Why I hated Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, in case anyone cares.

I went into this movie trying not to expect too much. I thought the previews looked amazing, and lots of my friends that saw it loved it, except for one person who said it was not that great, but still entertaining, and compared it to the Spiderman sequels. This friend ended up being prescient because I thought Spiderman 3 was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, full of squandered opportunity, idiotic moments that didn’t belong, and a wasted cast. Same with The Hobbit.

The movie started out fine, giving the history of the Dwarven kingdom under the Lonely Mountain, Smaug, the conflict with the elves, and just in case you haven’t seen the LOTR movies or read the books, reminding you that Frodo and Bilbo are related and their adventures are linked.  The Shire is beautiful. Bag End is rendered exactly how I imagine it, and after the prologue-style introduction to the history, the movie began with words taken exactly from the book, which if you know me at all you will know that made my heart happy. Gandalf’s and Bilbo’s first interaction was spot-on, and the first meeting of the dwarves and Bilbo was great. They even included some of the songs.

Shortly after that the movie went off the rails. The dwarfs are portrayed in the movie as these awesome warriors who don’t particularly seem to need Bilbo at all and who get saved from predicaments through their own sheer force, by Gandalf, or by luck. In the book, it’s Bilbo’s quick wit and hobbit sense that frequently save them, and while the dwarfs are brave and fight when necessary, they aren’t The Expendables.

The movie also invented a rivalry between Azog (who in the book is dead before the story starts) and Thorin, which was stupid and unnecessary. You don’t need a blood-match rivalry in order to show that the orcs are evil. Throwing the personal grudge in there lessened the meaning of the conflicts between the people groups. The orcs do evil things because they’re evil. It’s not always personal. So that was dumb.

There were many action scenes, particularly in the Goblin kingdom, for which I am pretty sure Jackson’s only guiding sense of direction was what would look cool in 3-D, not what actually happens in the book or would further the plot in any sensical way.

I especially hated what Jackson did to Radagast. In the book, he’s a solitary, simple wizard who loves animals, not a cross-eyed simpleton with bird poo plastered to his face. And a sleigh drawn by bunnies? And giving a hedgehog magical CPR? Seriously?

Also stupid? Elrond’s special magic moon rune reading rock. And Thorin being a bad-a up until he fights Azog again and makes it approximately 2.8 seconds before falling down and not being able to get back up. And Bilbo randomly being awesome with a weapon he’s never used before.

Tolkien’s The Hobbit is about Bilbo having to learn to use his wits and be brave like he never has before. He’s the key to the whole story. In the movie, it was like he was a tertiary character and all the conflicts are about superior force, which contradicted what Gandalf kept saying. This movie did not give you a chance to ponder the deeper meaning. It kept hitting you over the head with THE THEME. It just about had Gandalf turn to the audience and explain that the movie is about the small, every day choices being the ones that overcome evil, not a show of force, and hey, in case you’re an idiot, he’s talking about Bilbo. And oh, did I mention that the movie is about the small, every day choices being the ones that overcome evil, and just in case you missed it the first time, I mean Bilbo?

Including this in the dialogue, then contradicting it with prolonged, unnecessary, and sometimes completely made up action scenes made for a very poor story.

The worst part is the movie was visually stunning and the casting was perfect. Too bad the story-telling did not match these other qualities. Last night I couldn’t decide if the terrific parts outweighed the terrible parts, but today I have decided. The movie was a waste.

A poem

THE LETDOWN

I set out to do good-

The world was my oyster, as they say.

I was going to shine

A light.

Discovery

Is a harsh master. The light

Shined but I did not

Comprehend it. I thought it shone

For me. And all I would accomplish.

Setting goals for goal’s sake

Leads to a God-forsaken place and I fell.

I fell.

Darkness.

Still I fell. Angry

That my plans went to waste.

I almost cried

“What must I do to be saved?”

A NEW START/CARPE DIEM

As I fell I saw

Their faces

The good brother.

The literature lover.

The runner, the joker.

The pride

Of his father, the quiet

Surprise.

The lively and the lovely ones,

The new ones and the old ones.

