Runtime: 2 hours, 40 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Peter Jackson
Quick Impressions:
When I was in fourth grade I was so obsessed with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy that I mixed up a potion in the bathroom, said an incantation, and drank it all up while I wore a plastic ring I’d gotten at the school carnival. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I coaxed my younger sister to drink some of my strange brew, too. Who knows what was in it! I thought it was elven magic, but with the benefit of hindsight, I have to guess that it was probably largely mouthwash and possibly included a raw egg (most of my elementary school concoctions did). Anyway, I didn’t end up with a ring of power, but at least neither of us died from trying. (Pretty lucky when you consider the potential effects of drinking mouth wash.)
Seriously, though, I loved those books when I was nine. They were my world. I’ve read them many times over the years, but never with quite the same passion as that first time. (You know you’re passionate if you’re willing to risk drinking mouth wash. Kids, emphatically—don’t try this at home.)
The Hobbit I first encountered when my mother read it to me in kindergarten. We read it again the summer before fourth grade which was what inspired me to tackle The Lord of the Rings in the first place.
I like The Hobbit. I really do. I always have. I’ve read it several times now, seen the play performed on a few occasions, watched the musical cartoon version about a billion times. I don’t like it nearly as much as The Lord of the Rings, but Tolkien is pretty great no matter what he’s writing. (As you watch the scenes with Smaug, it’s hard not to think of his impressive career as a medievalist, his essay—I guess it was originally a lecture—on Beowulf. And I love his version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.)
On the whole, I think Peter Jackson has done a fabulous job of bringing Tolkien’s works to the screen. It’s a little frustrating that The Hobbit has been split into three movies (to match the epic feel of The Lord of the Rings films rather than the more modest scope of the novel itself), but what Jackson gives us is much better than any Hobbit dramatization I had as a child. (Well, actually, the play is pretty good, but you can only watch that if somebody happens to take the trouble to perform it for you.)
Last night, my whole family (my husband, my parents, the kids) trekked out to the theater to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and all of us liked it. If you’re a fan of Tolkien (and particularly if you’re a fan of Jackson’s treatment of Tolkien), then you should like it, too.
The Good:
Both the pacing and the overall story are better and more suited to the screen this time than last time. Even though the beginning falters a little, once we’re in the Mirkwood, things get really exciting. It helps that we dive right into the most exciting part of the actual novel. (While I enjoy what Jackson adds, in this series, I always find that the scenes I love best are the ones that actually appear in the book.)
Personally, I think the film does the part with the giant spiders really well. (My mother thought it was too short, but I think if you make the film much longer, you’d have people dying and women going into labor, babies weaning themselves before their parents got home from movie-dates to feed them.) Honestly before the spiders showed up I was feeling a bit skeptical about the movie. The beginning seemed really slow (but part of that may be that I was watching with my almost-five-year-old daughter who found the opening scene disorienting and off-putting.)
I think it’s worth noting that my almost five-year-old daughter (who often falls asleep if she gets bored) watched the entire movie (all two hours and forty minutes of it) with great interest and seemingly limitless comments. Not only did she read all of the captions out loud, but she also had quite a few questions. (Ex. “Do we have the first Hobbit at home on Netflix?” “Grandma has the blu-ray.” “Oh good. I need to watch the first one again to see how Oakenshield’s friends were betrayed by that creepy elf.” “Well, that’s not in the first Hobbit.” “Then I need to watch the one before that.”)
(Later my family in the car all protested that the betrayal is in the first Hobbit, but a dramatization of it is not, and I’m sure that’s what she meant.)
The new cast is universally excellent (and the old cast always was). I really like Martin Freeman as Bilbo. He plays him very well. I wish at times that the film focused more on him, though I must admit it’s fun and exciting to watch what Gandalf’s up to when he leaves.
When you read the book, it always seems that Gandalf disappears just in time to miss all the moments of greatest peril. It’s nice to get the visual confirmation that what he’s doing is actually far more dangerous and important than most of the peril he’s missing out on in the dwarves’ quest.
