The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage
The time has come for Hobbit to take it's rightful place in the ranks of my personal all-time movie disappointments. I've thought for a long time that things would end this way, but the optimist in me never could give up hope until I saw the movie with my very own eyes (regardless of how many negative reviews I read and heard). Now that I've seen it, though, Hobbit instantly becomes one of the major entries on that list of disappointments.
First place on that list will forever belong Star Wars: Episode I. In 1999, I was a 13 year old who had seen all the Star Wars movies and heard endlessly from people older than me about the incredible influence the original trilogy had had on their lives. With Episode I through III, I envisioned that my generation could have finally a Star Wars to call our own. Of course, we all know how that turned out. Episode II and Episode III aren't bad movies in my opinion, but Episode I certainly is, and none of them are good enough to carry the Star Wars name.
Ironically, the same year Episode I came out to my great disappointment, a little movie called The Matrix utterly floored me. At the time, being a less cynical youth, I never dreamed that there would be a sequel to The Matrix. So when they announced that there would be two sequels, a trilogy, I could barely contain my excitement. Could The Matrix actually be Star Wars for my generation? I was hopeful. Then I saw The Matrix Reloaded. And I suffered the second biggest movie-related disappointment of my life. In hindsight, Reloaded isn't as bad as I, and many others, thought it was at the time (although some of the effects look much worse now), but the third movie, Matrix Revolutions, was awful, and the entire ordeal only served to harm the legacy of the first Matrix movie, which I actually think has become underrated in the intervening years.
But all that was fine, because I did eventually get my generation's Star Wars, in the form of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It helped that the timing was perfect. The movies came out annually from 2001-2003, coinciding with my first three years of high school. I was becoming a young adult at the time, finding myself, making new friends, and becoming enamored with movies. And Lord of the Rings was everything I could have wanted: epic, whimsical, fantastic. Those qualities, coupled with incredible effects, acting, and music, made those movies instant classics.
The idea of a movie version of The Hobbit has been floating around a long time, and it made perfect sense given the success of the first three movies. If you had told me in 2003 that Peter Jackson was making a Hobbit movie, I would have forked over the admission free right then and there. But in the years between Return of the King and Hobbit, my enthusiasm for the project lessened. Peter Jackson was either doing nothing or making forgettable movies like King Kong and Lovely Bones. I begin to think maybe he was a one-hit wonder, and questioned whether he was the right guy for Hobbit. So when Guillermo del Toro was floated as a name to potentially take the reigns as director, I got excited. I thought a new director with a different vision might be a good idea for Hobbit.
Unfortunately, that fell through. And Jackson was back in the saddle. Still, I convinced myself, it might be good. Jackson did seem to have a special connection with the LOTR universe, and that might mean he could recapture the magic of the original movies. Then it was announced that The Hobbit would be split into three movies. One book? Into three movies? That was when I lost all hope. That was when I realized the studio was more concerned with their pocket book, and Jackson with his ego, then making a decent movie.
And the result is The Hobbit. I can honestly say today that I feel a fraction of the anguish that fans of the original Star Wars felt when they saw Episode I for the first time. Watching this pale imitation of something so beloved to me lurch across the screen for three hours was truly painful. In fact, the only thing this movie succeed in doing was to make me want to watch Lord of the Rings. I have a laundry list of complaints a mile long about The Hobbit, but first I will give credit where credit is due: the special effects are still amazing (I did not see the 48 fps version, which apparently suffered in that area), and Martin Freeman is very good as Bilbo. OK, I think that does it for the positive stuff.
Now on to all the things I hated. As other reviews of Hobbit have helpfully pointed out, most of the problems of this movie stem from it being over-long. The decision to stretch The Hobbit (which has a much less dense story than any of the three Lord of the Rings books) into three movies is a curious one; the decision to make each of those movies three hours long is just an asinine one. There are too many scenes where nothing is happening that drag on forever, too many "huh? what?"-inspiring interludes that contribute nothing (hello rock giants)! Additionally, Hobbit is undoubtedly one of the most repetitive movies in recent memory. There should be a drinking time for every time the characters are running from a threat, with a wide shot showing their progress. And every time the characters are in trouble only for salvation to come from an unlikely source (complete with epic music, of course).
The movie is at it's embarrassing worst when it tries to ape the original Lord of the Rings movies, and it suffers from a serious identity crisis throughout. The Hobbit book is far more whimsical and lighthearted than Lord of the Rings, but Jackson tries too often to shoehorn in some of the epic, dark grandiose of those movies, and it just doesn't work. And how about the utterly forgettable characters? As I mentioned before, Freeman is good, but remember Lord of the Rings? Those movies launched the careers of Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom, and featured countless other memorable characters who shared a number of now classic, unforgettable scenes. I can't even name one dwarf in this movie. And Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Elijah Wood, they are all just kind of there. Everyone is going through the motions. This movie doesn't 1/10 the heart of the original movies.
Perhaps the greatest insult I can give to The Hobbit is that I'm pretty sure I won't see the next movie in the theaters. In fact, the thought of a sequel coming out next year, and then another the year after that, is just depressing. The first movie was the decapitation, and the second and third movies will be the inevitable parading of the disembodied head around town square. Watching The Hobbit for me was akin to watching a three hour funeral. Just knowing that Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema are raiding my childhood is good enough. I don't need to sit back and watch them do it, too.
Verdict: 5/10
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