Going Where, Again? - A Review of The Hobbit

Peter Jackson returns us to Middle Earth in The Hobbit, the first film in a prequel trilogy to the highly acclaimed Lord of the Rings films. A fun frolic for the family, we are greeted with a young, reclusive Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) who receives a visit from the curious Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellan). Soon followed by an adventuring party of dwarves, Gandalf entices the quiet-life-leading Bilbo on a grand quest across the world to fight dragons and find treasures.

I would go on and give you great descriptions of things like the storm giants and the orc chases, but I am compelled to tell you that I left the theater feeling empty inside. The entire movie is beautiful, the clothes, sets, and characters are designed and created to the smallest details. Really, this is more like a painting of a wizard on the side of a twenty year old Astrovan than the masterwork cinema of Lord of the Rings. It looks nice, but it's still a factory-standard vehicle.

Why does it feel so standard? The answer lies in the third plot. The first plot, Bilbo's coming of age journey through Middle Earth to help refugee dwarves reclaim their home is the main focus of film. The second plot involves tainted magic of a powerful necromancer that brings the brown wizard Radagast (Sylvester McCoy) to Gandalf for aid. The third plot deals dwarf prince Thorin's (Richard Armitage) unfinished business with the monstrous White Orc. While the first two compliment each other well and lay the foundations for a fantastic saga, the third makes the film over complicated and takes the attention away from an already well-established narrative. In a film titled The Hobbit, it's not good when the main character is a dwarf whose history and motivations are summed up within five to ten minutes of a flashback sequence.

With the multiple plots dividing our attention, I can't help but bring up the film loses focus in multiple scenes. There are wonderful realizations of beloved moments in J.R.R. Tolkien's novel, don't get me wrong. The dinner with the dwarves, Biblo's outwitting of the hungry trolls, and the party's capture by the Goblin King are beautifully recreated and live up to what I imagined when I read the book as a boy. Sadly, scenes that feel out of place or over extended can be easily attributed to the curse of CGI. In one scene that took to long, Bilbo and the dwarves are on a mountain during a storm. Titan sized giants of stone, seemingly summoned by the storm, pull themselves away from the mountains and begin to hurl rocks the size of small towns. The adventurers are climbing along a wall of the mountain range when suddenly the area they are standing on reveals itself to be the body of a giant. In dark, low contrast lighting the group clings for their life as these mountain beings fight and die. It's interesting, but the group isn't affected at all by these events. They jump from one giant to the static mountains without any error or loss of life, then go in a cave for a nice nap. Spectacle is not story telling. The same issue arose when the group escapes the Goblin King. Gandalf comes at the last moment and leads the dwarves out of the mountain. At first, it was a great escape, but it became a repetitive computer simulation of dwarves running from goblins.

Ultimately, I feel that the goblin cave scenes perfectly describe the entire tone of the film. Bilbo is on this adventure, being outside of his environment and discovering the world, while the dwarves plow through all of their obstacles without being challenged. There is no growth offered. Now, I've tried to tell myself “It's the first in a trilogy, it's setting up a lot of ideas that are going to pay off later,” but that's not what film making is supposed to be about. With Jackson's first venture into middle earth, The Fellowship of the Ring, we left the theater with awe and astonishment. With a run time of 169 minutes, The Hobbit takes us through lands of a beautifully crafted world we could only have imagined before, but when it's over we are left imagining. The end of the film doesn't complete anything except a failure stand alone. Audiences should leave a theater wanting more, not needing more.