To tell you the truth, I think there’s money to be made in a tourism venture called Walking Around with Gandalf (alternate title, Running Away with Gandalf). Imagine Gandalf leading you through the Roman Forum or some other modern day ruin. Then when you get deep into where you’re going, he could throw up his staff and call theatrically, “Fly, you fools!” and then you’d all turn tail and run away as fast as you could.
Seriously, though, I love Gandalf. Since childhood, Gandalf and Gollum have always been my favorite characters in The Lord of the Rings (because, obviously, they’re the best characters). It’s very stirring to watch Gandalf lunging into perilous places, vast, immense, sweeping, ramshackle ruins and fortresses! They should have made a fourth movie called Where’s Gandalf where Ian McKellen just walks around New Zealand all day in his Gandalf costume. I know I could watch that for three hours!
I should also mention (because I know people complain about Tauriel) that the not-in-the-book female elf (Evangeline Lilly) was my stepson’s favorite character in the movie. He really liked her and found her genuinely interesting. (I liked her, too, but I like her name even better. I mean Evangeline Lilly. That’s such a great name!)
It was also nice to see Orlando Bloom reprising the role of Legolas. I thought it might feel awkward to have him crammed into the story, but actually, his presence was very welcome (although I’d swear his nose has gotten bigger). Lee Pace (whom I always loved on Wonderfalls) takes the creepy otherness of elfdom to a whole new level. He’s really something else. Sometimes it feels almost like he’s auditioning for Sunset Boulevard or something. He’s such a creepy spooky diva of an elf king.
Ken Stott gets some really fine moments as Balin this time around, and Richard Armitage as Thorin feels at least as important as Bilbo, which is odd, but he is captivating.
I’m on the fence about how I feel about Laketown. It’s so elaborately and beautifully rendered, but it also feels odd. On the whole, I think I like what they’ve done, but it’s really weird to spend so much time there. I enjoyed seeing Stephen Fry turn up, and both Luke Evans (Bard) and Ryan Gage (that annoying creepy guy) are really good.
My husband also wondered aloud after the movie if Kili getting shot in the knee was an in-joke about Skyrim targeted at like-minded geeks. He may be onto something there. (“I used to be able to accompany the dwarves to the Lonely Mountain, but then I got shot in the knee.”)
Best Action Sequence:
In general, the film has excellent fight choreography, which is an odd thing for me to notice because I usually find long action scenes bewildering, disorienting, off putting and ultimately boring.
I’m realizing now that I’m going to have to add a proviso to my general rule about action scenes. Apparently, I cannot be entertained by long fight sequences unless they feature Orlando Bloom. I say this because the elaborately choreographed swordfights in The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise also held my attention.
Perhaps what I find really hard to follow are explosions and vehicles. When combatants fight with swords or bows, watching them feels more like an invigorating evening at the ballet.
My daughter absolutely died laughing every time Legolas started killing Orcs. She just really liked his style, and so did I. After the movie, my husband remarked on how well the film highlights the distinct fighting styles of the elves versus the dwarves. The latter rely entirely on forged weapons, the former use their own elegant bodies as weapons and their bows and swords as extensions of themselves. He was spot on with that, and he’s right to commend the thoughtfulness of the production team responsible for fight choreography.
I’d love to see the scene with the barrels floating down the river in 3D. My daughter (and my mother) won’t wear the glasses, but I have a feeling this scene would be only more dizzying and delightful in 3D. The way Legolas leaps from head to head made my daughter burst into fits of giggles, and at moments, I found myself joining in. It’s really fun to watch.
Best Scene/ Best Scene Visually:
Watching the scene between Bilbo and Smaug, I found myself thinking, I love dragons. Now this is a well done dragon movie. Why were all the movies about dragons when I was a child so—what’s the word? Oh yes—bad?
