Movie Review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is the very epitome of proper and pompous hobbit-hood.  He likes nothing better than pottering around his garden, enjoying a good meal and never letting anything disturb the peace.

Words like 'adventure' and 'exciting' are bad in his worldview.  Particularly so when the likes of Gandalf (Ian McKellen) turn up telling him that he should have an exciting adventure himself.

Bilbo promptly shuts Gandalf out of his house and gets on with rearranging his doilies.  But the business isn't over, as far as the grey wizard is concerned.

By evening meal, the first of thirteen dwarves has arrived and he's turning Bilbo's nice, tidy home upside down.  Stunned and outraged, Bilbo rushes around trying to keep order, as well as ordering out these chaotic elements in his life.  There's an unequivocal 'no', when the offer is made for him to go on a quest with them.

The dwarves, now joined by Gandalf himself, are planning to reclaim their homeland from the destruction wrought by a dragon.  They need a hobbit; and Gandalf thinks that hobbit should be Bilbo.

Thus the scene is set for an epic two and a half hours crossing Middle Earth to the very sight of the dwarven Lonely Mountain.  Along the way, Bilbo really will learn that there's more to life than knowing what to do with crocheted napkins.

Most of the moments of disconnect between Tolkien and Jackson's visions come in the form of interpretation.

For example, Radagast the Brown is played with brilliant eccentricity by Sylvester McCoy.  He's portrayed as utterly zany and so close to nature that he has birds nesting in his hair. 

There's a comment later, which implies that the wizard is permanently tripping on magic mushrooms.  Though not said so blatantly as all that.

He's a fun character, who is bound to become a firm favorite with children.  I laughed at his antics, so the amusement is there for adults too.

He's not so well formed in Tolkien's tales.  The characterization could have gone in any direction.  This one was pure Jackson and (yes, I'll go there, considering Sylvester's acting history) the real McCoy.

Other interpretations are very literal.  For example, the stone giants actually form mountains; and those are very dangerous to pass.

Then there are moments when the movie does detour from the book narrative quite considerably. The scene where Gandalf throws his voice to distract mountain trolls is transformed into something else.  The change didn't make very much sense in the context of the movie; but it looked cinematically wonderful. 

Thus proving that Jackson did occasionally slip into style over content. 

But on the whole, the movie was fairly faithful to Tolkien's world.  Nothing too jarring, nor enough to have me up in arms about it anyway.

When I think of The Hobbit, it's a charming tale written for children.  Tolkien's own children to be precise.  It's light and airy, where The Lord of the Rings was dark and complex.  It's the most enchanting of nursery stories.

But Peter Jackson had to marry this up with the trilogy that has already been released.  Fans of those films would want more of the same.

The compromise seems to have come in finding the darker points of The Hobbit and elevating them to the fore.  Then adding a lot of battle scenes, where previously there were none.  I really don't recall that amount of orcs being in the original tale.  Goblins, yes; but orcs swarming all over the place?  Same race, I know, but definitely there for continuity with the chronologically later movies.

Further dramatic tension is added in scenes like, for example, mountain trolls threatening to dismember Bilbo.  It looked good.  But I don't quite understand why the dwarves would endanger themselves, at this point in the narrative, to save him.

All of this re-balancing of the story served mostly to turn the attention onto the dwarves themselves.  We see it all through Bilbo's eyes, but the movie's tale doesn't appear to be as much about him as them.  They had the darker, less feel-good story to tell.

However, the story's songs themselves received two compositions.  It was a great thrill to finally hear some of those poems put to music, like 'Misty Mountains'.  Top marks from me here.

Peter Jackson's movie spectacularly manages to fail the Bechdel Test on every single count.

However, in Jackson's defense, he was working from a classic novel.  In Tolkien's The Hobbit, there are no female characters at all.  Hence the fact that Galadriel turns up is actually an insertion by the director.

Nor is it likely to be his last.  In March 2011, the Mary Sue reported that the latest trilogy is likely to include at least two more female characters.  While Primula Brandybuck does get a mention in Tolkien's wider work, she's not actually in this novel.  Nevertheless Fran Walsh will play her in one of the future movies.

The final female will be a wood elf played by Saorse Ronan.

Tolkien purists are not going to like these insertions at all.  But they wouldn't.  The question for those trying to evaluate the silver screen portrayal of female roles is will they actually count?

Galadriel is shown in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as the final word in just about everything. It's even implied that Gandalf and the dwarves have to seek her permission to go on their quest.  That's for no good reason that I could ascertain.

She's also telepathically wise in uncovering all potential deceit in her presence.  Though not the one that actually matters.  (The entire franchise would collapse, if Galadriel was consistent. She'd know about Sauron as soon as he entered Rivendell.)

Galadriel is strong, graceful, beautiful, womanhood in perfection.  She's Galadriel!  And in her wisdom, she will only trust men in her councils or on her quests.  What kind of role model is that precisely?

And that part where she was messing with Gandalf's hair, was that flirting with him or mothering him?  I really can't recall any of that in Tolkien's books.  But as Galadriel wasn't even there in this particular book, then I suppose that the floor was wide open with what to do with her.