The Hobbit

Peter Jackson – New Zealand – 2012-14

I watched all three volumes of The Hobbit for the first time on the same day in a nine-hour marathon.  (Don’t ask why; it was just something I wanted to do.)  I had been somewhat skeptical ever since the films were announced.  I like Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy a lot but I don’t adore it to the point of thinking that it’s something untouchable that can never be rivaled.  Possibly my memory of how short a novel Tolkien’s The Hobbit is made me somewhat bemused when press releases stated that it would be stretched into three epic movies running three-hours each.  In any case, minor gripes aside, I can’t deny that Jackson seems to have done something that even George Lucas failed to do; induce lightning to strike twice.  There is some validity to the feeling that the series may have slightly outlasted its welcome by the time you get into the sixth of six three-hour films.  I felt the original trilogy could have benefitted from a bit of pruning too, but for the most part, it seems like the films’ biggest fans love to luxuriate in this world and savor every detail; in no hurry to have it end.  As a childhood fan of the novel, I appreciated Jackson’s embrace of song and whimsy in The Hobbit that were significantly minimized in his Lord of the Rings films because they would have been too incongruous next to gruesome, oozing monsters and non-stop decapitations and other war violence.  In The Hobbit, many characters erupt into rehearsed songs, as they would in a musical, and animals also tend to speak as they never did in Lord of the Rings.  Sure, some discrepancies are impossible to account for; the primary one being that the actors who appear in both trilogies are a decade older than they were in LOTR though their characters are supposed to be either younger or immortal.  As far as I’m concerned, the two series flow together beautifully and I’m not sure I would be able to tell which came first if I had no knowledge of their productions.  About The Hobbit, specifically, I was impressed – as much as by LOTR – with its ambitious scope and detailed artistic design, as well as its strong dependence on quality actors; Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Hugo Weaving, Luke Evans, Lee Pace, Benedict Cumberbatch, Christopher Lee, etc.  Stealing the show, however, (which is no easy task in such a populous and effects-driven story), is Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins.  He wisely makes no effort to impersonate Ian Holm, (who played an older Bilbo in LOTR), but instead starts from scratch and presents a completely natural and unpretentious interpretation of the character.  One of the main things that makes The Hobbit resonate with me – even more so than LOTR – is the depiction of flawed heroism.  The good guys in LOTR were almost annoyingly righteous and perfect in their morality.  In The Hobbit, things aren’t so black-and-white.  Bilbo is happily stingy and lazy, and that is what makes his later bravery so rewarding; it would be meaningless if he started out the film as a badass and then stayed that way.  But even his development into a hero is not all-consuming; throughout he retains a secretive streak that makes him withhold important things from his comrades when it suits him.  Thorin Oakenshield (Armitage) is also complex; idealistic and valiant but equally prone to corruption when power rests on his shoulders.  Even the seemingly irreproachable wizard Gandalf (McKellen) is shown to be a master manipulator who uses trickery and intimidation without regret while nudging his various pawns towards danger, death and war.  In this case, he worries that a fierce dragon named Smaug, who has been hibernating for 60 years in the dwarves’ mountain fortress, may pledge allegiance to the evil Sauron, which would make both of them pretty invincible.  That’s why he persuades the dwarves, under Thorin’s leadership, to retake the mountain and kill Smaug.  Thorin requires the retrieval of the precious Arkenstone first, though, which will legitimize him in the eyes of the dwarf kingdom, and that’s why Gandalf thinks to bring a Hobbit along, who is small and sneaky enough to swipe the stone from under Smaug’s nose.  At least that’s the plan.  Okay, it doesn’t bear a lot of scrutiny, and many other plans may have been more reasonable and effective, but that’s what gets the quest off the ground and eventually pits the company face-to-face with the awakened fire-breather Smaug.