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Essays, Not Rants! 039: Final Exam: The Hobbit
It’s finals time at NYU. Folks are churning out essays and cramming a semester of information in their heads. So here I’ll be doing something different (but not really): let’s look at The Hobbit.
I saw The Hobbit’s midnight showing at the IMAX here. It was good, clearly. Perfect, nah, not quite. Not Return of the King, but then what is? So where’d The Hobbit go right and where’d it go wrong?’
Right off the bat, it’s a great adaption. It went right for the heart of the story, then built up a proper body around it. What was the book about? Bilbo Baggins going on an adventure with thirteen dwarves and a wizard to reclaim a lost kingdom, fight a dragon, a war, and all that. The quest is still there.
Gandalf’s adventure in Mirkwood and Dol Guldur has been fleshed out some (fitting, as Gandalf’s references to the Necromancer weren’t included in the film adaption of The Fellowship of the Ring). All this serves to give the story more weight. See, now the slaying of Smaug is doubly important due to the risk of Sauron having him on his side. The follow up to the amazing Lord of the Rings Trilogy is now an epic too.
More than that, though, they built on the characters. Bilbo and Thorin especially have really strong arcs, expanding on Tokien’s work. We get Bilbo growing out of being a comfortable, boring Hobbit to the adventurer we all know him as. We see it when he’s taunting the troll, as he slowly grows confident throughout the movie, and ultimately in his actions in the tree at the end. Similarly, we see Thorin’s slow and begrudging acceptance of the hobbit into their company. The core arc of An Unexpected Journey is Bilbo’s growth and gradual adoption both of and by the dwarves. It’s crucial that this happens, due to events that happen later in the book. We absolutely need to have an attachment to these characters and their bond, else later events will have little impact.
Where The Hobbit does fail, however, is in its pacing. Yes, there were plenty of burritos being thrown around, but sometimes there seemed to be a few too many. An example would be the scene with the stone giants. We’ve just left Rivendell and are about to have the run in with Gollum and the goblins in the Misty Mountains. At this point, we don’t need another burrito. There are no character moments (besides Thorin helping Bilbo back up, which could easily be added to another sequence) nor any plot development vital to the scene.
Overall the film could have been tightened to keep the necessities without feeling draggy. Perhaps most of these issues are due to the film being stretched out into three films rather than just two. Adding bits here and being reluctant to cut others yields a movie that feels a lot like setup (rather than the essentially self-contained epics that was each entry in The Lord of the Rings).
The Hobbit, like The Lord of the Rings before it, once again has a point to be made and makes it quietly but effectively. It’s about being wiling to step out of your comfort zone, it’s about finding home, and, pointedly, what exactly constitutes courage. It’s not heavy handed, it feels natural and it works. Also makes for good Facebook/Twitter/tumblr post material.
But The Hobbit is not The Lord of the Rings. It’s very different both in tone and in nature. Same world, sure, but The Hangover and Saving Private Ryan are both set in The Real World and are both sixty years apart too. Point is: The Hobbit is a wonderful, if imperfect, movie. Go see, but don’t expect The Fellowship of the Ring.
Oh, and for the record, the riddles in the dark scene stands out as an amazing example of both special effects and storytelling, up to and including Biblo taking pity on Gollum. Beautiful.
Editors note: Will this ‘Final Exam’ post be repeated in the future? Who knows. But seeing as Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness both come out around the time I have my next bout of finals...
Also: buy my book In Transit! Support my education!
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