The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

 I feel a desperate urge to sing the praises of this film to the hills and back, so I’m going to try and take a restrained view and hit on a your mileage may vary moment. This is an action film. The characters set off on  their quest and in that they bounce from battle to battle, from giant stone monsters, to rabbit chariots (yes, really), to more battles and action. This film a series of action scenes loosely linked together. And I loved it, so there.

It is beautiful – it uses it’s brilliant picture and 3D-ness to great effect both during the action scenes but also showcasing the amazing scenery and detailed sets they use. It’s visually stunning and rich and glorious. It’s also restrained – I think we’re finally past the whole “WE HAVE 3D! LOOKIT COMING AT YOUR FACE AUDIENCE MUAHAHAHAHA!” phase and are finally incorporating 3D into films without feeling the need to ram an orc into your eyes every 5 seconds. It was used to enhance the movie rather than having the movie be a tool to show off the pretty technology.

The pacing is fast and exciting – but what do you expect for a series of closely linked action sequences? But I also think a lot of flesh has been added to the bare bones the book provided.

There was a lot about this film that fixed so many of the problems I had with the Hobbit. Part of that is the format – it’s much quicker to show beautiful, fantastic scenario, to show events, to show feelings than it is to describe them in extreme detail. And with songs. Just changing to a film greatly speeded up the slow pace of the book.

Similarly, while the dwarfs weren’t much more developed than in the book – merely being there, present during the scenes than being a name that is randomly brought up gives them much more presence than just the name they were in the book. They were all part of the fights, all part of the journey, all part of the story. Yes, there was still a lot of “oh shit Gandalf save us!” quite a lot, but at least they seemed to be there trying while Gandalf saved the day rather than flailing around incompetently and letting the wizard get on with it.

The film also did a great job of making Thorin a hero, a leader, a king people would want. In the book, again, he was something of a name and little else. Thorin in the film is epic, truly, awesome and a force to be reckoned with. Ok a lot of it takes part in the past – but he is still amazingly cool. And surprises everyone that you can have a hairy dwarf be the sexy male lead.

There were a few elements added to the film that were missing from the book and, I dare say, Tolkein purists are chuntering away. But I think they all added something important. The council with Galadriel, Elrond, Gandalf and Saruman helped tie in the film more with the Lord of the Rings and tie events together. There was a greater sense of events being lifted to a higher level than in the book. Gandalf is meddling not because he wants several random dwarfs to be rich, but because he fears the Necromancer (Sauron) coming back. This, along with Radagast the Brown’s inclusion (and his awesome rabbit chariot. Yes it was a rabbit chariot, yes it should have been ridiculous, yes, it was shockingly awesome) changes the Hobbit from a tale of several dwarfs out to fill their pockets who happen to trip over the One Ring on the way to being a story about the opening gambits in the war against Sauron: denying Sauron the help and power of Smaug. In the overall mythos it makes the film and the events of it far more significant and I hope it continues.

Review: The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien

 Bilbo Baggins is a Hobbit and he enjoys his quiet, respectable life in his quiet home in the Shire. Eating, seeing friends and generally living in peace.

Until Gandalf arrives at his door, followed quickly by 14 dwarfs who drag him into that least wanted of things – an adventure.

He finds himself walking half way across Middle Earth, not eating nearly as often as he would wish and facing far more peril than he’d like, to finally reach the lonely mountain, its treasure – and its dragon.

One of the eternal problems with reviewing is trying to be objective while at the same time recognising that reviewing is always based on our subjective opinions.

In light of that, I have to be fair. So, if you like long winded, extremely slow, ridiculously overwritten stories with far too many characters who have no development and are little more than a name, interspaced with grossly excessive exposition and the occasionally pointless song all told in the voice of a rambly old story teller who seems both forgetful and in terrible need of concise editing – you will like this book. Nay, you will love this book.

However, if you are like me and dislike info-dumping, prefer a tighter story, prefer a story to actually have some pace to it and not to have random pointless encounters to pad the pages and to have every character actually have a relevant role to play in the story then this book will slowly sap your will to live.

Bilbo leaves his home with 14 companions – Gandalf and Thorin and Fili and Kili and Sleepy and Dopey and Grumpy and Bombur (he’s the fat one. We know that because it is mentioned over and over again. Honestly, poor Bombur needs some better friends who won’t constantly mock his weight every single time his name is mentioned). Gandalf, Thorin, Bilbo are relevant, everyone else is an extra. And they didn’t have the good manners to be killed off as excess cast so the protagonist can be all sad about them – they hang around right until the end!

The story also bemuses me. The plan of the dwarfs is to get their ancestral treasure back. Do they know how to get there? Barely. Do they know what’s between them and the treasure? No. Do They have any idea how to overcome any obstacles along the way? No. Do they have any idea how to get the treasure past the dragon? No. Do they have any idea how to get the treasure home? No. They just set off on a wonder and hope that everything will sort itself out.

And it does! Partly through Gandalf Ex Machinae (seriously half of their problems are solved by throwing a wizard at them) and mostly through sheer chance and luck in random encounters. They run into some trolls, are saved by Gandalf and, stroke of luck, they happened to be carrying 3 of the most potent anti-goblin weapons of all time! What luck! Bilbo gets look in the middle of a goblin stronghold under a mountain and happens to find the One Ring! I was waiting for Bombur to look up from his supper and say “by my beard, this fish had swallowed the Portable Nuclear Device of Dragon Slaying! What amazing luck!” Luck gets them out of so many situations. They escape the wargs because, luckily, the eagles see them. They escape the spiders because, luckily, Bilbo has the One Ring. They have no plan to kill the dragon, but luckily their plotting is overheard by a bird who tells an archer a town over that is, luckily, attacked. These characters never actually achieve anything! They manage to bungle through the entire story in a series of natural 20s. Even achievements they seem to have – like Bilbo foiling the spiders or rescuing them from the elves is entirely dependent on his luck at finding the One Ring. And everyone’s dancing around him “my Bilbo you’re an amazing burglar!” he’s freaking invisible! How can he possibly fail? The only reason he looks incompetent is because next to Gloin and Oin and Fili and Doc and Sneezy the ponies they’re riding would look like geniuses!