The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Director: Peter Jackson 
Written By: Peter Jackson, Guillermo Del Toro, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens
Photography: Andrew Lesnie
Starring: Martian Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage. 
Year: 2012
Country: USA, New Zealand.  


I was going to be a lot kinder to the Hobbit in this review, but last night I had the pleasure of revisiting Guillermo Del Toro's stunning film, Pan's Labyrinth, and was reminded just what The Hobbit could have been. If you're unfamiliar with the production history of The Hobbit, here' a brief summery: Originally, Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro was set to direct the (then two) Hobbit movies. But after countless delays on a set filming date, Del Toro has no choice but to drop out as director, although staying on as a screenwriter. Ultimately, Peter Jackson was re-crowned as director and scraped all of Del Toro's concept art. 

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, of course, is based on the J.R.R. Tolkien's children's novel and precursor to The Lord of the Rings. Or it's at least on the first third of it, as this 378 pages novel (with pictures) is being turned into three separate 160 minute films. 

As someone who has read and loves The Hobbit, it's enraging to see how desperately Jackson and his team have tried to flesh out the story, by porting over tales and characters from Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion like Radagast the Brown. Or from their imagination created new tedious scenes with Galadriel, although it's nice to have a female presence, if only brief, now in a male dominated story. We'll probably even see Tom Bombadil in the next film. Oh joy! 

It's hard to tell if Peter Jackson actually knows what he's doing, he's made some pretty impressive films like the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and by-all accounts Heavenly Creatures, but he's also been behind the uninspired King Kong remake and The Lovely Bones which is one of the worst directed films I've ever seen.  The direction in The Hobbit is... pretty poor, but not so much that it's unwatchable. 

Speaking of unwatchable, let's move onto the editing. Not only is the film ridiculously long, with many scenes that could and should have been cut out, the actual editing of the film is clunky and occasionally leads to problems with continuity.

The writing is also a pitfall, the book is written mostly in rhyme, is quite comical and is basically written for children. The film takes lines from the novel but doesn't draw inspiration from it for the rest of the dialogue. So what you're left with is a film jumping between two very different languages.     

Martian Freeman is the saving grace of the film, he's brilliant and Bilbo is a much more engaging character than Frodo ever was. Andy Serkis is great reprising his role as Gollum and Ian McKellen is probably the only person who could play Gandalf. The band of Dwarfs are nearly all annoying and other than Thorin, all underdeveloped.

The Hobbit doesn't have the sense of awe that The Lord of the Rings trilogy did mostly thanks to an over use of CGI. The Lord of the Rings films took full advantage of the gorgeous New Zealand landscapes which The Hobbit doesn't. Also the fact that all the Orcs and Goblins are done with CGI is a huge disappointment.  

The problem with Peter Jackson is the same of that of James Cameron, he seems to be primarily concerned with getting himself into the history books. Both men seem to think if they are the one to push 3D or to push higher frame rates, they'll be remembered along Sergei Eisenstein and Edwin S. Porter.   

This review has probably made the The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey sound much worse than it is, it's not terrible, it's okay, if you enjoy the Middle Earth universe you might even enjoy it.  If this review seems rather lack luster I apologize and my only excuse is that this isn't a review of a film, it's a review of a third of a film.