The Hobbit

So, when sat wondering what to write for my next blog post, I was slightly hesitant to talk about the latest film to grace my eyeballs at the cinema, as it was Peter Jackson’s most recent offering of The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey. This is because I honestly still haven’t formed an opinion on it yet, but I will try my hardest to convey some sort of judgement. There will be some tiny spoilers.

So The Hobbit:The Unexpected Journey serves as a prequel to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, all written by J.R.R. Tolkein and brought to life by director Peter Jackson. This serves as the platform for Bilbo’s story of how he came by the ring, and some of the fantastic events he undergoes with a band of dwarves and Gandalf the Grey.

The Hobbit novel was released intended for children, whereas LOTR was aimed more at the adult audience, and the film definitely mirrors this. Though the sets and filming style is very similar to LOTR (specifically Fellowship of the Ring with all the scenes in the shire) the scale, bad guys and general script are tailored to a much younger audience. Gone is the epic battle over the fate of Middle Earth, instead we join the Dwarves as they fight the dragon Smaug to reclaim their home in the mountains and the treasure they had hoarded away. They must enlist Bilbo’s help as the ‘thief’ – someone a lot lighter and smaller than themselves to sneak into the mountain and grant them access without alerting the dragon.

A similar change has been undergone by the bad guys, as there is no all powerful Lord Sauron to evade for three films, but instead a mixture of three or four adversaries to defeat. One of these comes in the form of the ‘Pale Orc’, a long time enemy of dwarven leader Thoren Oakshield who took his arm in battle many years ago. This character is only mentioned briefly by Tolkein in the book, and only in passing as something Oakenshield defeated, but Jackson has brought him to life in order to have some sort of good vs. evil within the first film. It works, sort of, but if you’re a fan of the books then this seems a little unnecessary. My main annoyance when it comes to the bad guys however must be the Goblin King. Apart from being pretty grotesque, he comes out with silly one liners that could be funny in a sitcom but have little place in a film such as this. Yes, it’s meant to be for children, but you can still have the seriousness offset by the dwarves themselves rather than having this character as a ridiculous one. The goblins as a whole were poorly executed in my opinion, a part of the film that could have potentially been quite dark and scary – the only time the dwarves are truly in danger – is filled with poor CGI and a fat stupid King voiced by Barry Humphries (or Dame Edna Everage as he is better known). It is a real shame because this scene is spliced into some of the best scenes of the whole film, those between Bilbo and Gollum, but ends up taking away from both rather than adding anything.

My other gripe, small but persistent, is that you can’t actually differentiate between all of the dwarves. There are twelve of them in total, but I would struggle to identify more than about four of them, unlike the Fellowship which I can name straight off the bat. Thoren Oakenshield is pretty obvious (Richard Armitage, be still my beating heart) and Bofur is easy to keep track of simply due to James Nesbitt’s lilting Irish accent, but the others tend to mesh into one. Fili and Kili I can identify but have no idea who the actors are (I think one is out of Being Human), and Bombur is the really fat one. That is about it, the rest are simply a mass of beard and stout dwarf. It’s a pity really, because I believe the lesser known actors will simply fade, unlike the Fellowship actors who are now all very well known. The beards though, the beards are amazing. 

Don’t get me wrong, it is a good film and I would highly recommend going to see it, but it you’re expecting Lord of the Rings Part 4 then you’re going to be disappointed. Children will especially enjoy it, though at nearly three hours runtime they may not be able to sit still through it. And this is probably the aspect that has caused the most contention – Jackson has decided to not only have the film running at around three hours (similar to the LOTR films) but also split the actually quite slim Hobbit novel into three films. This is so that he can explore the appendixes of The Lord of the Rings as well as taking some liberties with the Hobbit storyline itself. Just one example is the presence of Radagast the Brown – a character who only gets a passing mention in the book but has a full storyline in the movie. Jackson’s reasonings for this are unclear, but most assume he’s just milking the franchise for all it’s worth, and I’m tempted to agree. Two films would have been enough, but instead it’s now going to be another two films and around ten years before the Hobbit is finally put to rest.

Last but by no means least is the music. Composed by Howard Shaw, the music is just a good as LOTR with the Dwarf Song standing out as a particular favourite. That scene in particular is another example of the potential of the film, ruined by the unnecessary comedic characters – Thorin Oakshield is quite a dark character, full of pride and bitterness and hate for the elves, but this is coupled with utter whimsy from his supposed adversaries.

You can understand why I’m struggling so much to decide if I like this film. In some respects it’s fantastic, and Jackson was never going to let us down really, but the child-friendly approach has me curling my lip slightly. Of course, as I said previously, The Hobbit was written as a children’s book so I can’t even complain about that with any sort of strength. I think, when all is said and done, I need to see it again to come to a decision.