Runtime: 2 hours, 49 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Peter Jackson
Quick Impressions:
When I was in fourth grade, I was completely—completely!—obsessed with The Lord of the Rings, and of course, I mean the written trilogy, not Peter Jackson’s well received films since I started fourth grade way back in the fall of 1988 before we knew that Middle Earth was really New Zealand.
Now I liked The Hobbit, too, of course. My mother read it to me for the first time back when I was in kindergarten. (Side note, this is why I always preferred to be read to. Which bedtime story would you choose—your mom reading The Hobbit or you being forced to read Nate the Great?) Before starting the trilogy the summer before fourth grade, I read The Hobbit again, and then again in my ninth grade English class. And I liked it. But I’ve always preferred The Lord of the Rings, hands down.
Maybe it’s just because The Hobbit has always seemed more childish to me since I first read it when I was so young. I think, really, I simply prefer the high stakes of the epic trilogy with all its dazzling locations, kingdoms on the verge of ruin, and diverse characters. (Plus, the best characters in The Hobbit are Gandalf and Gollum, who also show up in The Lord of the Rings.) For me, the trilogy is better because the story is bigger and you experience it from the points of view of multiple characters who journey off on separate errands. That’s what I really like, the split narrative.
The Hobbit is a sweeter, simpler, shorter story, and I just assumed that everyone considered The Lord of the Rings the greater work. So imagine my surprise tonight when as we left the theater Friday night, my husband told me that he has always preferred The Hobbit. (Part of the reason may be that I read LOTR as a nine-year-old, and he read it after previously consuming countless works of high fantasy that took Tolkien’s trilogy as a jumping off point and attempted to improve on it. The Hobbit hasn’t been copied nearly as often.)
I will grant readily that as hobbits themselves go, Bilbo is a far more lively and engaging character than his poor overburdened, underdeveloped nephew Frodo. And, of course, the book The Hobbit actually focuses on its titular hobbit and follows Bilbo through all his adventures. The quest is prompted by the dwarves’ agenda, but the story is about Bilbo and how he changes as he discovers the greater world outside the Shire. The outcome of the dwarves’ quest matters less to the reader than what happens to Bilbo as he encounters a succession of virtually unrelated dangers and marvels.
Peter Jackson’s movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is both an adaptation of the book and a cinematic prequel to the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Jackson includes Bilbo’s story (which is the entire focus of the book), but shifts the movie’s overall focus away from just Bilbo. He sets up a story with a split narrative told from many different perspectives, more like the storytelling style in The Lord of the Rings than The Hobbit. Bilbo is still there, running around having all of his adventures, but Jackson wants us to see also the larger story taking shape around him (though the plucky little hobbit himself is in no position to notice any of it). In the film, Bilbo still experiences his rollicking adventures from the book, but we also get to see the greater concerns of the guardians of Middle Earth as the dark powers assemble. All Jackson really does is widen the focus, and suddenly we’re seeing key events as they happen instead of hearing about them after the fact (usually from Gandalf) as we do in the book.
In the books, the one momentous event that connects The Hobbit to the trilogy is Bilbo’s accidental discovery of the One Ring, and in the film version, that’s probably the most important link, too. But in Jackson’s film, it’s not the only link. Jackson chooses to treat the dwarves’ quest as a link in its own right, suggesting that Gandalf took up the quest because he believes that the dragon Smaug might be an important ally/tool for Sauron. (In fact, Smaug and the Necromancer are both voiced by Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch.) Perhaps Tolkien addresses that idea somewhere, but I’m pretty sure it’s not in The Hobbit.
The result is a tonally uneven film, but that makes sense to me because Bilbo is experiencing a different type of story than, say, Gandalf. Imagine a disaster movie in which multiple characters experience a plane crash/an earthquake/a shipwreck/a tornado (the slashes mean take-your-pick thing not all-of-the-above). Two of those characters fall in love. They’re experiencing a romance within a disaster movie. (And in fact, if you choose “shipwreck,” they’re pretty much experiencing James Cameron’s Titanic.) This type of complex story (in which many seemingly different threads coexist) can be difficult to pull off on screen, but I think Jackson does a pretty good job. (Certainly, nobody’s ever done a better job, but that’s partially because nobody has ever tried to adapt The Hobbit in this particular way before.)
And guess what? My husband also preferred An Unexpected Journey to any of the Lord of the Rings movies. I wouldn’t go that far, but now that I’ve seen the movie, I am surprised by all the critical hate for The Hobbit that seems to be lurking everywhere. (Okay, I’m not actually all that surprised, but I’ll address the complaints that I haven’t been able to avoid hearing later.)
The Good:
I keep hearing that An Unexpected Journey that only “Tolkien die-hards” will love.