They really know how to use a dragon here. Smaug is wonderful. He’s sinister. He’s clever. He’s wicked. He’s wryly amusing. He undulates. He lunges. He teases. He taunts. He terrifies. He flies. And—this is particularly important when you’re dealing with a dragon—he breathes fire.
This is a plum role for Benedict Cumberbatch who really makes the most of it and turns the part into something special. Peter Jackson is very good at making motion capture stars. As fabulous as Andy Serkis is as Gollum, I think Cumberbatch is easily equally amazing as Smaug. (One note, though, Gollum is a richer and more complex character than Smaug, so obviously, Serkis’s Gollum is going to be the more memorable and awards worthy of the two. But everything marvelous about Smaug, Cumberbatch brings out brilliantly in his absolutely fantastic performance.)
Martin Freeman is also wonderful in these scenes. Honestly his one-on-one with Smaug was my favorite part of this movie, just as the riddles in the dark bit was my favorite part of the last. High school teachers should rejoice because (whatever their failings) Jackson’s Hobbit films dramatize these key scenes so well, and it’s easier to show a scene or two during a class period than to screen an entire movie, anyway.
(It’s also fun to think about what a great onscreen relationship Freeman and Cumberbatch are building. They’re becoming one of the great screen duos of the twenty-first century.)
For me, the piles of ill-gotten treasure, the sinuous, undulating, fearsome dragon—these were the visuals in the movie that made the biggest impression. There’s a scene very late in the film when Smaug is walking around looking for the dwarves, and he looks absolutely amazing.
Visually, I also enjoyed the somewhat novel way they depicted the Eye of Sauron. And of course, all the dramatic edifices (ruins, fortresses, what-have-you) are great!
Funniest Scene:
Both my mother and my daughter found it so amusing when Radagast commented to Gandalf about the niceness (or not niceness) of their meeting place. (My son, meanwhile, found a lot of humor in the film’s ending. “It’s a cliffhanger on the side of a mountain!”)
The Negatives:
If the third movie is as good as its predecessors, then Peter Jackson could cobble together all the scenes that actually happen in the book and come up with one pretty fantastic movie adaptation of The Hobbit.
That’s always the rub with these movies. They’re so long that inevitably you start to squirm in your seat and wonder, Does The Hobbit actually need to be told in three parts, three nearly three hour parts?
Clearly what Jackson is trying to do is make a cinematic prequel series to accompany The Lord of the Rings, so The Hobbit film trilogy is actually in a slightly different subgenre than The Hobbit the novel. When we read The Hobbit, we believe that we’re essentially reading an edited text of Bilbo Baggins’s memoir There and Back Again. Epic stuff may well be happening behind the scenes, but we’re focused on the events that lie within the small circle of Bilbo’s awareness. He’s only one hobbit. Hobbits are little people. It’s a little story, quaint, intimate, exciting, far more suitable for young children than the epic grandeur of The Lord of the Rings.
But Jackson isn’t trying to make a film adaptation of The Hobbit that matches the tone and scope of the book. Instead he’s making a cinematic prequel to The Lord of the Rings. So the movie doesn’t focus on just what Bilbo is doing. It also shows us the greater story unfolding in the much wider theater of play, a larger world of which little Bilbo is almost completely unaware.
That’s why some of the odd subplots have to be added, for the sake of continuity of style between the films. Kili (prettily played as always by Aidan Turner) has to get wounded so that some of the dwarves stay behind. Tauriel and Legolas have to wander away from the Mirkwood. We have to see where Gandalf goes when he leaves. Bard has to get a much more involved, detailed subplot. We’ve got to eavesdrop on the Orcs. As the seminal exemplar of high fantasy in the twentieth century and beyond, The Lord of the Rings thrives on splitting up its characters and sending them all off in different directions to give us exciting split points of view to jump among. That’s the way The Lord of the Ring works. The narrative is split among the teeming characters, all deeply involved in their own subplots. So in order to be like its cinematic predecessor, The Hobbit has to give minor characters more time and find some way of separating the protagonists. Fans of the book may be frustrated, but for people who have only seen the movies, this arrangement will look perfectly natural and comfortably familiar.
