The Hobbit; unexpected journey and announcements for future films. (partial review)

I'm not sure if this counts as a review or whether it's just a collection of thoughts about the film/films to come. (I've tried my hardest not to include too many spoilers btw.)

5/10

I will say that this is a painful experience, well in some ways it is, in others it is a pleasure. As a fan of the book I was perplexed how The Hobbit needed 3 movies to cover it when the Hobbit book is probably only half as long as the Fellowship of the Ring (the 1st book) in the LOTR trilogy.

Screen time comparison to LOTR?

I remember when the 3 LOTR films came out about 12(?) years ago, I reminded myself to cut Peter Jackson some slack, the books could be a slog to read in places and very long; the fact that they would be condensed into 3 movies was amazing. So I understood that in the adaption process there would be characters and details lost, some event changes, and various other "not quite book-exact" funny business going on to make the whole thing workable. I forgave the LOTR Trilogy simply because I had to, and if you took it on it's own merit (and I often do with book-to-movie adaptions) (pretend there never was a book to start with) it was very, very good. It had an epic-proportion story, a plot that was interesting and followable and it had great actors playing the characters.
With LOTR they had to take lesser characters out and fill their places with other re-occurring characters (Arwen taking Frodo to Rivendell) simply because with the screen time limit to include all the main characters, the lesser characters and the one-off-appearance characters wouldn't leave a lot of the time required for the main actors to flesh out their characters and give them the back story they needed to be in some ways relatable. (Insert more over-use of the word "characters" here!)

It was much harder to do this in the Hobbit. With 13 dwarves finding the time to give them all a sufficient amount of lines to keep them as anything other than feeling like a side note or misc-role-fillers was clearly difficult. The funny thing about adaptions is that in the book 13 dwarves feels like a tool used to pretty much tell the story that situations Bilbo finds himself in are often imperfect and complicated. Bar the first meeting underhill to start the story, and the fact that if you didn't have all 13 dwarves traditional Tolkien fans would really have gone mad. The story would have worked just as well, if not better with less dwarves. In fact there is a voice at the back of my head that wonders if it's taking 3 films to tell the story just because all the actors want their pound-of-flesh/screen time. Especially as it feels like a nod towards Snow white, where the dwarves seem to have set roles, happy, grumpy, dopey, bashful, hungry (if Bombur had a SW counterpart), and little else resulting in 2D personalities with very little depth.
Rather than blame this on the actors however it makes me feel for them, there are a good handful of well knowns that don't get adequate chance to bring their characters to life.

The actors themselves?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_%28film_series%29#Cast
TBH I really liked Martin Freeman as Bilbo. And I think this is an easy role for Martin, since he played Arthur Dent, another character who was an accidental adventurer who liked his home comforts. There are a lot of similarities between Bilbo and Arthur even though they have different stories and settings. Martin certainly lived upto Ian Holms predefined eccentricity quota for Bilbo, and for book fans this definitely was the "Tookish" streak spoken of in the book being fulfilled and not left out.

Ian McKellen I had assumed would be reprising the role of Gandalf and as ever did his job of playing him very well, though again with the screen time limits had I not seen LOTR I wonder if I'd have felt the same character depth as someone who had already SEEN INTO THE FUTURE as it were... (Ditto: Andy Serkis as Gollum, and Hugo Weaving as Elrond.)

I didn't recognise most of the actors playing the dwarves, but I recognised Aidan Turner right away (as a Being Human fan) and James Nesbitt took a bit to figure out under the costume but was familiar immediately even if the name didn't come to mind as fast.

Oh and I totally want to go live in the woods and become a shroom-head with my new adopted grandad Radagast (AKA Sylvester McCoy).

The Animation and technical Gandalfery*...

Animation was very good, for example the close ups of the wargs you fealt like you could reach out and feel individual hair tufts between your fingers (AND this isn't in the fad of 3D either). TBH I can't really say much about the special effects, I expected great quality animation and I got it. < insert smiley face >

Future films and other comments...

I know I just said "I understood that in the adaption process there would be characters and details lost, some event changes, and various other "not quite book-exact" funny business going on to make the whole thing workable." (re:lotr) and more or less said I'm applying the same logic to the Hobbit films but there is one thing that truly gets me and I'd be interested to see if it ends up true.

• Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel:^[40]

A female elf from Mirkwood. She is the Chief of the Guards for the Elvenking, Thranduil. Her name means "daughter of the wood". Peter Jackson has confirmed there will be no romantic connection to Legolas. Philipha Boyens stated that she was there so that there would be a female character in The Hobbit: "She’s our redhead. We created her for that reason. To bring that energy into the film, that feminine energy. We believe it’s completely within the spirit of Tolkien."^[59]

^{I'm not annoyed at this because I'm an ex Orlando fan girl, I'm actually pissed at this because I don't believe it's in the spirit of Tolkien. And with the aforementioned screen time limit I can't see why they are inventing new and unnecessary characters to suck up time to when they could use the time better elaboratingng on other (actually-in-the-books) characters. Also I'm a little bit miffed PJ didn't just make the romantic connection (seeing as there are plenty of other fake/added events anyway) and feel the only reason he's said there isn't going to be a romantic connection is because Bloom's fangirls would string him up before you could say "shattered illusions".
Speaking of which...}
If I had known that cinemas now showed 45 mins of ads before a 3hr approx film that included a behind the scene's featurette of the film I was just about to see ruining the immersion experience and stabbing you with the feeling of lost magic like a magician who has just explained how the trick works even before they do the fucking trick -BREAAAATHHEEE!!- I'd have waited in the lobby for another half an hour and took the oportunity for a last minute piss to avoid trying to hold it for about half the film. Which reallllllly didn't help me enjoy the film when coupled with my newly developed ADHD that comes with living in 2 hour segments thanks to a newborn. Alternatively (and I think I will do this with the 2nd and 3rd Hobbit films) I'll not give a flying fuck about the cinema, and just wait till it come out on DVD then I can pause it halfway to go to the toilet or have a real drink like a cup of tea rather than that watered down chemical compound that comes out of a plastic tap that they serve you in the Vue. :P

Summary

Take it on it's own merit. If you are a book fan that is what is best; take it on its own merit or pay a hypnotist to erase it from your memory. If you are not a book fan then skip this step and go straight to enjoying an over wise visually stunning and enjoyable film.

<sup>That's all for now.


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*If you didn't get this joke you seriously need to gtfo.</sup>