If that’s the case (and it may be), then there are an awful lot of Tolkien die-hards out there. Even though we chose the less impressive 2D screening, our Friday night showing was still packed. And the audience was very vocal and appreciative. Throughout, there was much laughter, gasping, and appreciative murmuring (including eager questions from children and not just mine). Nobody left early. When the credits rolled, a number of people (not just an isolated few) burst into applause. As people left the theater, most of them seemed pleased by the experience.
My mother is one of those “Tolkien die-hards” if anyone is. She prefers the extended cuts of the LOTR movies and used to watch them so often that my declining grandmother confused the war in Iraq with the fight scenes in Middle Earth and thought the conflict was taking place just outside our front door. (I fondly remember her concern for Sam, “the little girl” [aka Frodo], and “that poor thing that ain’t got no clothes on. It makes me cold just to look at that thing. Boo!” And I remember, too, how much she missed “the man in the hat” and wished he would “come back to help that poor little girl and Sam.”)
Anyway my mother loved the movie. In fact, she wished it had been longer and more detailed. (She won’t even watch the theatrical release cuts of the trilogy. It’s extended editions all the way.) And she’s read the books. She’s aware that the movies are not a literal, direct translation from page to screen. I have to think there are many others like her, and that this movie is going to do extremely well.
One of the most pleasurable aspects of the book The Hobbit is the lively character of Bilbo Baggins and his frequent interactions with the wizard, Gandalf. Bilbo and Gandalf spend much more time together than Gandalf and Frodo. They have a warm and complex friendship. Not burdened by the weight of the world’s troubles like Frodo, Bilbo is a relatively innocent character who, once coaxed from his shell, approaches the world with a childlike excitement and spirit of adventure.
Fittingly, one highlight of the movie is Martin Freeman’s performance. He’s wonderful as the young Bilbo. He’s perfect. He plays the humorous scenes particularly well and got lots of laughs from our audience. But he never makes the character ridiculous or silly (which happens in some productions).
In general, An Unexpected Journey captures The Hobbit’s humor and whimsy particularly well. The sequence introducing the party of the dwarves as they unexpectedly turn up and stay to dinner manages to be consistently hilarious and very true to the book without robbing the dwarves of their dignity. In other words, the situation is funny, but the characters themselves are not mere clowns.
Jackson also builds up the gravitas of the dwarves, and draws out more explicitly the contrast between Bilbo with his love of home and the dwarves seeking to reclaim the halls of their ancestors. When I read The Hobbit in the past, I never thought much about the profound connection between Bilbo’s nature and the dwarves’ dilemma, so I actually like the way Jackson brings that out more pointedly.
In other adaptations I’ve seen—like the stage play and the animated version by Bass and Rankin—the dwarves don’t come across particularly well. You get the feeling they’re really only there as an excuse to get Bilbo out the door. But Jackson takes their quest seriously and takes the time to make them distinguishable characters, most of whom get at least a bit of development (particularly Ken Stott as Balin and Aidan Turner as Kili). I actually enjoyed the played up relationship between Bilbo and Thorin (played compellingly by Richard Armitage). And I loved the two versions of the dwarves’ song (which I recited for a poetry contest in fourth grade). I’ve been hearing snippets of the version in the film since the previews. (In fact, it’s been my husband’s ringtone for the past few weeks.) But I really love the version in the end credits, too. And the song about the dishes is also quite well done.
I also think it’s nice that many of the characters from the trilogy get to return for at least a cameo (and was particularly surprised—and intrigued—to see one of them who was not in any of the previews I saw).
Probably the best part of the entire movie is the sequence based on the chapter “Riddles in the Dark,” featuring Andy Serkis as Gollum once again.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Andy Serkis):
The Academy has been given a rare opportunity—which I can virtually guarantee that it will not take advantage of. Andy Serkis did such brilliant work as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings that he really should have at least been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. (And this performance was absolutely not a fluke. He excels at giving spectacular motion capture performances. His performance in Tintin was by far the best part of the movie, and he carried the movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes with his moving performance as Caesar.) The Academy has been given a second chance to reward him with the accolades he deserves. At the very least, they should give him some kind of special award. I’ll be stunned (happy, but stunned), though, if they do it.
Serkis is in only one scene, but he practically steals the entire movie. (It helps, of course, that the scene is such a familiar one, the one everybody’s waiting for.)
Even my three-year-old enjoyed his performance. Up to that point, the highlight of the movie for her had been Radagast’s rabbit sled. But when Gollum came onscreen, she got the idea right away and really perked up and became attentive. (My mother has been reading the chapter “Riddles in the Dark” with her all week, and she liked Gollum so much in the story that she was very excited to see him in the film. Plus, she knows the answers to all the riddles and has been entertaining us by making up (rather strange) riddles of her own.)
