"No", replied a grave Ian McKellen "And if you do, you shall not be the same". I bid farewell to my humble surroundings and set off for the much anticipated first instalment of The Hobbit trilogy.
Much has been made of the fact that the Hobbit will be split into three films - universal opinion suggests that this is a mistake, not least because the Hobbit is around a third as long as the first Lord of the Rings book - which alone made for one movie 'episode' the last time that Peter Jackson took Tolkein to the cinema.
It's good that Jackson has the reins on this one again - he clearly has a very dear love for Middle Earth - although he might have grown a little tired of it and if his other 'blockbusters' are anything to go by (King Kong, featuring an ice-skating gorilla with mother issues) and The Lovely Bones (about some dead bird and featuring similar pap throughout to that seen in the gorilla ice-skating scene of King Kong) then Peter Jackson might just have lost his touch. The Lord of the Rings was clearly a labour of love, whilst audiences can't escape the feeling that by splitting The Hobbit into three films, there is already less love in the film and more of a desire to make a little extra doe-rae-mee; let's face it, whatever I say in this review, I'm seeing the next two Hobbit films.
What do I say in this review? As Tolkein often wrote within the text of the Hobbit "poor old Bilbo Baggins..." - for the Hobbit himself is really the only redeeming factor in a film that lacks love, aim or development - which rather seem vital to a quest narrative don't they?As anticipated, Martin Freeman makes for an excellent Bilbo Baggins.
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| Aw shit! |
The problem with The Hobbit, is that it suffers from 'Jar-Jar Binks Syndrome'. Where Star Wars IV, V & VI were of galaxy-wide importance, full of likeable characters with depth and… actually, if you think about it, Star Wars was pretty terrible, but also, it was great - and then on the delivery of Episode I, the excitement was replaced with a film rife with moments of needless wackiness, courtesy of Jar-Jar Binks, that undermined the rest of the entire storyline, both within the film itself and in regards to the canon. In much the same way, twelve dwarves make for a series of wacky cartoon figures, whose depth of character stretches only to singular personality quirks, voices & sayings. But, in the film's defence, this was never about dwarves, it was about a Hobbit, taken away from everything he knows. So why focus so consistently on these twelve "characters" - I know Dwarves live under-ground, but shallow doesn't even cover it. A Dwarven hymn, does not count as depth of character or motivation, for any of them. Making one fat, one silly, one a joker - it just doesn't cut it, it's not good enough - I started looking around for Doc & Grumpy. I half expected them to starting singing "Hi-Ho" as they left Bag End.
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| "Wait, which one are you? Oh forget it, what's the difference.." |
This lazy character design, is further magnified in the supporting cast and all those word things that they say, words that seemed to be trying to masquerade as dialogue. Set amongst the dwarves were characters like 'the albino Orc', 'the aristocratic Goblin King' & 'the wacky wizard'! Were these characters invented by rolling 'character dice'? Roll one: it comes up with "Albino"... second dice: it comes up with "Orc" - well gang, there's our antagonist!
And antagonist he is! Covered in scars, seemingly dead but also, shock horror, NOT actually dead and with a hatred of the dwarves based in absolutely nothing, the Albino Orc (whose name I forget and who I swear is not actually in The Hobbit text) makes your standard James Bond villain look vivid and interesting.
Meanwhile, the wacky wizard was a being a hoot nearer the beginning of the film. Boy howdy, was he ever a hoot! Aesthetically well designed, the costume department and artists did a great job with creating the fairly minor Radagast the Brown...but would he truly be quite as mad and loony as they made him out to be? Would he really have named a hedgehog Sebastian? Would he be able to fight off a necromancer, but also be covered in bird-shit? And why the constant hints at him smoking 'Old Toby' and eating 'mushrooms' - yes, hilarious, he's a hippy - well done Peter Jackson, for weaving a stoned hippy into the fabric of The Hobbit, how creative!
And he was a real whack-job old Radagast! This is a guy who offers to save the group from the onslaught of those Warg-rider type fellows; great, you think! Rather than leading the enemy away from the party however, he insists on circling them on his sled! Round and a round he went, forcing the dwarves to keep halting and checking their escape - just fuck off Radagast! That doesn't count as 'leading them off', because you're staying in the same place, you great tit. Incidentally, he has probably conversed with a few great tits in his time and perhaps they would have offered a more plausible inclusion than some of the other characters. Here's a side-note, Radagast just fucking disappears! No goodbye, no discovery of his fate, the camera just stops following his progress. He zooms behind a rock and then the film grows as bored of him as we quickly were and we never hear from the bloke again. Brilliant.
We do hear from the Goblin King though! Oh Goblin King. Oooh, Goblin King. He looked cool didn't he? Well animated. Good design. Another cartoon character with little reality though... again. The Lord of the Rings leant a reality to all of the characters, throughout - they were all people with their own wants and their own fears and appeared to be part of their world - and as such, it was entirely immersive, which is why we all cared so much about the outcome and why when, in the first film, the entire cinema I was in applauded when Aragorn chopped of Lurtz's head. Brilliant.
Whereas no applause was heard during The Hobbit. The Goblin King is symptomatic of The Hobbit's problems. He was just, stupid; an "okey-day" short of being Jar-Jar Binks. Barry Humphries is a fantastic voice actor and it's a great pleasure to listen to him playing the part of the Great Goblin... but he was perhaps a too theatrical choice of actor for the role (although it must be said that he can only read the lines he was given).
