims were always the Judges, people whose jobs really didn’t allow them to have any kind of life outside of the job); how much they felt like three-dimensional human beings, even after knowing them for such a short time, and how shocking it always felt when an alien burst out of their chests or acid blood was suddenly sprayed all over them. This is what makes Wagner such a perfect fit for the Alien universe: he has always been absolutely brilliant at making us care about characters who get such nasty deaths in so little time, and it’s nice that, along with co-writer Andy Diggle, both are at their A-game.

What also helps is that the story has a lot more depth than Predator Versus Judge Dredd. Whereas the first story was very straightforward, with Dredd and the Predator effectively hunting each other, here, there’re a lot more sides to it. First, we’re given the mystery of how the aliens arrived in Mega-City 1, which also introduces us to the human criminals involved, all of whose motives are for a variety of reasons: some political, some pure greed, and some just for the evulz.

Surprisingly, the story actually adds a lot of decent mythology to the Dredd universe, including the return of a few significant characters and even the introduction of a new Judge: Sanchez, brand new to the job and full of nerves, to say the least. So much so in fact that you’re forced to wonder if she’s really cut out for it. Interestingly, her perspective is probably the closest thing to being the ‘new reader introduction’ we get, and honestly, that’s not much of one, as the story really does throw readers new to the world of Dredd in the deep end. Now, I’m a huge fan of everything Judge Dredd (bar the Stallone movie, of course), and as a result, it’s harder for me to assess how easy a story like this would be for new readers to jump on board with. In the long term, it’s an approach I prefer to the more heavy-handed introduction the Predator story gave us, and the story itself is simple enough to follow. Plus, if readers did need more of an introduction, at least the Predator story is included in this collection.

We also get to see more than just the Judges perspective, as a pest control team is sent in to initially deal with one single chestburster. Yeah, you can guess how well that goes, but, as an Aliens fan, the pest control team is a fantastic addition to the story – all of the characters feel like real people with lives and jobs back home who feel like they know completely what they’re doing when it comes to tracking one little pest. Again, very predictable, but in this case, it’s in a good way. While lacking any direct continuity to the Aliens series beyond the Xenomorphs themselves – no mention of Ripley or any of her direct descendents, no mention of the company etc – it’s the characters and their story that gives it a truly authentic Aliens feel.

Of course, what else gives it an authentic Aliens feel of course is violence, and lots of it! People get burned in acid, chests are burst, shot to shit, ripped to shreds...in short, the kind of violence that feels right at home in a Judge Dredd comic. With the added bonus of giving us characters to actually give a shit about, the extra sting makes that violence work even better.

I mentioned how well the universes of Predator and Dredd suit each other, and naturally, the same goes for Dredd and Aliens. The difference being in this crossover is that the best of both worlds are used to their full advantage. The Aliens are such a great fit for Dredd’s world, (especially considering all the crazy aliens he’s dealt with over the years,) and the story really gives us both fleshed out characters and a world with depth. It avoids being a random encounter for both universes and instead feels like something big for one in the case of Dredd, another great selling point. Add to that the artwork of Henry Flint, a veteran artist of the comics that gives us that mixture of gritty style with the mixture of bright and dark colours of Mega-City 1, and you have a great story that’s well presented. As far as Judge Dredd crossovers are concerned, outside those exclusive to the 2000AD universe, this is one of the very best, up there with Judgement on Gotham, the story that made me a fan of the character in the first place.

One final point: the book itself. Going for the price of £25 in the UK, this is a very pricey book. Is it completely worth that price? Maybe not quite. The quality of the hardback itself is very nice, with a dust-cover over a completely black cover with just the title in red letters, so it really does make quite the impression on the book shelf. But there’re no extras at the back or front, no interviews with the writers or artists on how a crossover like this happened, nothing revealed about any unused story ideas or what might’ve been. Covers for individual issues at least are shown at the start of each relevant ‘chapter’, including some alternative ones, which are welcome, but besides that, there’s not much new. So I’d say that if you’ve read these two stories before and in previous separately released trade paperbacks, I’m gonna be honest and say there’s really nothing new for you here. If, however, you’re like me and you’ve never read these two stories before, it’s definitely worth a look, especially if you’re a fan of any of the three major icons. Judge Dredd Versus Aliens: Incubus really is not just a fantastic crossover story, but a brilliant comic book story period, and even Predator Versus Judge Dredd, while not being quite as good, is still worth a look if you're a fan of both characters.

Predator Versus Judge Dredd: 6/10

Judge Dredd Versus Aliens: 9/10

Overall collection: 8/10

Slaughterhouse 5 - An Analysis

One thing I have to get right out of the way: this book was, in many ways, not exactly what I had expected. But then again, perhaps that’s because I didn’t exactly have a clear idea of what to expect. Until a short while ago, the most I knew about this book was that it was an anti-war novel, and that it was something of a classic. That was literally it.

Then a couple of months ago, over drinks down a pub (where many great stories begin), I was talking to one of my oldest friends which, along with other important matters like Doctor Who, awesome presents, and what titles we could come up with for porn movie titles of classic movies, we also discussed reading and writing, including my own science fiction novel that I had been working on-and-off for some time, with one key idea being the main protagonist finding himself travelling mentally backwards and forwards in time. This, to my surprise, brought up the main plot of Slaughterhouse 5, in which main protagonist Billy Pilgrim finds himself doing the exact same thing, going backwards and forwards in time, mainly from travelling from two key periods in his life: his time as a prisoner of war and his eventful life afterwards, which included getting married, getting a job as an optometrist, and living on the planet Tralfamadore.

