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Old 12-22-2012, 05:35 PM   #1
Morthoron
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The Hobbit: An Extraneous Journey

THE HOBBIT: AN EXTRANEOUS JOURNEY

How so like Peter Jackson, a wizard of scanning CGI wars and panning Kiwi tors, to offer something completely unexpected in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The unexpected nature of the film will be readily apparent to anyone who has read J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy classic The Hobbit, a story of one Bilbo Baggins, esq., a stolid upper-middle class hobbit with not enough fight in him to tussle with a tough bit of beef. The book details his mock-epic quest for Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, wherein he not only finds adventure but the innate reserve of Tookish toughness that underlies the staid and respectable Baggins’ flab. What was unexpected in the film adaptation, you may ask? It is, sadly, that Bilbo has become a sideshow, just another bit part in a Hollywood epic, not demonstrably different from the cast of garish dwarves with limited speaking roles that surround him.

In fact, Martin Freeman, who plays Bilbo Baggins, retains the same confused look of irritation for most of the film, perhaps because his costume caused undue chaffing, or, more likely, because he has relatively little to do in a film ostensibly written by and detailing the exploits of his character. Freeman seems genuinely hobbitish, but not necessarily one of the Bagginses, and is certainly not of the acting caliber of the great Ian Holm (who reprises the older Bilbo Baggins role he played in the Lord of the Rings trilogy). Looking at turns put upon and sulky does not equate to acting the part, but again, this is not necessarily Freeman’s fault; after all, the movie has more subplots than a sprawling development of tract homes plopped indecorously in the suburbs.

What is this incessant need of Peter Jackson to undermine a classic with a superfluity usually reserved for dementia patients in a hospital ward? No, I am giving Jackson too much credit, and I apologize to the dementia patients. Somewhere in the labyrinthine, cobwebbed corridors that twist and turn in his troubled brain, I believe that Mr. Jackson somehow believes that inventing plots wholesale is part of the scriptwriting process. Never mind that one has one of the endearing and supreme fantasy stories of the 20th century to work with, a tale cherished by children and adults alike, passed on reverently from generation to generation, it is just not up to snuff as far as a cinematic thrill ride for the 21st century.

Ergo, Jackson, a fan-fiction writer at heart and prone to sanguine bouts of dizzying violence, has decided to completely rewrite The Hobbit in his own image and likeness, relying on scripting culled from back when he was a struggling director spitting out B-grade horror flicks with plenty of camp, buckets of blood and enough gore to fill an abbatoir. Never accused of subtlety, Jackson hammers the audience with an onslaught of combat scenes and then hits them upside the head with slapstick comedy: belching dwarves, snotty trolls, and psychedelicized wizards addled by mushroom ingestion. The clever nature of the humor imbued in the story with philological care by Tolkien can only be seen in brief snatches in Jackson’s film, before it is buried in tumbling dwarves, collapsing bridges and skewered orcs.

Speaking of orcs, the entire subplot of the albino orc Azog, the requisite Hollywood CGI villain used to stretch the plot to interminable lengths so that it can be teased and tortured into a three-movie marathon of orkish overkill, is completely and utterly unnecessary. To paraphrase Bilbo Baggins himself, the first movie of the trilogy seems to be thin and stretched, like not enough toilet paper over too much bum. Likewise, the White Council scene, featuring the lifelike mannequins of Cate Blanchett (as Galadriel), Hugo Weaving (as Elrond), Sir Ian McKellan (as Gandalf), and the corpse of Christopher Lee (as Saruman), is so stiff and flat one can reuse the sequence as underlayment for a bowling alley, and it pained me to listen to the fan-fictional excess of Nazgul buried in suspended animation, a plot point I am not sure a teenage writer would have the hubris to exploit.