I prayed and

I prayed

And I heard God say

“I gave them to you.

Love them like I love you.”

And I am

Trying.

God

I’m trying.

FALL BACK

This room is empty.

Except for one, who sits

And ponders empty

Chairs and tables, scraps on the tables

Papers left behind like fallen soldiers.

What a waste.

What a waste.

But no.

You can’t change

People; you can only

Love them.

That’s no waste.

All is vanity, says the Preacher,

But to eat, drink and enjoy your toil.

This toil

Is a daily grind of minds shrouded

In a mist of mule-like stubbornness,

Efficient

At blocking out anything

But their own way.

Friends,

Lend me your ears.

Am I not an honorable man?

Noble Brutus, noble Brutus, hear me.

I came to bury not to praise.

Here I am to speak what I do know.

THE SUNSHINE AND THE CLOUD

A cloud of charcoal blots the sky

And cries

In the earth. A song,

A song, my kingdom for a song

And a little sun.

April showers

Bring May flowers

But the garden is all rock.

FULL CIRCLE

I gave you

My words and my time

And you took them.

You took them in your hands

Like fragile glass

And smashed it.

A thousand ideas and time

Tinkled on the ground

And I walked over the crunching

Broken pieces.

You were always careless.

logos

Words, words, words. The satirical rogue

Says here that fortune

Is a strumpet, but

I could count myself

The king of infinite space.

When I think back on the years

Rolling like a thunderbolt

That brought me here, it’s all just

Words, words, words.

In the beginning

Was the Word.

It was with and it was and ever shall be,

Words without end, Amen.

Nothing but intended

Meaning understood, accomplished and applied.

The Dark Knight Rises: my thoughts.

If you haven’t seen the movie and want to be completely spoiler free, you probably shouldn’t read this. I discuss some plot events in detail, though I don’t give away any major plot turns. Now that that’s out of the way… There are so many thought-provoking themes raised in the final installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, I’m not sure where to start. The movie makes clear reference to the horrors of the French Revolution by way of allusions to A Tale of Two Cities, one of the greatest books ever written. Barsad and Stryver are two characters in the movie; Sydney Carton’s famous final speech is used in a moving way. In one scene, after Bane and his henchmen have taken over Gotham, supposedly freeing the people from oppression by the rich, there is a court scene straight out of the Reign of Terror. The accused even sits in a late 18th century French style chair. There is no justice. The accused are guilty by virtue of being rich, being in some kind of power-role, or a combination of the two. All are seen as oppressors worthy of punishment regardless of what they actually did. Those doing the condemning, and the ransacking and raiding of the wealthy’s homes, do so with the claim of “taking what’s rightfully theirs.” In one of many poignant scenes, Selina Kyle is walking through a now-squalid mansion that has been occupied by the low-lifes of Gotham and grieves over the loss of what was once a beautiful home. Another character remarks in answer to this that the home now belongs to everyone, as if this somehow justifies what they have done. Anyone who knows a little about history knows that the French Revolution was a horrific bloodbath that in no way secured equality. The people were no better off and instead of facing starvation, faced the guillotine if their neighbor so much as suspected them of sympathizing with the aristocracy. This aura of fear is reflected when one of the higher-up police officers lives in semi-hiding in his house, hoping no one realized he is in fact a police officer. Bane’s idea of “equality,” like that of the French Revolution, is reducing everyone to squalor, not elevating the lower classes to prosperity. This movie is violent, of course. But it shows the consequences of violence. Mad men with hatred in their hearts will do violence if circumstances allow. There’s an interesting scene where after Batman has told another character he doesn’t believe in guns, this character saves his life… with a gun. Sometimes the only way to stop evil, armed to the teeth and hell-bent on death, is to out-gun them. The violence that the heroes have to employ is not without consequences, though. It clearly weighs on their bodies and souls to do what no one else can or will in order to keep the city truly free. The performances the actors give throughout the movie are top-notch: among Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Gary Oldman, Michael Cane, and Tom Hardy there is not a single weak link. The cinematography is beautifully haunting. The moment where Batman lights the side of a building up with flame in the shape of the universally recognized Bat symbol, to give Gotham hope, is one of the most goose-bump inducing moments of any movie. Ever. As a fan of literature, comic books, comic book movies, and great film in general, this picture has so many levels to mull over. It has action, heroism, dialogue, a few subtle moments of humor, romance, and as someone familiar with the Batman comics, quite a few moments where I wanted to squeal loudly in the theater. I settled for subtly pumping my fists or grinning like a doof at my husband. Anyone making a comic book movie after this has a lot to live up to. If you are reading this and you’ve seen the movie, what did you think?

Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

"Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."

I saw this quote on pinterest and I think it is so right on. It goes along with something I’ve been thinking about lately, which is the nature of forgiveness. As Christians, or even just as people if you don’t believe in Christ, there’s no other way to live than to be forgiving. It should be like breathing. It should be automatic and easy, but because of our sin and natural proclivity to selfishness, it’s often not. But letting resentment build and never confronting the offender, or just truly letting it go and forgiving, is a sure way to kill your own heart and soul. It’s a gradual death though. It begins with a minor offense that you think you’re letting go of, but really you’re stuffing it into a file cabinet in your mind to be brought out, added and compounded the next time a minor offense happens, and it seems a little bigger and you get a little more angry and a little more resentful. Not dealing with it is not the same as forgiveness. It also robs the other person of the chance to seek forgiveness and fix the behavior. Before too long, everything seems like a major offense because you’re holding a long list of minor things together against the person at once. Not telling the person with whom you are upset, and instead somehow thinking they ought to know, is naive at best, and desperately wicked at worst. It deadens your heart and conscience as you push away the Holy Spirit and allow your evil nature to take over. And it’s a sure way to let once-valuable relationships be destroyed by Satan. I’ve seen this attitude destroy friendships and marriages. Isn’t a potentially awkward, maybe painful, conversation worth it to avoid this soul-deadening and relationship-destroying slippery slope?

“The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
‘“I the LORD search the heart
and test the mind,[b]
to give every man according to his ways,
according to the fruit of his deeds.’” Jeremiah 17:9-10

Is your heart attitude leading you to life or death?

In Defense of Children

We've all seen that kid. Screaming, having a tantrum, talking back, making a scene. It's always awkward, and it's even more so when the parent either doesn't do anything, or worse, screams back. This post is not about that.

More often than not when I go out to eat and my almost-3 year old is along, I get treated shabbily. This has happened in various combinations: My hubby, son and I together were passed over for seating for almost an hour, before we said something and were begrudgingly given a seat at a local family steakhouse, where my boy went on to charm our server and the families sitting near us. The 3 of us plus my best friend, her hubby, and daughter once went to a somewhat nicer Italian restaurant, and were treated like second class diners by our server, who did not hide her irritation with us and our kids BEFORE WE EVEN SAT DOWN. The manager took care of business though after noticing we were not happy campers. My BF and I took our kids out to eat during a shopping excursion and were seated in a hidy-hole corner like we were lepers. Neither of our kids have ever had a screaming melt-down crying fit of any sort during these times. I take it all servers expect all little guys to act like the above mentioned hellions, then preemptively ignore and/or mistreat those tables without waiting to see what kind of table it's going to be. I wish all those servers and the one random hostess could have seen what I saw on Saturday.

I took Edward to his first big Easter egg hunt at a pastor's house. The teenagers hid the eggs for the younger crowd, and left lots of eggs in plain view for the under-3 set. The toddlers went out to hunt first while the other little kids heard the Easter story. It was great fun as my son and all the other munchkins carried their baskets and picked up eggs from the ground. No tantrums, no trying to grab each other's eggs. Then the older-little kids came out, and every single one of them walked right past where the easy eggs were "hidden" and the little guys were toddling around picking them up. Not one of them stopped to get an easily-placed egg. It's like they just all automatically knew to let the toddlers have their fun, and they would walk til they spotted harder to find eggs. Nobody compared baskets, nobody cried because they hadn't found a special prize egg, nobody tried to knock down anybody else. Everyone was just so happy to be there. It seriously could not have been a better experience. That many kids plus candy and excitement and no behavior problems? Incredible.