As you can imagine, this wasn’t what I had expected from an ‘anti-war classic’.

Of course, it was only a week or so later, after my friend had actually bought me a copy of the novel for me to read, that I discovered just how completely unusual it is, not just in terms of war stories, but in literature overall.

The first thing that leaped out was how much author Kurt Vonnegut was himself a part of the story and its telling, including an opening and closing chapter on some of his personal experiences and even how he came to write the story and why he wanted/needed to write it. This actually threw me off at first because I was just expecting the novel to simply leap into the story of Billy Pilgrim, but after finishing the novel, I think it’s one of those key things that I’ll appreciate more on a second reading. Because it establishes that the writer of this story and his experiences are as important as the story he’s telling. Considering that, in my experience, writers themselves when it comes to fiction at least tend to be essentially invisible when telling their stories, the fact that Vonnegut not only does this but does it in such a way that he doesn’t come across as a massively pretentious wanker is already incredibly fascinating.

The second thing that leaped out about the novel was how funny and blackly satirical it was at times. Vonnegut’s writing is packed with brilliantly deadpan wit, especially when telling things that were at the same time absolutely ridiculous and perfectly everyday. This is never more clear than how he presents death in the book, something that is not only commonplace but is always punctuated with the words, ‘So it goes’. His continual use of these three words at the end of every single death described, even if those deaths were completely horrific – no, especially if those deaths were completely horrific – was something that I always found blackly hysterical. This is mostly due to the deliberate detachment Vonnegut has to most of the characters, as the writer himself admits at one point that in this book there are no characters, at least not in times of war, with everyone growing essentially detached from both their own lives and from life itself.

Even in Pilgrim’s life both before and after the war, there are many characters – including those in Billy’s own family, especially his daughter – that don’t come across as human beings as such. Not to call them flat or one-dimensional, but more that they have a detachment and lack of human empathy or sympathy at times that reminds me a great deal of the works of Roman Polanski. Another great friend of mine, Jean, who has written some brilliant analytical reviews of Polanski’s work, has noted that a common theme amongst his films is that a great deal of them involve protagonists who are sympathetic victims that are surrounded by ‘monsters’, in his terms – men and women who generally seem to lack empathy or sympathy or even humanity, even if it’s in the mundane way possible. This is, to me, the perfect way to describe a great deal of the characters in Vonnegut’s novel. The one time a character is even described as such is someone who we’ve always been told is essentially a doomed man, a victim that’s heading for, like many other people in war, a meaningless death.

Now, for the time travel. I’m a man who loves his time travel in stories – whether comedic or dramatic, some of my favourite stories have involved brilliant uses of this storytelling device. In fact, when it comes to many stories, there are times when I take it too seriously – Looper’s use of it was great throughout its first half, with a protagonist facing himself in both his past and his future, and neither viewpoint particularly likes the other, but then the completely non-sensical ending partially ruined it for me (the rest of it was ruined by a second half that just did not seem to fit the brilliantly nourish and character based first half) – so I was worried whether my obsession over things like cause and effect, what can and can’t be changed and any ‘rules’ of time travel that are presented in a story that are or are not adhered to, might ruin my enjoyment of a novel, even a greatly loved classic. But Slaughterhouse 5 is a story that has used it in a way that I’ve never really seen used before, and it’s one that I adore.

Firstly, whenever Billy Pilgrim travels, he always seems to know exactly where he is in his life. If he arrives in 1945, he knows he’s a prisoner of war in Germany. If he arrives in 1968, he knows he is a widower with a daughter. He even knows the exact date he’s going to die and how. And he never really attempts to change or prevent a single moment – once again, there’s a key detachment that’s focused on, and the detachment that Billy has is to time itself. He still finds degrees of happiness and sadness in his life, but overall, he has a unique perspective of time that no one else has. It’s almost like an experience of life that has been edited for Billy in the wrong order, and he just allows himself to go wherever time takes him, whether it’s as something as blissful as his honeymoon or whether it’s something as terrible as seeing the ruins of a bombed city and digging out rotting bodies out of ‘corpse mines’ afterwards.

The way Vonnegut has used time travel here is unlike anything I’ve seen in other time travel stories, mostly because it just works on so many layers. Looking at how the narrative and Billy constantly switch from the war to afterwards, I can’t help but think of the perfect metaphor here of how everything about war never truly leaves you. Afterwards, you can get married, you can have kids, you could even get abducted by aliens and fuck Hollywood stars on an alien world, in Billy’s case, and you can even experience things as terrible as grief. But as much as you can try to focus on the good things afterwards, war never truly leaves you. The things a man sees, the things a man lives through. The soldiers and the innocents who die in such conflicts. The sheer soullessness of it all. Vonnegut has written a war novel unlike any other by doing what all the greatest science fiction writers have done: using a key science fiction idea to put across something important – perhaps something even deeply important and personal to the writer himself – to allow a reader an easier understanding of something that perhaps is almost impossible to understand unless it’s something they’ve been through.

But I think Vonnegut’s novel is a lot more than just about war. It’s about life and death – these two extremes especially – and everything in between. It’s about how broken and fractured life is in general, about those moments that we always come back to, the best and the worst. It’s about all the things I’ve mentioned and, I strongly suspect, so much more that I’ve missed, and therefore make it a story that I will inevitably come back to. It is literally quite unlike any other novel I’ve ever read, and one I am so grateful to have read.