And Radagast the Brown (wisely absent from the White Council scene, given that an annoyed Saruman would undoubtedly and justifiably throttle him - and I would gladly assist), is a caricature of a zany wizard. No, not a caricature, his appearance is a direct theft of Merlyn from T.H. White’s classic The Once and Future King, wherein Merlyn is described thusly:

“It was not that he had dirty finger-nails or anything like that, but some large bird had been nesting in his hair…with white mutes, old bones, muddy feathers and castings. This is the impression which he [Wart] gathered from Merlyn. The old gentleman was streaked with droppings over his shoulders…”

Oh, I could go on about the similarities of Merlyn’s disheveled cottage in comparison to Radagast’s messy treehouse, or the daft inclusion of a hedgehog named “Sebastian” (Sebastian! Seriously?); whereas, an urchin (hedgehog) plays a role in both The Once and Future King and the sequel The Book of Merlyn as well. In this case, hedgehog has a wonderful Yorkshire accent (“Ah doan’t ‘ee nip our tender vitals, lovely Measter Brock, for ee wor a proper gennelman, ee wor, and brought us up full comely on cow’s milk an’ that, all supped out from a lorly dish.”). It works well for T.H. White, but it all seems so out of place for J.R.R. Tolkien. And a rabbit sled? Only if C.S. Lewis co-wrote the script. And this was Narnia.

Of course, Peter Jackson’s self-aggrandizing over-amplification of monumental effects goes absolutely off the deep end here. Erebor is now so grandiose a dwarvish kingdom, so ornately gilt and overlaid, that Moria looks like a shabby tin shack in comparison. And Goblin Town? There is a half-hour long movie version of “Chutes and Ladders” underground, with more bridgework than that completed by every dentist in recorded history. The GoblinKing is larger than a troll (why have Uruk-hai when Sauron could breed an army of pachydermic GoblinKings?), and the elephantine goiter swinging about its neck is probably due to Jackson’s inherent need for over-the-top accoutrements (like the WitchKing’s ridiculously oversized mace). The stone giants (primeval Transformers) make an appearance with so much destructive mayhem that one wonders how the Misty Mountains were not renamed the Misty Rubble Quarry.

There were aspects of the film I enjoyed – not surprisingly, when Jackson adhered somewhat to the original story: the dwarves dining at Bag-end, the cockney trolls, and the absolutely precious dialogue between Gollum and Bilbo during the Riddle Game (the only part of the movie where Bilbo actually seemed like Bilbo). Like The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, the best actor unfortunately is a CGI character, and Gollum once again shows more thespian ability and more range than the entire ensemble combined.

The soundtrack gave the impression that Peter Jackson was desperately trying to recapture the auld Oscar-winning magic of his Lord of the Rings trilogy. Anywhere Jackson could drop in a bit of the old score to make moviegoers teary-eyed reminiscing over his one great success was dolloped liberally thoughout the movie. The highlight musically-speaking was the dwarves singing in Bag-end. The rendition of “Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold” sung by Thorin and Company was genuinely moving, but the song by Neil Finn for the closing credits “Song of the Lonely Mountain” was reedy and abysmal, and sounded more like a corporate decision from the marketing department than a tune worthy of Tolkien.

And what of the dwarves, you might ask? There were thirteen of them, after all, surely they made some sort of impact? Well, no, not really. Thorin is a one-dimensional dark cut-out of a rueful and vengeful man (not a dwarf, he bears no resemblance to a dwarf whatsoever). He could have been Boromir’s bitter cousin, Angrimir. Any sort of pompous humor or high-falutin’ speechifying that Tolkien gave Thorin has been removed. He is as dull as he is stereotypically vengeful. And Thorin does not age. Balin ages, but not Thorin. Thorin, the oldest of the dwarves, looks absolutely the same from the Battle of Azanulbizar up to the Quest for Erebor. Don’t let the few wisps of grey in his beard fool you, Thorin has a picture up in his attic just like Dorian Gray. Of the other dwarves, I would say Balin was the best, and poor Bombur had no lines at all that I recall - which is probably just as well, as the sophomoric scripting would require him to be the butt of some fat joke.

