Summary:
Bilbo Baggins is recruited for an adventure that will send him galivanting across Middle Earth.
My Thoughts:
I think the Lord of the Rings trilogy is one of the most impressive cinematic feats in history; every movie is a 5/5 Star film, in my opinion, and they set the high bar for epic fantasy films. They are perfect films, and I will fight anyone who tells you differently… “The Hobbit” movies are another story.
As much as I love the LOTR films, and, even more so, the LOTR extended editions, I have a hard time caring about the Hobbit films. The Hobbit movies are long, sometimes boring, and frequently immature films that barely hold a candle to the brilliance of the LOTR trilogy. At the same time, while I absolutely loathe a lot of things that Peter Jackson did in this trilogy, I love a few moments, and, from the perspective of someone who is trying to capture the events of Middle Earth as a whole, I can understand what he’s trying to do by adding in some of the scenes that don’t pertain to the story of Bilbo.
This movie is frustrating if you just want an adaptation of “The Hobbit”, but if you look at this movie as an amalgamation of the Silmarillion, a few of Tolkien’s appendices, and the Hobbit, not just as a story about Dwarves reclaiming their gold from a dragon, but also as a prequel to the LOTR, then this film sort of works... sort of. It’s like listening to The Hobbit, if the Hobbit were being told by a rambling, senile war vet who seems insistent to include every detail from their glory days; subplots meander aimlessly and seemingly endlessly, making for a journey that is nigh incoherent and very boring at times. To make matters worse, the film doesn’t know who its target audience is; The Hobbit book is far more young-adulty than LOTR, and Jackson tries to capture that feeling by making the dwarves have an… erm… peculiar sense of humor. Cheap fart and skinny-dipping jokes feel completely out of place when they’re alongside the beautiful halls of Rivendell or the gloriously grim caves of the Goblin King.
As a whole, this movie is sort of a mess, but, much like the prequel trilogy of Star Wars, I still can’t hate it. The film takes place in world that I adore, and while this version of the Hobbit is filled with dozens of subplots that don’t really relate to the story of the Hobbit, I know that there proably will never be another film that deals with the stories of Radagast or deals with some of the earlier battles of the third age. So, while I don’t think some of the stories are necessary, when you look at this film not as a single entry, but as the first brushstroke of the glorious masterpiece that is the Middle Earth saga, then this film is a sloppy but compelling entry into that world.
“I’m going on an adventure!”
In a hole in a ground there lived a Hobbit… named Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman, “Ghost Stories”). Bilbo is one day approached by a wizard named Gandalf (Ian McKellen, “Cats”) who asks him to go on an adventure with a band of dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage, “The Lodge”). The goal of the dwarves is to travel to Erebore, the Lonely Mountain, a city which once was home to the dwarves, but is now a desolate place where the dragon Smaug slumbers. Along the journey, Bilbo encounters many foes and friends including Elrond (Hugo Weaving, “The Matrix”), the ruler of Rivendell, and Gollum (Andy Serkis, “King Kong (2005)”), a mysterious subterranean dweller with a secret.
Since I’ve already started talking about my disdain for some of the added unnecessary lengthy scenes, I’ll start there. This was the first time I’d sat down to watch the Hobbit films since I picked up the extended edition, so, honestly, my issue with the length could’ve been partially solved by watching the theatrical cuts, but I was curious so I gave it a go. The extended editions of the LOTR movies are indispensable; I think the scenes that PJ added in those cuts often flush out the world in beautiful ways that often hint at character development or some kind of historical significance in a way that feels realistic to the story and natural to the way the characters would live in that world. The extended sequences in this film were cut for a reason.
Most of the stuff that was cut out for the theatrical editions and then added back in for the extended cuts are just ridiculous attempts at juvenile humor, and it honestly made me hate some of the dwarves as much as I hate JarJar Binks (“Star Wars: The Phantom Menace”). The dwarves make fart, burp, and gay jokes that were cut out; they skinny dip in a fountain in Rivendell; and there are two or three added songs that just feel completely out of place. I’ve watched the extended cut of this film once, and I can honestly say that was enough for me. I know I’ll probably watch this film once or twice more in my life (I’ll watch the LOTR movies a dozen more times), but I can’t say I’ll ever go out of my way to watch the extended cut again.
The problem with these movies as a straight adaptation of The Hobbit is that there’s just SOOO much extra stuff jammed in there. I watched this film with my roommate and fellow TMM reviewer Karl; both of us are huge LOTR fans, so it’s easier to slog through the lesser Middle Earth entries with kindred spirits. As we were watching this movie, I started to wonder how the film compared to the book, so I broke out my copy so we could sort of ‘follow along’ with the movie as it played out. We essentially just checked the time stamp and then checked to see how many pages into the book the story was at that time. To give you an idea of how much extra junk is in this movie, the first scene of the book doesn’t start until about eighteen minutes into this movie. That first chapter- only thirty pages long- tells about the dwarves arrival at Bag End and then eventually their departure, doesn’t conclude until about forty-five minutes into the film, and the next chapter, which concerns the trolls that Gandalf turns to stone, is only about forty-five pages into the book, but it takes us almost an hour and a half to get to that point. The whole of this film covered the first hundred-and-twenty pages of this three-hundred-and-thirty-page book; three hours spent on that short and simple of a story isn’t only excessive, it can be downright boring at times.
But while there is a LOT of extra everything, some of the extra stuff is great, or if it’s not great, it’s at least made in a way that is visually pleasing. The world of Middle Earth is one that I am willing to spend time in regardless of how some of the lesser scenes turn out. Hobbiton, Rivendell, Mirkwood, the Misty Mountains, all of it looks amazing under the lens of Peter Jackson. The production design in these movies and the LOTR movies are second to none; they have, as I’ve stated before, set the bar for fantasy epics. The costuming, makeup, and hairstyling in these films are even better than the LOTR movies, because all of the dwarves have their own peculiar styles. The way that this film looks makes up for a lot of my qualms with it; I can deal with few farting trolls in exchange for a perfect Gollum/Bilbo riddle exchange.
Verdict:
The Lord of the Rings movies are perfect, and the Hobbit movies are fine. I know some people find these movies to be insufferable due to their length and unnecessary sequences, but I still find them completely passable. I will always want to return to Middle Earth, and even when Middle Earth’s offerings are a little subpar, I can usually find enough to make my stay worthwhile.
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