Gollum made everyone laugh out loud, and that’s almost entirely because of Serkis’s wonderful timing and brilliant line delivery. It’s very difficult to be amusing, endearing, “so cute” (in my daughter’s words), scary, evil, crazy, tormented, piteous, threatening, and fragile all at once, but Serkis pulls it off in this performance. And for people who think stop-motion performances aren’t real acting—well then why aren’t all stop-motion performances of equal quality?
Serkis deserves recognition. (I now have a vision of him in a tuxedo, chasing after the winner of Best Supporting Actor, and coveting the Golden statuette, “my preciousss.”)
Best Scene/Funniest Scene:
Just about everyone laughed out loud when Gollum proposed what prize he would earn if he won the game of riddles. In terms of having the entire theater alert and engaged, that scene was the best.
My daughter—who had been eagerly awaiting the movie for some time—fell asleep during the previews and woke up just before Radagast the Brown started drawing off the Orcs. The Orcs were frightening enough that she declared immediately, “Well, I’m not going to stay awake to watch this part.” But then she got a look at Radagast and his rabbits and changed her mind completely. She squealed with laughter at the rabbit sled.
And on a more personal level, I found it pretty amusing when my stepson misheard Gandalf pronounce the place name “Dol Guldur” and whispered in confusion, “Did he say he got that from Dumbledore?” (I’m trying to give Jackson some leeway, but I’m pretty sure that Tolkien never mentions Dumbledore.)
Best Action Sequence:
I liked the fight/flight sequence with the Goblins (whose king is deliciously voiced by the over-the-top Barry Humphries, alter ego of Dame Edna). Even the Goblin song was pretty good. I don’t know if Troll sneezing counts as action, but that got my attention, too.
Best Scene Visually:
People seem to be complaining non-stop about the 48fps. I know nothing about the technical side of filming a movie, but I believe this means that we’re seeing more frames per second than usual. Aware of this, I watched the film to see if it made a difference, and (in 2D at least) I really don’t think so. (Is frame rate even a factor in 2D? I don’t really understand, you see.) [Update: As I’ve read more, I don’t think the film is shown in 48 fps in 2D, so I probably saw 24 fps, though I’m still not completely sure.] I did notice that this movie showed greater visual detail and didn’t seem as misty looking as the others. Gandalf in particular seemed very visible—I mean, we saw every wrinkle on his face and quite often the surprisingly smooth surface of his staff. I don’t really think this is a problem for the average filmgoer for whom the draw is the story. It did make Gandalf’s face look a little odd, but then again he should look older and more tired here than when we last saw him since he’s still just gray and hasn’t undergone any transformation yet. (Plus, Ian McKellen is ten years older, so maybe part of it is just his face.)
Anyway, I thought the treasure of the dwarves (and what little we saw of Smaug) looked marvelous. Despite my better judgment, I also loved the giant rock people. My brain keeps telling me I should be against them, but they looked cool.
Three Reasons Why (I think) An Unexpected Journey Got Such (Relatively) Negative Early Reviews:
1) Genre Bias. Some people want nothing to do with a story that involves dwarves and elves. They find wizards and hobbits off-putting. No doubt, the critics who fall into this category are still slightly resentful that The Lord of the Rings movies made high fantasy temporarily mainstream, so that they were forced to watch fantasy and take it seriously. They’re not about to do it again, especially when the fate of the world is not immediately at stake. (Then, of course, there’s the New Zealand Corollary: Some people in the film industry find Peter Jackson off-putting.) These people watch the film hoping it will
fail. They expect it to fall apart and delight in every sign of weakness. And their reviews have a domino effect—once one smells blood, the others take encouragement and redouble their efforts, rushing to join the attack.
2) Faithfulness to the Book. Another audience likely to be disappointed is the set of casual fans of the film trilogy who have no knowledge of the written source material and wrongly assume that The Hobbit is supposed to be a stopping-the-end-of-the-world, highest-imaginable-stakes epic like The Lord of the Rings. I keep hearing The Hobbit compared to The Phantom Menace, and I keep thinking, No, no. The story of young Anakin Skywalker turning to the Dark Side is in many ways a more compelling and promising premise than the plot of the original Star Wars trilogy, but the prequels fail to deliver on that promise. The Hobbit is already a well-known story in its own right, even though it’s a much less ambitious work than The Lord of the Rings. It’s not like Peter Jackson is trying to base an entire series of prequels on some vague ideas Tolkien mentioned in the trilogy. There’s already a story—a story of modest scope—written and widely read. Jackson’s not simply trying (and failing) to replicate the world (and the success) of Lord of the Rings. He’s trying to bring a story that already exists to the screen.
