The Hobbit (2012)

I really wanted to like the movie. Like a million other people I’m a big fan of Peter Jackson’s movie trilogy Lord of the Rings, but the news over the last two years that the prequel, The Hobbit, first was going to be not one but two movies and then later even three movies worried a lot of people. Looks like they were right. The Hobbit is not a bad movie, but it is not in the same league with any of the Lord of the Rings movies.

   

The premise of the movie is quickly told. The wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) convinces the initially reluctant hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) to join a band of 13 dwarves. Gandalf and the dwarves are planning to reclaim the dwarves’ home Erebor. 170 years before, the dragon Smaug, attracted by the gold treasure accumulated by the dwarven king Thror, destroyed Erebor and drove the surviving dwarves out into the wild. To the confusion of the dwarves Gandalf does not explain why he insists on Bilbo being part of this adventure.

I have three major problems with The Hobbit. First there is a problem with the tone, then there are continuity problems, and last the pacing just isn’t right.

The Hobbit is a children’s book. Unlike the more developed and groundbreaking Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit is an easy, straight-forward read with likeable characters on a simple big adventure. The tone is light-hearted, even silly at times. Most of the movie audience for The Hobbit is probably very familiar with the portentous, dramatic, a bit theatric world created in the Lord of the Rings movies. Now Peter Jackson must have asked himself countless of times how to combine the two vastly different worlds. I’m not convinced he found the most ideal way to achieve that. The Hobbit is full of little silly details and child-friendly slapstick. A wizard is riding a sled pulled by rabbits, stone giants are engaging in fisticuffs, even booger jokes are making an appearance. This is in stark contrast to the creepy creatures running through the world, quite a bit of violence (Mutilations, eviscerations, severed heads), and the dark signs of things to come.

Future events hinted at are also part of the second problem I have with the movie. Peter Jackson fell in love with his own creation and retconned the movie to within an inch of The Hobbit’s life. Was that scene with Gandalf, Saruman, Elrond and Galadriel really necessary? And if the answer is ‘yes’, was the incessant winking at the audience necessary? We get it, whatever you are showing us now is going to happen in Lord of the Rings. Awesome. Great, Elijah Wood in his role as Frodo Baggins is allowed to show up for two seconds. The one ring is so important, who would have thought?

The main problem of the movie is pacing though. Other reviews complained about the initial scenes in the Shire where we are introduced to Gandalf, Bilbo and the dwarves. And there are a lot of dwarves. The first third of the movie is basically spent in Bilbo’s “hole in the ground”. I found the beginning to be slightly too long, but also rich in charm. There is more “action” in the rest of the movie, but the action consists mostly of dwarves running around, running away from things, running towards things. The main offender is the goblin dwelling. On multiple levels in a gigantic cave small groups of dwarves are fighting through hundreds of goblins. It’s like a video game. I fully expected to see points for successful combos popping up. These scenes depicting dwarves working on their cardio are occasionally interrupted by a foreboding ‘something stirs in the east’ speech by one of the characters originally more important in Lord of the Rings.

The Hobbit definitely has its moments, but preventable issues mar the experience and the end result is beautiful and dull in equal parts.