Why This Sucks

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I’m going to get this out of the way right from the get-go: I love the Lord of the Rings films.  The extended editions of those films are, to me, perfect.  I wouldn’t change a frame of any of them, even though you could totally argue Legolas gets all the bitchiest, least-meaningful lines.  It was with a glad heart that I approached the idea of seeing The Hobbit film.  For years, Jackson moved from project to project, never definitively saying whether he would pursue a Hobbit film.  When it was finally announced that he was producing with Guillermo Del Toro directing, I was happy.  I thought if there was one guy who could breathe fresh life into the Tolkien-verse, Del Toro would be a great and unique choice.  When Del Toro left and Jackson stepped back in, I was gleeful.  A mere decade after the release of Fellowship, we were going to get a new Hobbit film.  All of the press releases and Jackson’s video blogs did nothing but bring my expectations to a fever pitch, and I was loving everything I saw.  I was even intrigued by the idea of a film in 48fps, something unseen in cinema up until this films’ release.  Unfortunately, like many films before it, Hobbit 1 was a real letdown of the worst kind.  It was, like the Star Wars prequels before it, a bloated, cgi-infused-yet-vapid attempt at fantasy, proving that not only was making The Hobbit into a movie a bad idea, but also that stretching it into a trilogy was a downright cash-grab.

Expectations are always tricky when it comes to sequels but I think the biggest problem with The Hobbit is that it doesn’t contain any of the emotional importance or rich content of the LOTR trilogy.  The Hobbit, when you break it down, is a simple children’s book.  It follows a simple lead character who goes on a quest to help a band of dwarves steal some treasure.  The Dwarves in this book don’t really factor into anything else happening in Middle-Earth at this time, so this self-contained story has little effect on the world it is set in.  It is this problem that permeates throughout the entire film.  For the most part, LOTR’s characters and plot were integral to Middle-Earth.  Much of the geography, distance and warfare was specific to the area in which it was located.  In The Hobbit, it doesn’t matter if the crew is rolling through Helm’s Deep or motherfucking Grove Street from GTA, moreso than the other trilogy this movie is about a bunch of assholes walking, as Clerks II said.  The film never asks the questions LOTR does about identity and morality and, in my mind, leave the viewer with a whole lot less to relate to.

Another severe issue with this film, which I think will continue in the next two, is the repetitive nature of certain plot points.  I was absolutely disappointed when I saw Gandalf once again use a butterfly to summon the Eagles which would then fly the heroes to safety.  I was upset to see certain musical cues misinterpreted in this film, such as the scene where, for some unknown reason, Thorin rises to beat on the CGI goblin-boy to one of the evil Ringwraith themes from LOTR.  It was an odd moment that seemed like it was copied and pasted from a greater film, although pasted incorrectly and without the proper emotional weight.  The Hobbit relies too much on what has worked before and chooses to not innovate or show anything new.  When you look at Fellowship, the main Uruk-Hai was a guy in a suit and it fucking plays when you watch it today.  Seeing this goblin Azog asshole be totally CGI is a letdown and takes me out of what I’m watching.  If I wanted to see great graphics I would be playing a fucking video game, you assholes, not paying $16.00 bucks a ticket to sit through subpar 3D effects and a bunch of dwarves singing about bullshit.

The most criminal thing about Hobbit 1 is the fact that it gets a few key things SO right.  The entire riddles in the dark sequence was spot-on, featuring another dynamic performance by Andy Serkis.  The digital effects employed in this scene really harken back to the LOTR trilogy’s emphasis on building the practical effect first, then adding the CGI as a sort of complementary bonus.  The opening moments of this film, as well, were a flooding wave of nostalgia as well.  Seeing Frodo happy at the beginning all but brought a goddamn tear to my eye and it reminded me why these characters meant something to me.  That’s the problem with The Hobbit.  I never got to see what it is about these characters that matters to me.  Bilbo worked so much better in LOTR because he was an old, regretful, ignorant hobbit who lived his life, loved his family and yearned for something more.  Here, Bilbo is going through the motions in a paint-by-the-numbers plot about proving he is worth a damn.  It gets old fast, and I don’t know how this character can have a more meaningful arc as the series continues.  Gandalf was largely wasted here, with his sparse subplot not really factoring into anything going on, and even Elrond, Galadriel and Saruman’s appearances seemed like empty shells of their previous performances, which was sad to see.

I never thought I’d say this but Peter Jackson has gone the way of George Lucas, investing time and energy into the importance of visual effects without backing up those effects with innovative storytelling.  I hope I’m wrong about the next two films, but I’m probably not going to be, and that is why this sucks.