In the end, I would classify The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as a blockbuster Hollywood action movie epic. That is not being complimentary, however. Given the fan-fictionalization of the annoyingly superfluous subplots and extraneous material grafted on the original story like attaching a chrome grill and hubcaps to a racing stallion, I would say that it was not necessary to make this a movie derived from Tolkien’s book at all: any generic swords-and-sorcery fantasy world would do the job quite adequately.

As I mentioned previously, the parts that worked the best were taken nearly verbatim from the book; unfortunately, these seemed like forlorn set pieces, all too brief sequences of splendid and literate display hiding an empty façade, and behind that blank wall the detritus of explodey things, decapitations, manic chases, violent combat and farcical pratfalls – the very definition of a Hollywood action movie, not a Tolkien book. Thorin could have just as well spat out “This is Sparta!” and I wouldn’t have noticed the difference. The movie was nearly three hours long, and I could feel it (and it wasn’t just the $10 soft drink welling in my kidneys either!). Had it been trimmed of all the excess fat and inane, ham-handed extrapolation, and then reduced to a two-movie set, it would have been extraordinary. I am being quite honest. Had this been two movies rather than three, it would be sublime. How sad that it isn’t.
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Old 12-22-2012, 09:36 PM   #2
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Originally Posted by Morthoron View Post
And Thorin does not age. Balin ages, but not Thorin. Thorin, the oldest of the dwarves, looks absolutely the same from the Battle of Azanulbizar up to the Quest for Erebor. Don’t let the few wisps of grey in his beard fool you, Thorin has a picture up in his attic just like Dorian Gray.
I noticed that too.

I suspect you have hit upon the likeliest explanation.
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Old 12-23-2012, 09:28 AM   #3
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I noticed that too.

I suspect you have hit upon the likeliest explanation.
The lack of aging on Thorin's part was jarring to me (and the fact that he bore no resemblance to a dwarf, save for his pudgy fingers). This was obviously a conscious decision on PJ's part, as Balin had dark hair at the Battle of Azanulbizar, but he was snow white by the time of the quest. Movie-Thorin's character also was dissimilar to the book: no pompous speeches or any humor whatsoever. Gloomy bastard!

Also, Kili and Fili (The Hobbit film's recycled versions of the LotR films' Merry and Pippin) also were not very dwarvish.

Another aspect of the film that ****ed me off was PJ's treatment of Thranduil, the ElvenKing. Would a Sindarin Elf, a refugee with his father, Oropher, of the dwarven sack of Menegroth and the destruction of Doriath, ever pay homage to a dwarf king? I think not.

And then make Thranduil look like an even bigger jerk by ignoring Thorin's tearful pleas for help as the dwarvish refugees fled from the ruin of Erebor? Thranduil was not so callous in the books, a bit fey perhaps, but not an ***. And why would Thranduil even drag his army so far from his demesne in Mirkwood just to turn around once he reached Erebor? That is no Sunday-afternoon-be-home-by-tea jaunt around the park. Again, this is PJ's lack of subtlety. He must beat the audience over the head with a plot-point in the mistaken belief that the audience needs to be reminded at every turn that dwarves and elves don't like each other, even inventing further plot-points to bolster the audience beating.
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Old 12-23-2012, 09:49 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by Morthoron View Post
Another aspect of the film that ****ed me off was PJ's treatment of Thranduil, the ElvenKing. Would a Sindarin Elf, a refugee with his father, Oropher, of the dwarven sack of Menegroth and the destruction of Doriath, ever pay homage to a dwarf king? I think not.
Yes, that was very dumb. Dwarves ruling over men is fairly sound from a Tolkien perspective. Dwarves ruling over elves is highly unsound and would never happen from a Tolkien perspective.

