'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey' review: Was this (cinematic) trip necessary?
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| (C) 2012 New Line Cinema/Warner Bros. Pictures |
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
Directed by Peter Jackson
Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, and Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee
Gandalf: Well, why does it matter? He's back!
Thorin Oakenshield: It matters. I want to know - why did you come back?
Bilbo Baggins: Look, I know you doubt me, I know you always have. And you're right... I often think of Bag End. I miss my books, and my armchair, and my garden. See, that's where I belong, that's home. That's why I came back... 'cause you don't have one, a home. It was taken from you. But I will help you take it back if I can.
Considering the success of director Peter Jackson’s epic fantasy film series The Lord of the Rings ($2.92 billion worldwide box office gross, plus 17 Academy Awards won out of 30 nominations), it’s not surprising that New Line Cinema and Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) decided to return to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth with a live action film based on his 1937 novel The Hobbit.
Initially intended to be a two-film series directed by Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy), The Hobbit was expanded into a trilogy with the addition of material derived from Tolkien’s appendices for The Lord of the Rings. And although del Toro worked for two years on the film during its pre-production stage, financial issues at MGM delayed the project. Del Toro left in 2010 and Jackson, who also served as a producer, returned to direct the prequel trilogy.
Gandalf: The world is not in your books and maps. It's out there.
Bilbo Baggins: I can't just go running off into the blue! I am a Baggins of Bag End!
Gandalf: You are also a Took. Did you know that your Great-Great-Great-Great Uncle Bullroarer Took was so large he could ride a real horse?
Bilbo Baggins: Yes.
Gandalf: Well, he could! In the Battle of Greenfields, he charged the Goblin ranks. He swung his club so hard it knocked the Goblin King's head cleaned off and it sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit hole. And thus the battle was won and the game of golf invented at the same time.
Bilbo Baggins: I do believe you made that up.
Gandalf: Well, all good stories deserve embellishment. You'll have a tale or two to tell of your own when you come back.
Bilbo Baggins: ...Can you promise that I will come back?
Gandalf: No. And if you do... you will not be the same.
Set 60 years before The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), An Unexpected Journey follows the adventures of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), a quiet and unassuming hobbit recruited by the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) to join a perilous quest to the Lonely Mountain. Bilbo’s mission: to be the 14th member of a band of Dwarves led by Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), the long-exiled son of the last Dwarf King. Their goal: to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and its vast treasure from Smaug the Dragon.
But as Bilbo’s nephew Frodo (Elijah Wood) found out in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, quests such as this never take a direct path. Along the way, the 14 adventurers will encounter Orcs and goblins, wargs, trolls, and majestic but aloof Elves. And, of course, somewhere on this unexpected journey, Bilbo will cross paths with an odd but dangerous creature named Gollum and its most precious treasure, a magic ring.
My Take
This, in a nutshell, is the basic plot of Tolkien’s original novel, which was more of a children’s book than its darker, denser sequels. The Hobbit’s 1937 incarnation is a slight volume that, if adapted directly, could have been made into a single movie.
Tolkien purists (and, perhaps, many film critics) probably wish that Jackson and his writing partners had gone that route rather than expanding The Hobbit into a nine-hour trilogy.
At first glance, the morphing of The Hobbit into a trilogy seems to be a simple money grab by New Line Cinema, MGM, and Peter Jackson. There’s gold in them thar Tolkien movies, after all, and studios love franchises because they’re usually safe and profitable investments.
Now, I’m sure that success at the box office was a factor in the filmmakers’ decision to expand The Hobbit by referring to Tolkien’s appendices and creating new characters and situations. And yet, had Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Guillermo del Toro stuck to Tolkien’s lighter, more child-friendly story, the contrast between the prequel and Jackson’s epic Rings cycle would have been jarring, to say the least.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and its two sequels, The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies therefore have more battles and action sequences than Tolkien conceived in the 1930s. This does not jive with the original novel, of course, but it matches the tone of Tolkien’s later Middle Earth works, including The Silmarillion and his Lost Tales series.
There is also a great deal of exposition in An Unexpected Journey, including a prologue that introduces Smaug in a way that mirrors The Fellowship of the Rings’ introduction to the evil Sauron.
The first act of An Unexpected Journey is almost glacially slow and nearly douses the viewer’s enthusiasm for the entire Hobbit enterprise. Set almost exclusively in Bilbo’s comfortable Bag End home, it’s a talky, song-filled stretch where characters are introduced and grand, dangerous schemes are discusses.
However, once Gandalf, Thorin, and the others hit the road for their rendezvous with destiny at the Lonely Mountain, An Unexpected Journey gains its narrative momentum - and the viewer’s attention.
Though The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey tends to focus more on the 12 Dwarves led by the bitter and obsessed Thorin Oakenshield, director Jackson’s movie finds its emotional core when it focuses on Bilbo. Martin Freeman looks like a younger version of actor Ian Holm, who returns to reprise his Lord of the Rings role of the 111-year-old hobbit.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’s cast includes new-to-Middle Earth actors Ken Stott (Balin), Graham McTavish (Dwalin) Lee Pace (Thranduil), Benedict Cumberbatch (the voices of Smaug and The Necromancer). They are joined by several Lord of the Rings veterans, including Ian McKellen (Gandalf), Elijah Wood (Frodo), Ian Holm (Old Bilbo), Andy Serkis (Gollum), Christopher Lee (Saruman the White), and Hugo Weaving (Elrond) Jackson gets solid performances from his large company, thus making The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey worth watching.
Though I found An Unexpected Journey to be more enjoyable than I expected, it is not without its issues.
First, as necessary as some of the changes to Tolkien’s story seem to be, I still think that making The Hobbit into a nine-hour-long trilogy is, at best, a bit excessive. I don’t mind the addition of darker, scarier elements to match the prequels to the Rings saga, but surely the tale can be told in six hours and with fewer plot twists.
Second, Peter Jackson decided to film and project The Hobbit trilogy at a frame rate of 48 frames per second (fps). The movie industry standard is 24 fps, and most theaters which screened The Hobbit projected the movies at the normal frame rate after a New Line and MGM conversion.
On home video, though, the higher frame rate makes everything look too sharply defined and lets viewers see some of the film’s artificial elements, including makeup prosthetics and painted backgrounds.
This hyper-reality may not be obvious on standard definition DVDs, but it is detectable on HD Blu-ray and 3D Blu-ray editions of An Unexpected Journey and its sequels.
Bilbo Baggins: I have... I have never used a sword in my life.
Gandalf: And I hope you never have to. But if you do, remember this: true courage is about knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one.
If you are not a die-hard fan of long movies, J.R.R. Tolkien’s books or of Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, chances you may want to skip this Journey Its 169-minute running time is a challenge even for lovers of epic fantasies, and the divergence from Tolkien’s novel will turn off many purists.
However, despite its many flaws, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey manages to tell its story of an ordinary individual (Bilbo) who accomplishes extraordinary things in spite of his fears and self-doubt. This is a universal theme in most myths from the Labors of Hercules to the Star Wars saga, and it is the core of Tolkien’s (and Jackson’s) Middle Earth legendarium.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2013 BD/DVD/Digital Copy Edition)Blu-ray Technical Specifications
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