The Hobbit: An Unexpected journey: Just Your Average Epic
by Andrew E. Lindsay
I
liked this movie, but I didn’t love it. I wanted to, but there
was just too
much
to love. I remember the first time I read Tolkien’s classic
children’s novel, The
Hobbit,
and what a fun and quick read it was. When I subsequently read his
follow-up work, The
Lord of the Rings,
I was immediately struck by the differences, almost to the point of
wondering if it was the same author. As light and fast-paced as The
Hobbit
was, The
Lord of the Rings
was heavy and laborious. It was an amazing story, but you really had
to work for it.
At
some point in reading LOTR,
it dawned on me that part of Tolkien’s genius was his ability
to write The
Hobbit
basically from Bilbo Baggins’ perspective, a diary or journal
of a simple hobbit who had an extraordinary adventure and wrote it
down for his family. The
Lord of the Rings,
on the other hand, was a much more academic, detailed, omniscient
third-person account of the history of Middle-Earth. They weren’t
supposed
to sound or feel the same; one existed inside the other.
When
Peter Jackson’s trilogy of The
Lord of the Rings
was released, I was mesmerized by stunning cinematic presentation,
and eagerly anticipated each installment. And although the theatrical
runtimes totaled about nine hours, when it was released on DVD in the
extended director’s cut, nine had become 12, but that was just
fine with me. In fact, if Jackson had decided to release another six
or seven hours, I would have been thrilled. After all, there was so
much ground to cover in The
Lord of the Rings
that you couldn’t possibly shove all of it into a mere nine or
12 hours.
But
The Lord of the Rings is not without its flaws. There are some
goofy additions that I could’ve done without, and there are
some glaring omissions that I still don’t understand. Much of
the heart and soul of Tolkien’s story was the recounting of
Aragorn as a healer, and, toward the end of the story, the Scouring
of the Shire. But those are complaints for a different day and a
different review.
What
is relevant is understanding that while The Lord of the Rings
needed to be broken up into at least three parts and spread out and
fleshed out to cover literally volumes of material, The Hobbit
did not. By comparison to its sequel, it’s practically a
pamphlet. But not in the hands of Jackson. For some reason, Peter
Jackson believed he had to top the grandeur and scale of The Lord
of the Rings, administering cinematic steroids to our intrepid
little story until it was almost grotesquely unrecognizable.
Characters
and subplots were added all over the place to considerably lengthen
the story. And given the amount of money The Lord of the Rings
trilogy raked in, well, it’s not hard to understand why more
movies is better for your bottom line. But not necessarily for your
story. Besides the fact that The Hobbit feels long (and that’s
just the first installment), we’ve also completely lost the
playful, narrative perspective that made The Hobbit stand
apart from The Lord of the Rings. Now it just feels like some
deleted scenes from The Lord of the Rings, really.
And
it’s not the actors’ fault. Ian McKellen is still
wonderfully wizard-like as Gandalf the Grey. Martin Freeman as the
young Bilbo turns in an amusing and likable performance, and a quorum
of dwarves is made up largely of actors I’m not familiar with,
but who are appropriately dwarfish in appearance and mannerisms
consistent with the previous films.
The
basic plot has Bilbo Baggins unwittingly joining Gandalf and a band
of dwarves on a quest to reclaim their lost kingdom of Erebor from a
nasty dragon named Smaug. Between Bag End in the Shire and the
mountain kingdom, Bilbo and company encounter all sorts of creatures
and characters, including Gollum (portrayed again by the amazing Andy
Serkis), from whom Bilbo accidentally acquires The
Ring
(as in, One Ring To Rule Them All), as explained in great detail in
The
Lord of the Rings.
One
of the many un-necessities was trying to introduce a bunch of
characters from the LOTR trilogy who weren’t originally in The
Hobbit.
Nor did they need to be. But Peter Jackson apparently lacked faith in
Tolkien’s storytelling skills or the audiences’ cognitive
capabilities, so he felt like some character foreshadowing was
imperative. It wasn’t. We didn’t need to meet people who
would show up later in The
Lord of the Rings;
this isn’t their story, it belongs to Bilbo Baggins.
You
might be thinking long about now that I hated this movie. I didn’t.
I liked about half of it. Which half? Whichever half moved along and
didn’t dawdle. Dwelling on superfluous scenes and dumb
sub-plots clogged the flow of the movie up to the point where I felt
compelled to check my watch, more than once. Yet my admiration for
Tolkien’s work and the folk who inhabit his world made me want
to watch, hoping it might improve. And I guess it still might, in the
six or seven hours that remain in the final two installments.
I
wish that Jackson had made one movie, three or four hours long, that
crammed the whole Hobbit into one big, fat, sloppy cinematic
sandwich. Instead, I feel a little like that old Wendy’s
commercial with Clara Peller demanding, “Where’s the
beef?” Maybe for the next sequel I’ll bring my copy of
The
Hobbit
along to read during the slow parts, and I bet I might even finish
reading it before the movie ever gets around to the end.
Andy Lindsay can frequently be overheard engaged in conversations that consist entirely of repeating lines of dialogue from movies, a genetic disorder he has passed on to his four children and one which his wife tolerates but rarely understands. When Andy's not watching a movie he's probably talking about a movie or thinking about a movie.
Or, because his family likes to eat on a somewhat regular basis, he just might be working on producing a TV commercial or a documentary or a corporate video or a short film. His production company is Barking Shark Creative, and you can check out his work here www.barkingshark.com.
Andy grew up in Frederick, Maryland, but migrated south to North Carolina where he met his wife, Deborah, who wasn't his wife then but later agreed to take the job. Their children were all born and raised in Greensboro, but are in various stages of growing up and running away.
Andy (or Anziano Lindsay, as he was known then) served a full-time mission for the Church in Italy, and today he teaches Sunday School, works with the Scouts, and is the Stake Video Historian.