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And then make Thranduil look like an even bigger jerk by ignoring Thorin's tearful pleas for help as the dwarvish refugees fled from the ruin of Erebor? Thranduil was not so callous in the books, a bit fey perhaps, but not an ***.
Notice the groundwork being laid down for story changes later on down the road. When Thorin goes mad for gold before the Battle of Five Armies (which I think they setup well enough in AUJ) all of a sudden the elves are going to go from being the bad guys that the audience is supposed to resent to the voices of reason, which is just going to be more confusing. If I were to credit Jackson with much thought, I would suspect he is trying to create post-modern feelings of ambiguity. However, for me to think that would be to assume that he hasn't come up with some new way to make the lead up to the climax confusing and I am pretty sure he has done just that.

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And why would Thranduil even drag his army so far from his demesne in Mirkwood just to turn around once he reached Erebor? That is no Sunday-afternoon-be-home-by-tea jaunt around the park.
Actually, in Jackson geography it probably *is* a Sunday-afternoon-be-home-by-tea jaunt around the park as the movie clearly illustrated that the Lonely Mountain is at most 50 miles from the Misty Mountains. So the Woodland Realm is probably like 5 miles from Erebor.
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Old 12-23-2012, 11:05 AM   #5
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'Angrimir'

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Old 12-23-2012, 02:55 PM   #6
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And while Thorin does not age, Bilbo (relative to intro Holm-Bilbo) DOES age- even though of course he did not.
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Old 12-23-2012, 02:56 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Morthoron
And Thorin does not age. Balin ages, but not Thorin. Thorin, the oldest of the dwarves, looks absolutely the same from the Battle of Azanulbizar up to the Quest for Erebor. Don’t let the few wisps of grey in his beard fool you, Thorin has a picture up in his attic just like Dorian Gray.
You must remember one additional fact while looking for an explanation to that. A Hollywood blockbuster movie needs to sell - and you do it by posing hot characters teenagers can fall in love to. Thirteen old and wary dwarves doesn't sound like a recipe to that - so let's sex up their leader / the plot hero (and some others while doing it).

Just ask yourselves what a millenia-old Legolas would have looked in the LotR (even if the elves don't age as people do, but I think you would have seen the time in some way).
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Old 12-23-2012, 05:27 PM   #8
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Originally Posted by Morthoron View Post
Had it been trimmed of all the excess fat and inane, ham-handed extrapolation, and then reduced to a two-movie set, it would have been extraordinary. I am being quite honest. Had this been two movies rather than three, it would be sublime. How sad that it isn’t.
Well, I suppose we can always wait for the Extended Editions to come out (I really hope with more of the 'nice' Thorin of the books) and wait for someone to fanedit them like for LOTR. Which reminds me- I'd better watch the last few.
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Old 12-23-2012, 06:12 PM   #9
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Originally posted by Morsul the Dark:

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Just out of curiousity, why would you see the film? You all have very strong opinions on Jackson and seem to detest any change and dismiss anything as minor as a chracter looking different as sacrilage and pandering.
Why bother? Quite honestly I'm happy you enjoy the books as we all do, but I think that's your joy lies let the movies be you'll be happier for it.
I don't expect that I will be seeing them. Unless I watch them some years from now when they show up on TV. The Lord of the Rings movies were a disappointment for me. The Hobbit is likely to be the same.

The sad thing is, P.J. got just enough right that I doubt that a more-qualified film-maker will attempt to out-do his work in my lifetime. And I'm someone who believes these stories are eminently filmable.
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Old 12-26-2012, 04:48 PM   #10
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Don’t let the few wisps of grey in his beard fool you, Thorin has a picture up in his attic just like Dorian Gray.
Mind you, I quite liked the movie-Thorin despite his big differences from the book-Thorin, but this comment of yours just totally cracked me up.

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Originally Posted by Eönwë
Well, I suppose we can always wait for the Extended Editions to come out (I really hope with more of the 'nice' Thorin of the books) and wait for someone to fanedit them like for LOTR. Which reminds me- I'd better watch the last few.
Actually, care to link some? I suddenly got curious...

