As illustrated by my previous post about The Hobbit Facebook page, I am a massive Tolkien fan. Therefore, when I went to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I spent three joyful hours back in Middle Earth, nostalgic for that lovely land that I had last seen in theaters nine years ago. However, despite my enjoyment, I recognize that this is no movie for the casual moviegoer.
Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was a daring experiment in fantasy film-making. Sure, there are plenty of Tolkien fans in the world, but in order to become true blockbusters, the movies had to appeal to everyone in the audience, even those who had never read The Lord of the Rings. As a result, Jackson crafted a sumptuous set of movies that offered just enough background to keep the audience informed but proceeded at a brisk enough pace that no one got bored. The movies were dazzling visual spectacles (thanks to the otherworldly New Zealand scenery) with great attention paid to costumes, hair and make-up, production design, music, and anything else that could help audiences differentiate all the characters and regions of Middle Earth without requiring extensive exposition. And there were action sequences and intrigues and romances aplenty, so that everyone found something to like.
With The Hobbit, Jackson no longer harbors any populist aspirations. This is a movie that feels like it was made for fans of Tolkien and the LOTR trilogy, people who just want to spend several hours in the theatre reconnecting with the characters and stories that they love. Why else would Jackson turn this tiny children's book into a trilogy of movies? Instead of giving us a simple movie, Jackson and his fellow writers Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens have constructed a much more elaborate tale that delves deep into Middle Earth mythology and provides a very thorough prequel to the LOTR trilogy. This movie covers the first six chapters of The Hobbit (a mere 100 pages), but it boasts a three-hour runtime because of additional material culled from the appendices to the Lord of the Rings and long backstories about the hobbit and thirteen dwarves who serve as the heroes of our tale. This is a level of detail that can only appeal to a hardcore Tolkien enthusiast. After all, if you don't know anything about Middle Earth, why would you care about the Necromancer, or the history of the dwarves and their distrust of elves, and the other countless stories that only tangentially affect the main adventure plot of The Hobbit?
The Hobbit is still characteristic of the impeccable filmmaking that characterized the LOTR trilogy, taking great pains to make Middle Earth feel as real as possible. I did not see the movie in the 48 fps format that has caused a great deal of debate, but watching it in 2D at a paltry 24 frames per second was enough to keep me satisfied. The background score hearkened back to the themes that were so familiar in the LOTR trilogy, and there are plenty of cameos featuring characters from those movies. Ian McKellen (who plays Gandalf) is the only actor from the LOTR trilogy to return in a starring role in this trilogy, but the new actors, particularly Martin Freeman as the hobbit Bilbo Baggins and Richard Armitage as the dwarf leader Thorin Oakenshield, do a wonderful job of stepping right into their fantastical roles and easing the audience back into Middle Earth.
The movie could have benefited from more judicious editing - various action sequences felt overlong or tedious because they were almost identical to prior sequences. At times it feels like Peter Jackson simply missed making these movies and couldn't help but include long sequences that let him spend more time in Middle Earth. Occasionally the dialogue felt schmaltzy and laughably sentimental, but again, as a fan you can forgive anything. The highlight of the film is certainly the Riddles in the Dark sequence featuring Bilbo and Gollum. Performance capture enhancements in the decade since the last LOTR movie mean that Andy Serkis' performance as Gollum feels even more nuanced and brilliant than ever before. And this is the scene that introduces the One Ring, an object that will set off the epic events of the Lord of the Rings.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is an indulgent movie for any Tolkien fan, but an overwrought movie for anyone else. I loved it and cannot wait for the next installment when we finally get to see our heroes interact with Thranduil, Bard, and of course, Smaug. But if the detailed fantasy and mythology of Tolkien's Middle Earth doesn't interest you, watching The Hobbit might be a very tiring journey.
Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was a daring experiment in fantasy film-making. Sure, there are plenty of Tolkien fans in the world, but in order to become true blockbusters, the movies had to appeal to everyone in the audience, even those who had never read The Lord of the Rings. As a result, Jackson crafted a sumptuous set of movies that offered just enough background to keep the audience informed but proceeded at a brisk enough pace that no one got bored. The movies were dazzling visual spectacles (thanks to the otherworldly New Zealand scenery) with great attention paid to costumes, hair and make-up, production design, music, and anything else that could help audiences differentiate all the characters and regions of Middle Earth without requiring extensive exposition. And there were action sequences and intrigues and romances aplenty, so that everyone found something to like.
With The Hobbit, Jackson no longer harbors any populist aspirations. This is a movie that feels like it was made for fans of Tolkien and the LOTR trilogy, people who just want to spend several hours in the theatre reconnecting with the characters and stories that they love. Why else would Jackson turn this tiny children's book into a trilogy of movies? Instead of giving us a simple movie, Jackson and his fellow writers Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens have constructed a much more elaborate tale that delves deep into Middle Earth mythology and provides a very thorough prequel to the LOTR trilogy. This movie covers the first six chapters of The Hobbit (a mere 100 pages), but it boasts a three-hour runtime because of additional material culled from the appendices to the Lord of the Rings and long backstories about the hobbit and thirteen dwarves who serve as the heroes of our tale. This is a level of detail that can only appeal to a hardcore Tolkien enthusiast. After all, if you don't know anything about Middle Earth, why would you care about the Necromancer, or the history of the dwarves and their distrust of elves, and the other countless stories that only tangentially affect the main adventure plot of The Hobbit?
The Hobbit is still characteristic of the impeccable filmmaking that characterized the LOTR trilogy, taking great pains to make Middle Earth feel as real as possible. I did not see the movie in the 48 fps format that has caused a great deal of debate, but watching it in 2D at a paltry 24 frames per second was enough to keep me satisfied. The background score hearkened back to the themes that were so familiar in the LOTR trilogy, and there are plenty of cameos featuring characters from those movies. Ian McKellen (who plays Gandalf) is the only actor from the LOTR trilogy to return in a starring role in this trilogy, but the new actors, particularly Martin Freeman as the hobbit Bilbo Baggins and Richard Armitage as the dwarf leader Thorin Oakenshield, do a wonderful job of stepping right into their fantastical roles and easing the audience back into Middle Earth.
The movie could have benefited from more judicious editing - various action sequences felt overlong or tedious because they were almost identical to prior sequences. At times it feels like Peter Jackson simply missed making these movies and couldn't help but include long sequences that let him spend more time in Middle Earth. Occasionally the dialogue felt schmaltzy and laughably sentimental, but again, as a fan you can forgive anything. The highlight of the film is certainly the Riddles in the Dark sequence featuring Bilbo and Gollum. Performance capture enhancements in the decade since the last LOTR movie mean that Andy Serkis' performance as Gollum feels even more nuanced and brilliant than ever before. And this is the scene that introduces the One Ring, an object that will set off the epic events of the Lord of the Rings.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is an indulgent movie for any Tolkien fan, but an overwrought movie for anyone else. I loved it and cannot wait for the next installment when we finally get to see our heroes interact with Thranduil, Bard, and of course, Smaug. But if the detailed fantasy and mythology of Tolkien's Middle Earth doesn't interest you, watching The Hobbit might be a very tiring journey.
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