Movies with too much, or too little.

I've become much more conscious that the quality of a movie or TV show is affected by the budget.  I mean, that's obvious, but when you watch a show it's usually thumbs up or thumbs down, regardless.

So I went to to see THE HOBBIT.

Very Minor SPOILERS.  (What?  You haven't read the Hobbit!!!!)

I enjoyed it quite a bit.  More than the first movie, I think.  Smaug was awesome, and designed the way a dragon should look.  (This is rare, actually -- movies tend to make them goofy, for some reason.)

But it was so embellished as to be distracting.  It's the Lucas syndrome -- too much money for special effects.  So, for instance, if you have a barrow jumping out of the river and bouncing along the bank and it rolls over a couple of orcs, that's cute.  When you have it leap across the river and land on a couple of more orcs, that's well, interesting, but yeah I got it.  When you have the barrel jumping around like three or four more times -- that's excessive.

Too many choreographs fights where the elves and dwarves are basically invincible and the orcs are just hapless stormtroopers without the armor. 

Too much of lots of things.  Could cut maybe a third of the embellishments and the movie might actually flow a bit better.


Then, last night, I watched HAMMER OF THE GODS on Netflix.

Low budget, but kind of clever in how they stretch the budget once you become aware that they're doing it.

SPOILERS:

So basically, this turns out to be a Viking 'Heart of Darkness' story, Apocalypse Now, if you will.

I thought that was an interesting direction to go.  The script and dialogue were pretty basic, the acting serviceable, the fighting choreographing a little too Hollywood.  But -- you know -- I wonder what they could done with a couple extra million.  A couple of extra million that The Hobbit wouldn't have missed.

Our culture is starting to lose Mid-List:  books, TV shows, movies.  Entertainment that doesn't try to be a blockbuster.  So it seems to be low budget, or ultra budget, with little in-between.

There will always be the creative people who manage to create something even in a low budget.  And apparently, there will always be directors who have so much money to throw around that they can't just have Legolas shoot an orc in the face and slight down a hill on his body, but he has to do it twice in the same movie.  And shoot a couple hundred orcs while he's at it.

And movies where the five main Vikings happen to land on the shore ahead of the fleet, (which is shown hazily in the background) because five Vikings is all the director can afford.