The Hobbit opens
with a lengthy history of the Lonely Mountain, the rise of its power, the greed
of its king, and finally its fall to Smaug the Dragon. Added to this you have the fact that the
elves declined to aid the Dwarves in the fight against the mighty dragon, thus
explaining Thorin Oakenshield’s animus toward elves.
With that prologue,
the story picks up with Bilbo working on his memoir of his great adventure on
the very day that Gandalf is expected for his birthday party (see the beginning
of Fellowship of the Ring). It was fun –
though unnecessary – to see Frodo (Elijah Woods) as he leaves Bag End to
intercept Gandalf. More importantly,
this gave an opportunity for Bilbo (Ian Holm) to provide a bridge to his younger
self (Martin Freeman).
Finally, our story
begins. Gandalf and the dwarves arrive
at Bilbo’s home and enlist him into the cause of reclaiming the Lonely Mountain
from Smaug. Bilbo refuses but then chases
after them to join. The plot generally
follows the book though it is massively augmented with other events in Middle
Earth. This is useful in a big picture
sense but detracts from the story, especially since this is supposed to be
Bilbo’s memoir. Furthermore, many events
are turned into huge battles. The flight
from the goblin caves is turned into a running fight where all of the dwarves survive
essentially unscathed. No sooner are
they out of the caves than some orcs on wargs show up and the dwarves are
helpless and must climb trees. Really?
The band is safely
carried away from the orc threat by giant eagles and deposited on a picturesque
peak where they can see the Lonely Mountain in the distance. The dwarves talk among themselves that
perhaps Smaug is dead, as he hasn’t ventured out in many decades. The movie ends with the great piles of gold
suddenly disturbed to reveal the head of a dragon; Smaug yet lives.
Though generally
enjoyable, this isn’t The Hobbit. This
is a prequel to Lord of the Rings, bringing in characters who have no business
in the story and outlining events that are referenced in other works. Radagast the Brown Wizard never appears in
The Hobbit but he has a sizable role here.
Saruman (Christopher Lee) scolds Gandalf and Galadriel (Cate Blanchet)
gives him tentative support. In the
book, Gandalf often vanished from the party without much explanation but the
movie version isn’t going to leave that a mystery. It is no wonder that Peter Jackson is
stretching this into a three movie epic.
The Hobbit was a modest book, smaller than any of the three books of
Lord of the Rings and yet we are promised as much film time as the trilogy. Of course, the trilogy left out some things;
that certainly won’t happen with The Hobbit.
One of the benefits
of being so long is that all those dwarves get a bit of personality. Thorin was noteworthy in the book for being
the dispossessed King of the Lonely Mountain and Bombur was a plump fellow who
cooked but the rest were just a collection of names. Now Balin is an old veteran who is an adviser
to Thorin. Dwalin is a monster fighter
with a bad attitude, Bofur is an amiable dwarf and friend to Bilbo, Kili is a
master archer, Ori is the youngster of the bunch, and so forth. I expect some of the ones I haven’t mentioned
will get their due in the next two movies.
Each dwarf is very distinctive in appearance so that it is hard to
confuse them. I wonder if these
personalities are taken from the writings of Tolkien or are they from the
imaginings of Peter Jackson.
Despite its flaws,
it is a fun movie; too much movie but still enjoyable.
Though I wrote this review in November 2013 - nearly a year after the movie was released, I have not seen the two other movies in the trilogy. The first trilogy saw me in the theater during opening week but this one didn't even get me to go for that first one. I saw it on HBO or pay per view. Just not all that eager to see the over-inflated Jackson version of The Hobbit.
No comments:
Post a Comment