The Hobbit: An Addendum

So, as you might have been able to tell from my first post about The Hobbit, the movie gave me a lot of feels.  Most of which came from the fact that I wanted to like it a lot more than I did - not that I didn't like it, I did quite a bit, but I was still kind of disappointed in the final product.  Which led pretty directly to me writing a "review" which didn't actually say anything useful at all, but whined a lot and threw in some stuff about dwarves.  This addendum is my attempt to say something substantive about the movie itself.

I did not see The Hobbit in 48fps, or even in IMAX.  Because of this I didn't have the hyper-realism issue that many people have been complaining about; however (and I don't know if this is BECAUSE I saw it in standard form, or if everyone had this problem), there were several panoramic scenes that ended up blurry and headache-y for me.  This was especially problematic because they were scenes I wanted to see - the opening scene of Erebor, the dwarven city, for example, and the goblin underground compound.  New Zealand is used to great effect, and Jackson definitely remembers how to use great sweeping panoramas to good effect, but the film is a little heavy on the scenery porn, which matters more because of how padded the movie already feels.

The scale of the movie is pretty grand - Jackson proved he was great at doing epics with LOTR, and he brings that same sense of grandeur to The Hobbit.  It works to mediate some of the tonal dissonance that the film has, since there's not as much of that weighty feeling to the book; The Hobbit adapted scenes are very true to the spirit of the book - lighter, with some levity, while the material from the ROTK appendices (most particularly a meeting between Gandalf, Galadriel, Sarumon and Elrond) is more serious, more ponderous.  While individually, every scene is pretty great, they don't transition very well..  The opening sequence, where we learn the history of the dwarves and their homeland, gives gravity to the story; as I'm thinking about it right now, part of the problem I may be having is that we got the big sweeping epic FIRST and are only now going back to the prequel story, which puts more expectation on The Hobbit to be similar to LOTR in terms of tone and feeling.  Jackson does a good job of incorporating his extra material, showing that the story he's trying to tell is bigger than just The Hobbit text, but staying true to all his sources hurts him in terms of meshing the elements together.

All in all, The Hobbit was an enjoyable, but flawed, experience.  I think we were all expecting something more, which is why it's getting so slammed in reviews right now - it's a pretty good movie, and we were expecting something great.  I hope parts two and three deliver a little bit more.

The Hobbit

The Hobbit is not Lord of the Rings.

I expressed concern when the first trailer hit, because it looked way too much like LOTR rescrambled with a different hobbit, and having read The Hobbit I wanted a movie that let the merits of that story shine without being overshadowed by the darker, more serious events of LOTR.

Well...yes and no.  The story Peter Jackson is telling here is much larger than what's contained in The Hobbit, which is why I'm finally comfortable with the fact that we're getting three movies (for a great rundown of what Jackson's doing with Tolkein's extended mythology, read this explanation by Dresden Codak author and artist, Aaron Diaz.  His whole tumblr right now is full of awesome LOTR, Hobbit, and Silmarillion facts).  But...

But.

There are two things that weaken this movie tremendously, and one of them is the constant insistence that this movie IS related to LOTR and IS a prequel and dammit, how many parallels can we fit into this film?  It's detrimental; Thorin Oakenshield is a badass with an awesome backstory, he doesn't need to be constantly and bluntly compared to Aragorn.  There's even one instance of a deus ex machina from Fellowship being directly reused, in a scene that was changed from the Hobbit text (not that I'm objecting to the fact that the book was changed - I'm objecting to the fact that Jackson reuses a terrible plot device that didn't work that well in the first place).

Radagast is pretty magnificent and I basically won't hear a word against him.

The other thing that hurts the movie is length; even with the added material, this didn't need to be a three hour movie.  I would go so far as to say it could have fit just as much story, and just as much scenery, comfortably into two hours and been a stronger film for it.  There are two scenes in particular, a chase scene and a battle, that are long to the point of being ridiculous and tiresome.  Edit more better, Jackson!  I know you can do it.

Some good stuff!  The dwarves are excellent.  Even though, for all its length, some of them are confined to caricatures and cut-outs (Bombur's most memorable characteristics are "fat" and "donut beard"), they still end up being memorable, and fun to spend screen time with.  They are also fierce; unlike the hobbits, who will always look a little funny with swords in their hands (intentionally, I think), the dwarves are true warriors.  They are also the best channel for the book's levity to come through; the scene where you meet them at Bilbo's house was one of my favorites in the whole film.

If my beard was this majestic, I'd want to be remembered for it too.

I don't really know how to talk about Riddles in the Dark, except by saying that it's the centerpiece of the movie, and could stand alone as its own short film.  It's amazing, and Martin Freeman (fabulous, amazing, I-don't-think-they-could-have-made-this-without-him Martin Freeman) sells the hell out of it.  It's kind of like Jackson conceived of this scene, and built the rest of the movie to support it (which is entirely possible, it's the cornerstone moment of the film, after all).  It's also a great way of starting the descent into darkness from the bright tones of the opening acts, and it's a great lead-in to part two.

Shall I talk some about Martin Freemen?  He's flawless, really.  He hits such the perfect tone, unassuming and pretty self-deprecating, that when his moments of bravery come he looks just as surprised as everyone else.  He makes those moments believable, as well - it's not like his cleverness in the face of danger comes out of nowhere.  He's always been a smart hobbit, and now he has the chance to be a hero, even if someone else will probably have to tell him when it happens.