Lastly, good points Boro, but I'm afraid I can't repy uo right now and I have whatsoever nothing to add.
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Old 12-31-2012, 02:29 AM   #11
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THE HOBBIT: AN EXTRANEOUS JOURNEY

How so like Peter Jackson, a wizard of scanning CGI wars and panning Kiwi tors, to offer something completely unexpected in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The unexpected nature of the film will be readily apparent to anyone who has read J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy classic The Hobbit, a story of one Bilbo Baggins, esq., a stolid upper-middle class hobbit with not enough fight in him to tussle with a tough bit of beef. The book details his mock-epic quest for Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, wherein he not only finds adventure but the innate reserve of Tookish toughness that underlies the staid and respectable Baggins’ flab. What was unexpected in the film adaptation, you may ask? It is, sadly, that Bilbo has become a sideshow, just another bit part in a Hollywood epic, not demonstrably different from the cast of garish dwarves with limited speaking roles that surround him.

In fact, Martin Freeman, who plays Bilbo Baggins, retains the same confused look of irritation for most of the film, perhaps because his costume caused undue chaffing, or, more likely, because he has relatively little to do in a film ostensibly written by and detailing the exploits of his character. Freeman seems genuinely hobbitish, but not necessarily one of the Bagginses, and is certainly not of the acting caliber of the great Ian Holm (who reprises the older Bilbo Baggins role he played in the Lord of the Rings trilogy). Looking at turns put upon and sulky does not equate to acting the part, but again, this is not necessarily Freeman’s fault; after all, the movie has more subplots than a sprawling development of tract homes plopped indecorously in the suburbs.

What is this incessant need of Peter Jackson to undermine a classic with a superfluity usually reserved for dementia patients in a hospital ward? No, I am giving Jackson too much credit, and I apologize to the dementia patients. Somewhere in the labyrinthine, cobwebbed corridors that twist and turn in his troubled brain, I believe that Mr. Jackson somehow believes that inventing plots wholesale is part of the scriptwriting process. Never mind that one has one of the endearing and supreme fantasy stories of the 20th century to work with, a tale cherished by children and adults alike, passed on reverently from generation to generation, it is just not up to snuff as far as a cinematic thrill ride for the 21st century.

Ergo, Jackson, a fan-fiction writer at heart and prone to sanguine bouts of dizzying violence, has decided to completely rewrite The Hobbit in his own image and likeness, relying on scripting culled from back when he was a struggling director spitting out B-grade horror flicks with plenty of camp, buckets of blood and enough gore to fill an abbatoir. Never accused of subtlety, Jackson hammers the audience with an onslaught of combat scenes and then hits them upside the head with slapstick comedy: belching dwarves, snotty trolls, and psychedelicized wizards addled by mushroom ingestion. The clever nature of the humor imbued in the story with philological care by Tolkien can only be seen in brief snatches in Jackson’s film, before it is buried in tumbling dwarves, collapsing bridges and skewered orcs.

Speaking of orcs, the entire subplot of the albino orc Azog, the requisite Hollywood CGI villain used to stretch the plot to interminable lengths so that it can be teased and tortured into a three-movie marathon of orkish overkill, is completely and utterly unnecessary. To paraphrase Bilbo Baggins himself, the first movie of the trilogy seems to be thin and stretched, like not enough toilet paper over too much bum. Likewise, the White Council scene, featuring the lifelike mannequins of Cate Blanchett (as Galadriel), Hugo Weaving (as Elrond), Sir Ian McKellan (as Gandalf), and the corpse of Christopher Lee (as Saruman), is so stiff and flat one can reuse the sequence as underlayment for a bowling alley, and it pained me to listen to the fan-fictional excess of Nazgul buried in suspended animation, a plot point I am not sure a teenage writer would have the hubris to exploit.