Because I know what I know, that my boy can behave in public, and so can all these other kids, I'm going to keep doing what I do. Maybe through our actions, we can turn the tide of this discriminatory attitude that people have towards parents with small children. I know the hunt on Saturday wasn't an anomaly. I believe we outnumber the occasional public temper tantrum thrower. Who's with me?

I Can Do All Things...

Or: What I learned at summer camp: the final installment.

I’ve been away from this blog for a long time. Too much got in the way, and I was kind of being a chicken about what I felt God prompting me to write about. There was one seminar at RYC that God used to etch His words into me, onto my heart, and that was on contentment in suffering, taught by Pastor Joel Fick. We started out learning about the root of suffering, which is sin and its devastating effects. Sin is anti-relational, among brothers and sisters, among friends, between self and God, and the ultimate expression of this is death. Pastor Joel prefaced the rest of his comments by saying that the contentment we have is not what our reaction to death is supposed to be, as if it doesn’t hurt, but how we can be content in our circumstances. Not a fake smile, pretending things are ok, but even in the midst of tragedy, knowing God is present.

Psalm 73:25-26 says “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

Is Christ sufficient for me, even when I have nothing else? The comfort Christ brings doesn’t mean the pain isn’t real, or will go away any time soon, but it means I can and will endure what this fallen world brings to me.

In Philippians 4:11-13, which includes an oft-quoted verse applied and misapplied to all kinds of situations, Paul states “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”

Pastor Joel pointed out the typical isolation of this last verse, which really makes the meaning bereft of its richness in context. Paul is speaking of knowing how to graciously accept blessings and graciously accept suffering, and Paul knew what that meant. One of the points made during this seminar that stood out to me was that you don’t have to feel guilty when you have blessings and others are suffering. You can be grateful to God for your blessings, and grieve for those who are suffering, without denigrating God’s good gifts. I had a really hard time with this when I was pregnant with Edward. During that time, I saw people I loved suffer hardship and loss in their pregnancies while I had a perfectly healthy one. I didn’t know how to handle that. I remember confessing to a dear friend that I spent a lot of time feeling guilty just for existing. Rejoicing at my pre-born son’s healthy check-ups somehow felt like a betrayal to my friends.

A year ago today, I was on the “brought low” side of that passage. On a Thursday morning, I walked out of my class and left for the emergency room. I spent all day there, undergoing tests, getting stuck with IV’s to give me fluids, and waiting for hours to receive confirmation of what I knew deep down was already true- that I had miscarried my baby at ~6 weeks. Some parts of that day are a blur, and some parts of that day still flash vividly in my mind like the living nightmare it was. Things you don’t want to ever hear your doctor say. Wondering what to tell the handful of people that knew I was pregnant. Wondering how anyone moves on from loss.

In the days that followed, I heard pregnancy announcement after pregnancy announcement. At one point I had 12 friends that were with child. And I was genuinely happy for them, but it was hard. And also in those days, I was upheld by God’s love expressed through my amazing family and friends. I read Scriptures that people sent me, not to try to make me feel better, but that allowed me to grieve. My best friend dropped everything to be with me every time I needed her. My pastor came over and encouraged us with Truth; not rainbows and sunshine, but the real actual truth. The world is broken. Heaven is real. My baby is there waiting for me. I may have to suffer, but my second child never does.

2 days after I came home from the ER, Edward hit his head and gashed it open pretty badly right above his eye. We were at my parents’ house, so my mom drove us to the ER while I sat in the back with Edward, trying to comfort him, keep blood out of his eye, and not have a crazy-person breakdown. We were seen right away, and the pediatric nurse was a friend from church. Edward was glued back together pretty quickly and we were on our way. 2 days before I was walking down that same ER hallway, broken and empty. This time I was walking down the hallway holding my son, and I knew God was telling me something. I still had a job to do. I still had a family. I was still a mother. And He would get me through the days and weeks to come. And He did. I can live fully. I can rejoice in my God. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.