It’s not that this story isn’t there in The Hobbit. It’s just that it isn’t told. (I mean, the stuff about Tauriel and Kili is obviously very heavily embroidered. But no one who’s read the book can deny that Gandalf is always wandering away at critical moments and disappearing for long stretches of time on mysterious errands only to return at moments that are more critical still with only vague explanations of where he’s been.)
So while Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit is not exactly faithful to the book, it’s really only cheating on it with The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and the collective imagination of the screenwriters, and let’s be honest, that’s the best adaptation of The Hobbit we’re likely to get in my lifetime.
The fact remains, though, that many of the scenes actually in The Hobbit stand out as particularly well done. Imagine taking only the unexpected party with the dwarves, the riddles in the dark scene, the spiders in the Mirkwood, the conversation with Smaug, and maybe a few choice others and putting them all into one movie. These scenes are almost perfect, so as we watch the longer films, it’s hard not to come away with the idea that a pretty amazing adaptation of the actual Hobbit is buried in there somewhere. But would that simpler story have satisfied fans of The Lord of the Rings films? Pleasing everyone here is terribly daunting. It’s easy to see why getting The Hobbit into production with Jackson back at the helm took so long.
The biggest problem with An Unexpected Journey is that the ending felt awkward and forced, inadequate. (It was literally contrived, in fact.) The Desolation of Smaug doesn’t have the best ending, either, but it’s got an even worse beginning. They should have opened with something stronger. The initial conversation at the Prancing Pony feels like too prosaic a start, and the stuff with Beorn is not particularly well done. The pacing and quality of the film picks up once they get to the Mirkwood. In terms of events, that happens very quickly. In terms of runtime, it does not happen nearly quickly enough.
For me, the movie finally did something interesting when it brought in the spiders, and then moved quickly to Gandalf’s adventures, and the increasingly creepy elves. Still, even after that, it drags in places.
Honestly at one moment when a certain character gets thrown in jail, I suddenly realized, Oh great! Because once you end up enough pivotal characters behind bars, you just know they’re not getting out in this movie. It became clear then exactly where the film would end, right before something rather essential happened. If it were me, I would have released the prisoners and staged the big event as a satisfying finale to the movie. I mean, obviously they must plan to add a bunch of stuff after that, anyway, to make a third three hour movie. So why not go out on a high note? But the movie doesn’t do that.
In some ways, though, I’m glad the film ends in such an awful, unsatisfying way because the vocal reaction of the audience was a real treat. The last time I heard such a loud, universal, unabashed response from the audience was during Django Unchained. But this was even better because everyone’s reaction was slightly different, and all the sounds came at once, and the noise continued for almost a full minute as the final scene of the movie filled the screen and then finally faded to black. That was pretty fun.
As a parent, I have to say that I wish there were fewer captions, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the film. It’s just that last year, my daughter kept whispering for me to read them to her, and this year, she kept reading them to me. (I’m sure the people sitting near us wanted to kill us, and that was just my family! (Just Kidding.)) You’d think being able to read would keep a child quieter when captions pop up, but little children read out loud, and they always have lots of questions. So I kept hearing, “‘The master is summoning us.’ Oh! Why is the master summoning them?” I guess that does make the movie more interactive and fun, but it’s also a lot harder to keep your kids quiet this way.
Overall:
You’re not going to see a better Hobbit movie this Christmas than The Desolation of Smaug. Whether you’re a fan of Tolkien or Jackson (or you’re just a lucky foot fetishist who can’t wait to get a peek at Martin Freeman’s oversized hairy toes as he tramps up the side of the Lonely Mountain), you should probably buy a ticket for The Desolation of Smaug as soon as you can. If you liked the previous Hobbit film, then you should like this one even better. So hurry up and see it now. That way, you leave yourself time to go there and back again (and again?) before it’s out of theaters!