Quick(ish) Note About The Hobbit...
 |
| Obviously not mine :) |
But that's not the point, here. I went in kind of skeptical not of the technology (which, obviously, I'm ready to embrace) but of the story. How do you take a 300ish page children's book and make it THREE movies?
Really?
But...well, Jackson did a great job. First of all, young Bilbo is Watson from BBC's Sherlock - which I didn't pay attention to going in, but that was pretty cool. Freeman is perfect as the reluctant burglar. As far as the movie goes, Jackson adds a lot to the story. I got some of the references, some I didn't (I'm kind of a nerd, yeah, and I like Tolkien and all...but I'm not, you know, like one of those guys who has all this stuff memorized...). But it really worked. It was a little slow at times...but as often as not it was because the BOOK was a little slow at times. "Riddles in the dark" is not exactly fast paced when you read it. Come to think of it, "An Unexpected Party" drags on FOREVER in the book...and isn't exactly a barn burner in the movie, either... The stuff that sets up The Hobbit as a Prequel for The Lord of the Rings movies (the framing at the very beginning, for example) worked fine for me, I kind of smiled. It was a good FILMMAKERS touch**. Was it necessary? No. But it really worked, allowing the story to actually begin with:
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
Or something very close to that... And THAT was perfect...
So it works. The additions aren't really there just to say, "Hey, watch the Lord of the Rings" or, as some have suggested, because TLotR has become a BRAND and the Hobbit has to fit into it. Rather, because Jackson knows his Middle Earth history. And he takes The Hobbit and infuses it with a lot of material that - and purists will disagree, but that's okay*** - he infuses it with a lot of material that explains the Tolkien MYTHOLOGY and the World of Middle Earth.
Unlike a lot of fantasy novels, the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings aren't just two books. They are part of a whole world with history and cosmology and, for crying out loud, languages that Tolkien spent his whole life creating and revising and cross referencing.
Check out this article at The Huffington Post **** that talks in more detail about this (best if you have already seen the movie - or don't mind some spoilers).
So, yeah, the cameo from a powerful figure or two from the Lord of the Rings that might feel like "brand placement" or "tie in" or whatever, well, maybe it's much deeper than that. I really DID get that sense watching this first installment.
I agree with two things that critics have complained about.
First, it's almost three hours that, in effect, just SETS UP, the rest of the story... But that's the nature of part one, isn't it? We get a satisfactory climax, of course, just as we will with movies two and three. But I get it. We don't get THAT far into the story...
Second, there are a lot "chase" scenes. For every "slow" scene, there's at least one "holy cow I can't take it all in it's moving too fast" scene.
And, while I'm at it, a few moments done "for laughs" fell flat for me. But that's to be expected. Humor is subjective.
Here's the bottom line for those who want something "more like the book" only, watch the Rankin Bass TV adaptation from 1977. Actually, it's not too bad. Animated, good voice actors, follows the story closely.
So, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey gets two thumbs up from me - for the storytelling AND the technology. I rarely go to theaters these days - I'd go again to see this - and I'll buy it the day it comes out on Blu-ray*****
*Seriously - there was one shot that I went, "Wow, that was badly done." And it was just plain badly done. Bad CGI birds over (presumably) real mountains. Color/lighting matching was horrible - threw me right out of the moment. That was it. Almost three hours of movie and it was three seconds of film. That's it... YMMV...
**Here's where we have to remember that film and books are different media - and sometimes things work better in one than in another. Words don't always translate from page to screen, and sometimes images work more powerfully than words. Also, this book is 75 years old, or something, and, well, we might THINK a little differently in 2012 than in 1937 or whenever the Hobbit was published...
***'Cause the purists wanted Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings...and they were wrong about that, too :)
****Not my favorite news outlet, generally, but I really liked this guy's perspective...
*****heh- it's 2 hrs 49 min in release - wonder what the Special Edition will be? 4 hrs and 36 min? Anybody taking bets?
Comments