And Radagast the Brown (wisely absent from the White Council scene, given that an annoyed Saruman would undoubtedly and justifiably throttle him - and I would gladly assist), is a caricature of a zany wizard. No, not a caricature, his appearance is a direct theft of Merlyn from T.H. White’s classic The Once and Future King, wherein Merlyn is described thusly:

“It was not that he had dirty finger-nails or anything like that, but some large bird had been nesting in his hair…with white mutes, old bones, muddy feathers and castings. This is the impression which he [Wart] gathered from Merlyn. The old gentleman was streaked with droppings over his shoulders…”

Oh, I could go on about the similarities of Merlyn’s disheveled cottage in comparison to Radagast’s messy treehouse, or the daft inclusion of a hedgehog named “Sebastian” (Sebastian! Seriously?); whereas, an urchin (hedgehog) plays a role in both The Once and Future King and the sequel The Book of Merlyn as well. In this case, hedgehog has a wonderful Yorkshire accent (“Ah doan’t ‘ee nip our tender vitals, lovely Measter Brock, for ee wor a proper gennelman, ee wor, and brought us up full comely on cow’s milk an’ that, all supped out from a lorly dish.”). It works well for T.H. White, but it all seems so out of place for J.R.R. Tolkien. And a rabbit sled? Only if C.S. Lewis co-wrote the script. And this was Narnia.

Of course, Peter Jackson’s self-aggrandizing over-amplification of monumental effects goes absolutely off the deep end here. Erebor is now so grandiose a dwarvish kingdom, so ornately gilt and overlaid, that Moria looks like a shabby tin shack in comparison. And Goblin Town? There is a half-hour long movie version of “Chutes and Ladders” underground, with more bridgework than that completed by every dentist in recorded history. The GoblinKing is larger than a troll (why have Uruk-hai when Sauron could breed an army of pachydermic GoblinKings?), and the elephantine goiter swinging about its neck is probably due to Jackson’s inherent need for over-the-top accoutrements (like the WitchKing’s ridiculously oversized mace). The stone giants (primeval Transformers) make an appearance with so much destructive mayhem that one wonders how the Misty Mountains were not renamed the Misty Rubble Quarry.

There were aspects of the film I enjoyed – not surprisingly, when Jackson adhered somewhat to the original story: the dwarves dining at Bag-end, the cockney trolls, and the absolutely precious dialogue between Gollum and Bilbo during the Riddle Game (the only part of the movie where Bilbo actually seemed like Bilbo). Like The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, the best actor unfortunately is a CGI character, and Gollum once again shows more thespian ability and more range than the entire ensemble combined.

The soundtrack gave the impression that Peter Jackson was desperately trying to recapture the auld Oscar-winning magic of his Lord of the Rings trilogy. Anywhere Jackson could drop in a bit of the old score to make moviegoers teary-eyed reminiscing over his one great success was dolloped liberally thoughout the movie. The highlight musically-speaking was the dwarves singing in Bag-end. The rendition of “Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold” sung by Thorin and Company was genuinely moving, but the song by Neil Finn for the closing credits “Song of the Lonely Mountain” was reedy and abysmal, and sounded more like a corporate decision from the marketing department than a tune worthy of Tolkien.

And what of the dwarves, you might ask? There were thirteen of them, after all, surely they made some sort of impact? Well, no, not really. Thorin is a one-dimensional dark cut-out of a rueful and vengeful man (not a dwarf, he bears no resemblance to a dwarf whatsoever). He could have been Boromir’s bitter cousin, Angrimir. Any sort of pompous humor or high-falutin’ speechifying that Tolkien gave Thorin has been removed. He is as dull as he is stereotypically vengeful. And Thorin does not age. Balin ages, but not Thorin. Thorin, the oldest of the dwarves, looks absolutely the same from the Battle of Azanulbizar up to the Quest for Erebor. Don’t let the few wisps of grey in his beard fool you, Thorin has a picture up in his attic just like Dorian Gray. Of the other dwarves, I would say Balin was the best, and poor Bombur had no lines at all that I recall - which is probably just as well, as the sophomoric scripting would require him to be the butt of some fat joke.