3) Lack of Faithfulness to the Book. Now, of course, Jackson has taken tremendous liberties with the material, so Tolkien purists comprise a third group of film goers likely to be dissatisfied. This group has the most legitimate cause for complaint. Jackson and his screenwriting team really do add a lot to the story. Of course, they changed a lot the last time, and nobody complained too much. (As far as I’m concerned, in LOTR, the good changes (cutting Tom Bombadil) by far outweighed the bad (reimagining Denethor).
Probably there’s more resistance now because instead of mainly cutting things, Jackson is mainly adding things. But much of the “padding” that he adds really does come from either Tolkien’s own writing or logical inferences based on Tolkien’s writing. (For example, I don’t remember ever seeing Radagast the Brown in action in the books, but Gandalf does talk about him.)
Based on what I’ve seen, the allegations of padding simply to increase runtime and make more money seem pretty untrue. As I’ve said, Jackson does not want us to focus only on Bilbo. Because he wants to tell not only the story of The Hobbit but also lay the groundwork for what happens in The Lord of the Rings, he needs more time, more movies. So he uses the “pale orc” stuff to create a story arc for the first film, so that it doesn’t just begin with some people setting off and end with them still walking around vaguely, not having yet arrived anywhere. I also enjoyed getting a visual backstory of Thorin’s “Oakenshield” epithet. Absolute purists can avoid the problem of being offended simply by staying home from the movie and rereading the book.
So all the people complaining that the movie is slow and takes a long time to build momentum probably fall into one of the three categories I just mentioned. If you hate high fantasy and resent having to review it, of course the movie will seem slow. Fans of the movie trilogy who haven’t read the books may think that the somewhat comical dinner party with the dwarves drags on a long time, but that’s exactly what happens in the book. Even Gandalf’s remarks about Bilbo’s relatives are taken from Tolkien’s own narration. So people who don’t get that The Hobbit (the book) isn’t an epic may find these moments needlessly slow. On the other hand, the fans of the book probably find the movie slow because the film doesn’t take the same narrative viewpoint as the book. Instead of presenting us with Bilbo’s limited view of events, the movie gives us all the events that must also have been occurring around him outside of his limited awareness. Jackson adds a lot of action and quite a bit of exposition as well, giving the movie a slower, more deliberate pace than the book.
Complaints that the movie The Hobbit is inconsistent tonally are true. As I’ve said, Peter Jackson isn’t just making a screen adaptation of The Hobbit. He’s also making a cinematic prequel to his film version of LOTR. That’s quite an ambitious project, not without its basically unavoidable pitfalls. Honestly, I think those complaining about the tonal inconsistencies should turn their pointing fingers on Tolkien. He’s the one who wrote two literary works set within the same universe with such wildly different characteristics in the first place. The Hobbit is a very different kind of story than The Lord of the Rings, so attempts to combine them on screen of course produce a film that lacks a consistent tone. That’s because we’re getting Bilbo’s version of his own adventures while at the same time seeing the more epic story surrounding the hobbit. But we can’t afford to lose the comic, adventuresome spirit of Bilbo’s portion of the story because he is, after all, the one who finds the ring and sets all the epic events in motion. He plays a tremendous role in the overall story, so his nature and viewpoint are relevant. (Why does is it this particular creature through whom Middle Earth’s salvation from the powers of darkness is obtained? Bilbo’s version of the story clearly matters.)
The Negatives:
Now, I’m not claiming that the movie is perfectly paced and never drags. On the contrary, I assure you that the movie does drag. Does it spend too much time on the comical dinner party or too much time on action scenes that aren’t taken from the book? People will answer this differently, but I’d say that it spends a bit too much time on both of these things, and taken together, that’s quite a lot of time. When Gollum finally shows up, it’s such a relief because that part of the story is so well known and focused so tightly on the interactions between Bilbo and Gollum.
The most unfocused part of the movie happens when Radagast shows up with his rabbit sled. Since so many things not in the book are happening all at once, it’s disconcertingly hard to guess what will happen next. And Jackson’s decision to make Bilbo’s story just one narrative thread doesn’t work perfectly because we spend far more time with him than with any of the others. As a result, when Bilbo is not there, it’s very disorienting. We don’t feel as comfortable with the other players in the story. (Even Gandalf, though familiar, is quite different here than in LOTR.)
I also found the scene with the eagles confusing in this version. One minute, they’re all trapped in a tree about to fall into a ravine, and then next, they’re running around all over the place doing whatever they want.
Overall:
An Unexpected Journey isn’t perfect, but for me, the film’s strengths practically make up for its weaknesses, and the overall experience was definitely enjoyable. Andy Serkis is once again brilliant as Gollum, Martin Freeman is perfect as Bilbo, and it’s nice to see Ian McKellan’s Gandalf again. I particularly liked the presentation of the songs. I’m going to have to buy the soundtrack.