The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was, for me at least, one or the most anticipated films of last year and how couldn't it be? It's the start of a new trilogy in a series, the previous installment of which was one of the most awarded films of all time. I was thrilled to see it and left the theater slightly less so. Let's discuss.
First the good: the actors were fantastic. Ian McKellen reprises his role as Gandalf perfectly just as everyone expected him to. Richard Armitage really acts through all of the make-up to bring a complicated Thorin to life. He doesn't immediately come off as a good guy, but through his performance (and the expositions of dwarvish history which I particularly enjoyed) it becomes easy to sympathize with the burdened character. When I saw that James Nesbitt was cast as one of the dwarves, I was worried that he would just be a background character, but his Bofur has probably the second most speaking lines of any dwarf next to Thorin and becomes a solid secondary character.
Then, of course there's Martin Freeman as a young Bilbo Baggins. I'm a big fan of his work on BBC's Sherlock and was really looking forward to his performance in the Hobbit. He did not disappoint. I've read some other reviews that claim Freeman's Bilbo is the best protagonist in the series and I'm inclined to agree as the character is genuinely more relatable and likable than his competition, namely Frodo and Aragorn from LOTR. Whereas Frodo just becomes annoying at times and Aragorn is too morally perfect, Bilbo is understandable, easy to sympathize with, and somewhat flawed.
In addition to some fine acting, the film is beautiful and full of the sweeping environments and detailed locales that we've come to expect from the Peter Jackson team. Likewise the soundtrack is tremendous, brilliantly blending the familiar scores of The Lord of the Rings, that along with the visuals make us feel right at home at the Shire and Rivendell, with the new Dwarvish theme based on the melody of the Misty Mountains song.
With all that said, I do have some negative criticisms. The filmmakers do a lot to establish The Hobbit as a work related to the previous trilogy by adding appearances of actors that wouldn't have necessarily appeared had they been doing a stricter book adaptation. They rather effectively start the story on the same day that Fellowship does and then flashing back to the primary action. That's all fine and mostly very well done. The inclusion of Elijah Wood's Frodo makes the film instantly more relatable to fans of the Jackson trilogy, but then the overall feeling becomes very different from that of LOTR mostly in terms of being much less organic. There's a lot of screen time with purely CGI characters delivering several lines of dialogue, whereas in the first trilogy that was really only Gollum's case with the remainder of characters being played by actors wearing make-up or prosthetics. I'm sure it saved time and money or whatever but it definitely makes the film feel inorganic and cartoony.
Also, the movie is way too damn long and not very cohesive. We could logically come to the conclusion that it's based on a third of Tolkien's novel since it's a planned trilogy. The Hobbit is a shorter book than any of the LOTR trilogy but the film is only about 10 minutes shorter than the Fellowship, the next shortest film and book. The length results in (or is due to) some pacing issues. On top of that, the movie doesn't seem to have a cohesive plot of its own. Each of the LOTR films have a sort of sub-plot and solid ending points, making them good standalone films on top of being part of something bigger. It does leave the viewer wanting more (something that should be inherit in a planned trilogy) but not in the best way possible.
So there you go. Let me know what you think about the movie. Tell me how wrong I am!
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