The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Film (2012)

With Martin Freeman (Bilbo), Ian McKellen (Gandalf), Richard Armitage (Thorin), Ken Stott (Balin), Graham McTavish (Dwalin), William Kircher (Bifur / Tom Troll), James Nesbitt (Bofur), Stephen Hunter (Bombur), Dean O’Gorman (Fili), Aidan Turner (Kili), John Callen (Oin), Peter Hambleton (Gloin / William Troll), Jed Brophy (Nori), Mark Hadlow (Dori / Bert Troll), Adam Brown (Ori), Ian Holm (Old Bilbo), Elijah Wood (Frodo), Hugo Weaving (Elrond), Cate Blanchett (Galadriel), Christopher Lee (Saruman), Andy Serkis (Gollum), Sylvester McCoy (Radagast), Barry Humphries (Great Goblin), Jeffrey Thomas (Thror), Michael Mizrahi (Thrain), Lee Pace (Thranduil), Manu Bennett (Azog), Conan Stevens (Bolg), John Rawls (Yazneg), Stephen Ure (Fimbul / Grinnah), Timothy Bartlett (Master Worrywort), Bret McKenzie (Lindir), Kiran Shah (Goblin Scribe), Benedict Cumberbatch (Necromancer), Glenn Boswell (Dwarf Miner), Thomas Robins (Young Thrain)

Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, sets off on an adventure with a bunch of dwarves and runs into the ring that causes so much to-do in the subsequent The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and which gives him power and challenges him with responsibilities. In addition to the dwarves and Bilbo, orcs and elves get into the action, and there is plenty of it.

The Hobbit was J.R.R. Tolkien’s introductory book to Middle Earth and it is concise and delightful. It has a kind of folksy, bucolic charm that even Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings proper does not quite embody. The lives of hobbits is clearly and richly detailed, and the quaintness of that life, and the way Bilbo embodies it, sets the scene for the way in which his unusual adventure unfolds in stark contrast to it.

To my mind, this film is overdone in just about every way.

Somehow, Jackson and company have used every last detail of the original, plus narrative expansions based on footnotes and related materials, to turn The Hobbit, a concise work, into a major three-film series. Beforehand, that struck me as a bizarre thing to attempt, and now, having seen the first part of this trilogy, I can attest to that feeling.

From start to finish, the film is almost nonstop action, involving one sort of orc or another brutalizing Bilbo and his dwarf companions. The number of animation special effects used to realize this orcfest is daunting. Subjected constantly to orc violence, there is literally no time to breathe. It is all orcs, all the time.

We get practically no introduction to The Shire nor to Bilbo’s life in it, a very important part of The Hobbit. There is a meeting at Bilbo’s house before the gang sets off, but, before we know it, we are off on the quest, and the violence starts almost immmediately.

Frankly, I found the film boring. It had almost the highest action to interest ratio for a film that I have seen recently. In other words, there was a lot going on, constantly, but I found very little stimulation or interest in much of it.

However, I found Martin Freeman, who plays Bilbo, quite charming. Somehow, he conveys a sense of Bilbo’s earnest and modest domesticity and made that quality of character shine through all the technical shenanigans.

The score by Howard Shore is omnipresent, so much so that I wanted a moment of silence now and then; it was hard to find. His score for The Lord of the Rings films was quite enjoyable, but this one struck me as overwrought and relentless.

After the success of the three The Lord of the Rings films, Peter Jackson had endeavored, it seems, to capitalize on another blockbuster trilogy and has gone overboard, regardless of the appropriateness of the scale of this project to the book.

The animation of the orcs, I must say, is done with a thoroughgoing sense of what is disgusting. The head orc has something that looks like a terminal double chin which sways and bounces with abandon; whoever conceived it has a certain kind of genius for depicting the unappealing.

The usual gang of characters have returned from The Lord of the Rings for a series of cameo appearances. Ian McKellan (Gandalf), Ian Holm (Old Bilbo), Cate Blanchett (Galadriel), Hugo Weaving (Elrond), Christopher Lee (Saruman) and Elijah Wood (Frodo) all do their thing capably. It is good to see them, albeit too briefly between orcfests.

The script struck me as poorly written. It felt predictable and sentimental at every turn.

The 3D experience was pretty successful overall. However, the quality of the image that resulted from the 48 frames per second format sometime seemed like a strange variant of videotaped animation for TV.

Some time after seeing the film, I spoke with a friend who is a very knowledgeable Tolkien fan. He loved it – go figure! For him, it touched all the bases, conveyed the story dutifully, and the length did not seem inappropriate; the inclusion of all sorts of additional footnoted material that was not in the original book did not seem an intrusion.

Given that, if you are intrigued, please venture into this mega Middle Earth fest with some 3D glasses and, as Gollum might say, make up your own mindses, my precioussssses.

– BADMan