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In parts I liked it very much – like a lot of reviewers the riddle game between Bilbo and Gollum struck home wonderfully, but around it there’s a lot of visual showiness and derivative storytelling that counteracts those smaller moments. You know the movie makers are up against it when there’s a third eagle rescue to mount (Jackson must have shaken his head in dismay when he read that chapter – and there’s another one yet to come, of course), but it’s another thing to see such blatant lampshading in the added scenes – pointedly, Bolg swatting his way to a fallen Dwarf king mid-battle like Sauron before him in Fellowship.
I would argue that a big part of adapting a story as old and familiar as The Hobbit
absolutely needs newness, as much as a remake of an earlier work does (see:
Dredd 3D, which succeeded by having to and being able to throw virtually
everything the earlier Stallone movie offered out the window.) The problem for
me with The Hobbit An Unexpected Journey however isn’t in its familiarity, but
it doesn’t help it. Where the movie lets itself down is the ham-fisted
introduction of the newness to the established.
Consider this:
before The Hobbit we already know Gandalf, Bilbo, Gollum and Elrond from the
Rings trilogy. Yes, each of these characters must be tweaked a little to mark
earlier versions of themselves (Bilbo especially), but the broad strokes are
there. The makers of AUJ had the Dwarf race also broadly indicated through the
characterisation of Gimli which, even in the movie’s prat-falling moments, still
didn’t seriously undermine what a Dwarf essentially is – proud, stubborn, loyal,
grounded and not given to sentiment. All that’s left, surely are a new band of
elves and a dragon.
It’s a children’s story - we can cope with the rest, right?
One of the failings I see with The Hobbit An Unexpected Journey is its lack of trust
in its audience. Here’s a movie with a lot of flash – Hi-Definition, 48 frames
per second, 3D RED camera filming – none of which are necessary to telling the
story and little of which sold the movie to me. This is the format I saw it in,
and despite concerns I might suffer from ‘motion sickness’ reported by others,
or for the effect to somehow ‘not work’ for me, it did, bar some opening shots
where character movement was too quick and definitely stood out. Once I’d
settled in, it was okay – but I wasn’t sold on it. Ironically, in an age where
TV is increasingly being ‘film-ised’ in post-production, The Hobbit to me
(especially in the prologue sequence set in the Renaissance-like setting of
Dale) resembled little more than a History Channel dramatisation of the life of
Leonardo or Jesus. I didn’t feel drawn in to the action. The technique’s enemy
seems to be daylight scenes – Rivendell has a real Hallmark Cards effect now,
with its amber sunset lighting, while the scenes set in bag End, under the Misty
Mountains and, especially, the wonderful 'Riddles in the Dark' sequence, work so
much better.
Character-wise
the principles are great – Freeman is a fine Bilbo, and the returning regulars
each put a different spin on their characters convincingly (a more whimsical
Gandalf, a friendlier Elrond, a more sinister Gollum). My opinions on the
interpretations of the various Dwarves are making their way into my various
Oaken’s Twelve postings – I can see the need with thirteen readily-identifiable Dwarves to cover (and
I’m glad nobody’s been cut out yet), but there’s almost too much going on here,
and not enough of the subtlety that made the slow reveal of Boromir’s character
absolutely work in Rings. Mark Hadlow’s meek Mavis Riley-like Dori and Adam
Browne’s village idiot Ori are my chief complaints.
The design of Erebor I was looking forward to, but its gaudiness and unsurprising continuity made me think less of Tolkien’s dark halls of Moria and more of an over-lit World of Warcraft setting. Too much – everything is biggened, scaled up, made more epic, because we can’t have The Hobbit being a small story. Rateliff argues that Tolkien’s revision of The Hobbit via the off-limits for adaptation The Quest for Erebor diminishes Bilbo’s quest by making him a small figure in a larger quest. Of course, Bilbo's finding of the One Ring changes that context again, but I think the appeal of the larger canvas, of the necromancer, Smaug, the fall of Erebor and the promise of Moria, have drowned this little Hobbit out. To revise the story takes a very skilled balancing act, and I don’t think the movie’s writers have been up to the task, and certainly haven’t been helped by the direction.
The lack of
trust also continues with the added story elements. I don’t mind Radagast’s
presence, and even liked Sylvester McCoy’s take on the character (informed, I
guess, by Peter Jackson’s penchant for adolescent humour). The White Council/Dol Guldur
subplot will be fine, I’m sure. Gandalf’s absence in the book is explained in
the barest way, and this is an aspect of the adaptation’s expansion I do approve
of. I wanted to see the Battle of Azanulbizar, and Dwarven halls (as gaudy as
they were). But please put me in the camp that doesn’t want Azog as the
principal enemy of this movie. It’s not that he should be dead at the end of
Azanulbizar (and by the hand of Dain Ironfoot, no less), but that there’s a
better substitute in Bolg that could have been there – or better yet, no chasing
Dwarf at all. Thorin’s quest didn’t need to be a chase movie at all, and this
set up only draws more attention to the episodic nature of the book’s first
half. I'm mixed over how the climactic confrontation between Thorin and Azog pulls Bilbo’s heroism forward. In a three movie arrangement perhaps this
relationship of trust between principal Dwarf and Hobbit needed to be advanced
early, but I preferred it in the book where Bilbo earns Thorin’s trust through
his presumed skills (stealth) in the Elvenking’s halls, and by using his wits,
rather than a questionable display of brawn. His rescue of Thorin is a movie
cliché – the body blow from out of shot, and belongs, along with a lingering
shot of a child’s doll in the ravaged streets of dale, in the bargain bin of
Hollywood visual shorthand. Again, a lack of faith is on display here.
To my regret I
found myself checking my watch several times during the film. I hope this issue
of pacing will be addressed in the next two installments, because at this stage
I’m not hanging out for an extended edition with more scenes and less organic
storytelling (the elves’ arrival doesn’t lead into the Company’s emerging in
Rivendell, for example – a wasted opportunity). And though I’ll see the next two
movies in the same format, I won’t be rushing out for a 3D TV to play them on at
home.
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