Thursday, February 14, 2013

Day 84: 22 Short Films About Middle Earth

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (2012)
Directed by Peter Jackson
Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Sylvester McCoy
Featuring appearances by: Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett, Andy Serkis, Elijah Wood, Ian Holm

Normally, the title of my reviews are taken from a line of dialogue in the film.  But as I sat through The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, this joke, dumb though it may be, kept popping into my head.  Why?  Because the first hour or so of this marathon film is mostly backstory and exposition.  One hour into a film called The Hobbit, and Bilbo Baggins (Freeman) has about 10 minutes of screen time.  As if he's a bit player in his own movie.

And this brings me to my chief complaint about this film: it's long.  Really long.  I've sat through three-hour films before, and they're a crap-shoot.  Either that three hours flies by because you're so entranced by what you're seeing, or your looking at your watch, wondering when the whole thing is going to be over.  I was in the latter camp for this movie, though I didn't think I would be.  After all, Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy is probably my favorite movie trilogy ever (yes, I even like it more than the original Star Wars trilogy).  But the epic length was necessary for The Lord of the Rings in order to fit in as much from the book as possible.  As a book, The Hobbit is a quarter of the length.  How, then, will Peter Jackson expand it into three epic films?

By adding as much of Tolkien's Middle Earth mythos as possible.

J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle earth was not just contained in two books.  He wrote volumes about the history and mythology of his make-believe world of elves, dwarves, men and hobbits.  And Jackson draws from these other works as well, padding out a film that would have been perfectly entertaining at two hours, and instead ballooning it to three.  Not all of the padding was done this way, but a majority of it was.  As a result, when the film goes off on these tangents, it becomes unfocused, and left me looking at my watch.

But the preceding lengthy rant should not give you the idea that I hated this movie.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  I liked it quite a bit.  When the film focuses on Bilbo and the band of dwarves, going off to reclaim their homeland, it's a funny, action-packed, entertaining piece of work.  Almost like the best action films.  Martin Freeman is wonderful as the young Bilbo Baggins, claiming the role as his own, and not trying to feed off Ian Holms' previous portrayal.  Ian McKellen reprises his role as Gandalf the Grey, and picks up right where he left off from The Lord of the Rings.  Richard Armatage plays the dwarf king Thorin Oakenshield, and does a fine job in the role, taking the part of the dwarves from merely comedy relief to actual, respected warriors.  Probably for that reason, they decided not to give him the stereotypical bulbous nose and red cheeks some of the other dwarves had.

But the real star here is the country of New Zealand.  Once again, Peter Jackson films his native land with a lush vibrancy usually reserved for nature documentaries.  In fact, everything in this film looked amazing.  Much has been made of the fact that Jackson shot the film at 48 frames per second (twice as fast as the standard 24 fps).  The reasoning behind this was that it would reduce motion blur and make for a much crisper image, which is exactly what I saw.  I understand, however, that this new technique didn't translate well to 3-D.  But I didn't see it in 3-D (which I try to avoid whenever possible).  My only concern was that it was going to look like the world's most expensive soap opera.  But as it turns out, I had nothing to worry about.

If you are a die-hard Tolkien fan, you are absolutely going to love this movie.  In fact, chances are good you've seen it multiple times by now (I love being so current).  But the movie's length and tendency to wander may make it harder for casual fans, or those who had never read the book, to get into it.  But if you've got the time for it, it's certainly worth a look.