And what lines! Let's get straight to the best example! Just short of their escape from the goblin kingdom, BOOM, the Goblin King lands right in our heroes path. "So" says the Goblin King to Gandalf "What are you going to do now, wizard?" - at which point Gandalf slits his throat and cuts his belly "That'll do it" says the Goblin King, before falling dead and breaking the bridge they stand on.
Sorry, are we meant to believe that Tolkein thought to himself as he was penning his fantasy classic "now, what would this great goblin say as he died - ah! I know" he thought with some satisfaction, putting pen to paper "he'd come out with a witty quip, worthy of films not yet made in my lifetime and rife with comic wackiness." Oh how I bet Tolkein laughed and laughed to himself. What larks!
Such lines were prevalent throughout the Hobbit and have no place in the Middle-Earth catalogue, whatsoever. It's not how the film was marketed and it's not how the previous Lord of the Rings films were made or presented.
And if it's not ridiculous, uninspired lines of that nature, it was stuff that was beyond cliche. I counted three times in There & Back Again when a character wailed the following:-
"Nooooooooooooo!"
Brilliant. Really? Really Peter Jackson? A long pained no? Not once, but on three separate occasions. Carrying on the story (or starting it) of one of the most popular trilogies of all time and that was the best way you could come up with to express woe in your characters. Excellent, let's get you an oscar. Thorin Oakenshield, a wholly dislikable fellow, is guilty of two of the "Nos" and while he is one of the characters with the most easily understandable motivations for this journey, he is also part of one of the most typical movie developments - "I do not trust this Hobbit"... "I do not trust this Hobbit"... "I do not trust this Hobbit"... "Now I trust this Hobbit" - have a second oscar, Peter Jackson, you Hollywood idiot.
No, wait, make that three, because if you like exposition, you'll love the Hobbit. Nothing was left to chance and everything was explained for the audience about species, places, why who was going where, all explained to one another, but with one eye on those idiots watching the screen, you and me. Not that those reasons were much cop, but it was like having little pop-ups at the bottom of the film, little info-boxes that came up whenever something was said:- " i: in Middle-Earth, Dwarves & Elves do not always get along" - that wasn't actually one, I've just forgotten all my examples.
Not unlike how I forgot what New Zealand looks like. Famously the setting for all things Middle-Earth, New Zealand disappears during The Hobbit. Much is made of the fabulous, sweeping landscapes in Lord of the Rings and much was also made of the speed of the filming or something... like, inside the camera, it was faster or something - I didn't notice any difference, but who could, almost every, single, thing, was CGI. There was constant CGI and the film suffered from the same thing that made the Tintin film so terrible, that is, it was a constant series of set-pieces that made you wonder where your xbox controller had gone because you were surely in the middle of playing a video-game.
This wasn't an unpleasant film. It was fine, sort of and it was kind of fun - but other films are more fun, more of a romp, because that's what they're setting out to do from the off. The Hobbit has a responsibility to address the expectations of an audience who have enthusiastically consumed The Lord of the Rings films and Tolkein's written work, none of which, is particularly comic or wacky. It is artistic, poetic, epic... none of which the The Hobbit is.
The film spends three hours trying to establish why Bilbo Baggins runs out that door and it happens at the very end. Because he has a home and they don't. Well yes but surely you must have felt that way when you left, otherwise, why go? Ah yes, exposition, sorry, Gandalf explained to us that you were an exciting youth! Bollocks, shut up, don't give me that - what's the old creative writing saying that they hammer into writers? Show, don't tell. And we got an awful lot of telling in this film.
The point of The Hobbit, was missed. This was a quite fun and I will greedily watch this film in a few years time, when it receives it's network premiere on Channel 4 - which is where this film belongs. Perhaps it was the new filming technique, perhaps the excessive light-heartedness and hammy dramatics, but The Hobbit, minus it's excessive CGI, suits the realm of television, far more than that of the cinema. Cinema has a much greater responsibility to serve fans of any franchise and residents of Middle-Earth will cringe at the way in which the trolls are dealt with and the fact that Gollum claims to have nine teeth instead of the six he has in the book.
What does Bilbo Baggins get out of all of this in the end? Nothing, about as much as the audience itself. Martin Freeman is a real delight as Bilbo, he really is and naturally the scene with he and Gollum was quite enjoyable (although predictably, Gollums wackier, more schizophrenic side was played up a lot more in this film). The moment when Bilbo spares Gollum was great I thought, calling back as it did to Gandalf's conversation with Frodo in Moria during The Fellowship of the Ring. And perhaps I am being unkind - it is possible that this new trilogy has been made for a younger audience, new to this 'franchise' and they need it to be accessible in the ways that this film is - but everyone else with half a love of Middle-Earth will come away feeling disappointed and a little bit betrayed. Indeed, it is symptomatic of the film's problems that I have had to refer to it as a 'franchise'. It is held so dearly by so many people and is so widely influential, that it should not be treated as a franchise in any way and unfortunately, The Hobbit has been made lazily and with much less love than it deserves. To split it into three films, is indicative of the shallow, money-making motivations, with which the films have been made instead. Not unlike these:
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| One of the producers. |
...OH, and those fucking eagles saved the fucking day again didn't they! I suppose in the last film it'll turn out that all of this was one of Radagasts hallucinations. That'll be the final 'up-yours' to the audience won't it. God we're idiots.
