Why I Hate Peter Jackson: That Didn’t Take Long

Well, it didn’t take long for things to change drastically. Rather than get straight to the story, Jackson has gifted us another long opening montage. In this instance, he is relating the history of dwarves of Lonely Mountain. Why???

I know why, but I am going to make the case right away that this exposition should have come much later. It seems that Peter Jackson has learned nothing about suspense. Why not have the dwarves show up mysteriously on Bilbo’s doorstep, and we know nothing about them? Then he could slowly reveal their story and why it’s so important for them to travel to the Lonely Mountain and face the dragon.

As always, the scenes of the Dwarf kingdom are stunning to look at, but serve no real narrative purpose. Except, I know that Jackson wants to establish the Arkenstone as the key item that will lead to the battle at the end of the third film (or I assume its the end of the third film. Jackson was intent on making three movies, so who knows where they will end). Of course, he didn’t need to do so 4 minutes into the movie. That could have come later. I mean, we’re not actually going to see the stone in Unexpected Journey, so he could have saved it for movie two. But I’m sure that Jackson thought to himself, “Well, I opened the first trilogy with a long montage, and that worked well, so let’s try to come up with something for us to talk about at length to open the second trilogy.”

This is, after all, how genius works, repeating what you’ve done before.

Minutes Watched: 04.08

Number of Montages: 1

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