In the end, I would classify The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as a blockbuster Hollywood action movie epic. That is not being complimentary, however. Given the fan-fictionalization of the annoyingly superfluous subplots and extraneous material grafted on the original story like attaching a chrome grill and hubcaps to a racing stallion, I would say that it was not necessary to make this a movie derived from Tolkien’s book at all: any generic swords-and-sorcery fantasy world would do the job quite adequately.

As I mentioned previously, the parts that worked the best were taken nearly verbatim from the book; unfortunately, these seemed like forlorn set pieces, all too brief sequences of splendid and literate display hiding an empty façade, and behind that blank wall the detritus of explodey things, decapitations, manic chases, violent combat and farcical pratfalls – the very definition of a Hollywood action movie, not a Tolkien book. Thorin could have just as well spat out “This is Sparta!” and I wouldn’t have noticed the difference. The movie was nearly three hours long, and I could feel it (and it wasn’t just the $10 soft drink welling in my kidneys either!). Had it been trimmed of all the excess fat and inane, ham-handed extrapolation, and then reduced to a two-movie set, it would have been extraordinary. I am being quite honest. Had this been two movies rather than three, it would be sublime. How sad that it isn’t.
I have to agree with much of what Morthoron says in his Extraneous Review.

My review is much simpler...
The Good Points:
  • Hobbiton looked good and the party at Bilbo's was well done. Love The Green Dragon!
  • Rivendell looked better after the remodel and the tearing down of some of the cheap-looking gazebos. The remaining ones were better built.
  • Elrond looked better and the acting was more 'Elrondish'
  • Galadriel looked much better, much more like Galadriel.
  • The whole 'Riddles In The Dark' bit was good. Andy nailed Gollum again!

The Bad Points:
The rest of the movie. It was rubbish. This movie, and I suspect the two coming, and all the added fluff to pad the one book out into three movies, are just more nails in the coffin of J.R.R. Tolkien's legacy. I went to an advance screening for us here in Oz (which means we got to see it when most of the rest of the world did) that required getting dressed up in costume. It was a fun night seeing all the different costumes and the nice photo-shoot and the free drinks and food and all. Yet it was more of a matter of getting through the movie than it was enjoying watching it. It was in the 3D HD 48fps format, which made the effects rather intense. Listening to the people's chatter going in, Peter Jackson has pretty much succeeded in co-opting Tolkien's works, and now in the minds of the idiot masses, they have awarded the tale as his own. My only consolation this time is I haven't spent a cent that will go to the film company or Peter Jackson. I intend to keep it that way.
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Old 12-31-2012, 08:34 PM   #12
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Originally Posted by Snowdog View Post
I have to agree with much of what Morthoron says in his Extraneous Review.

The Bad Points:
The rest of the movie. It was rubbish. This movie, and I suspect the two coming, and all the added fluff to pad the one book out into three movies, are just more nails in the coffin of J.R.R. Tolkien's legacy. I went to an advance screening for us here in Oz (which means we got to see it when most of the rest of the world did) that required getting dressed up in costume. It was a fun night seeing all the different costumes and the nice photo-shoot and the free drinks and food and all. Yet it was more of a matter of getting through the movie than it was enjoying watching it. It was in the 3D HD 48fps format, which made the effects rather intense. Listening to the people's chatter going in, Peter Jackson has pretty much succeeded in co-opting Tolkien's works, and now in the minds of the idiot masses, they have awarded the tale as his own. My only consolation this time is I haven't spent a cent that will go to the film company or Peter Jackson. I intend to keep it that way.
PJ plopped in iconic set-pieces from the book about every 15 minutes or so in an effort to stop movie-goers from using the rest room. I wouldn't be surprised to see an increase in kidney or bladder infections due to the length of the movie, and the need to do something else (snack, drink soda) while waiting for another tedious subplot to unfold.
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