Obligatory Hobbit Movie Reaction Post

I liked the Hobbit movie a lot more than I expected to, which, I suspect, has everything to do with not having read (or fully reread) the book since I was a kid and having little investment in canonicity. I also went in expecting the film to feel bloated and self-indulgent, so I was psychologically set up to be pleasantly surprised. All in all, the almost three hours went by very fast, and I look forward to seeing it again and to seeing the next film.

Below, a good/bad review and some personal reflections. Light spoilers.

The Good
* The acting and casting overall. Some highlights...

Martin Freeman: Perfect as Bilbo. An excellent casting choice and an excellent actor. He didn’t put a furry foot wrong ever.

Ian McKellen as usual.

Ian Holm and Elijah Wood -- not too much to do but good reprises of their characters and a nice bridge between films.

Hugo Weaving! He was too old to play Elrond circa 2000, and as far as I can tell, they air-brushed him for this, which was necessary, but damn... I was never fond of his Elrond in LotR. I found him too dour and disapproving and too limited in emotional range. He undid all that here, striking a really nice balance between impressive and authoritative, but also personable and, well, deep--not in the sense of philosophically deep but in the sense of having deep roots in a long life, of being at ease with himself.

Dwarves: they were all good and nicely differentiated. And nice accents.

* Pacing. I was pretty sure the film would feel padded to Michelin Man proportions, but it didn’t. While Bilbo got a little lost as protagonist, the interweaving of the Hobbit plot with preamble on the War of the Ring was quite well done. It all felt relevant, and it trekked along at a good clip.

* Radagast. He’s been a pet favorite of mine since I was a kid, truly one of the unsung heroes. And while this Radagast bears little superficial resemblance to the Radagast in my fanon, it was lovely to see him, and his essence came through so well: a believable mix of bumbling, eccentric hedgehog hermit and very wise and powerful wizard.

* The Goblin King: hilarious in a very Hobbit-appropriate way, and on a more serious note, a nice contrast to the more severe Mordor-style Orcs. This gives a welcome sense of cultural variation and, in the context of the whole series, creates good rising tension toward a more grim showdown with Sauron.

* The Ring: as in Fellowship, convincingly powerful and scary, even without Bilbo realizing it.

* Production values: high as always--sets, scenery, etc. Much prettiness.

* The music: nice across the board and good song inclusions.

The Bad

* Too many fight scenes. This can be broken down into three problems: 1) Too. 2) Many. 3) Fight Scenes.

1) (Too much.) They were over the top and suffered from the classic Hollywoodish problem of making fighting so fantastically unrealistic that it ceases to have any emotional impact. I really don’t buy that a bunch of beleaguered Dwarves, however well trained in the martial arts, can batter their way through endless Orcs and Goblins for what seems like hours and show no fatigue and virtually no injury. And that makes me not suspend my disbelief and not care.

2) (Too many.) If the pacing suffered anywhere, it was here. It got repetitious and boring.

3) (Fight scenes.) As a friend observed, this is not what The Hobbit is about, and whether or not one cares about being true to the book, that’s a legitimate point. Drama, heroism, adventure, danger, sacrifice--these things can all exist in the absence of sword swinging, and most often do, and that less-sung heroism is what The Hobbit foregrounds, what it is designed to teach its child audience to value, a heroism not dependent on violence. This was particularly undercut in making Bilbo charge to Thorin’s defense with Orc-slaying kickassery. That’s not Bilbo and not the point. Of course, fighting happens, but a lot of more quirky and interesting stuff, like outsmarting Trolls, got overpowered by the CGI Orc hoards. Speaking of which...

* CGI. I’m tired of it. It’s not just The Hobbit, and it’s not Peter Jackson’s fault the whole industry is like this, but it looks fake. And here’s the ironic bit: Ralph Bakshi’s Orcs are scarier than Peter Jackson’s. Because they look real. Because they are a bunch of actors in SCA costumes being shot in silhouette, jerking around restlessly and irritably against a suitable soundtrack of snarling and muttering. I wouldn’t want to meet them on a dark night: Check it out. I can’t imagine meeting Jackson’s Orcs because they don’t look real.

* Galadriel. I’m glad she was there. The film needs a woman (also glad Bilbo’s mum got a mention). And I do appreciate that playing an incredibly wise and powerful 10,000-year-old woman who looks young and gorgeous is a tall order when a) no actor can be as amazing as she’s supposed to be and b) “young and gorgeous woman,” in our society, defaults to not old, wise, and powerful. But there has to be a better way than standing stock still and speaking at one-half normal speed with almost no inflection or facial expression. That doesn’t look badass; it just looks like trying too hard. Now, this mostly worked in Fellowship because when the Fellowship meets Galadriel, she’s acting as the Lady of Lothlorien and trying to wow them. But there’s no reason for her to put that act on indefatigably while chatting alone with Gandalf or in a private meeting with a couple of wizards she known for millennia and her son-in-law. It undercut her presence, and that’s a shame because I want her to be awesome.

* Thorin’s Orcish arch-enemy. Dull and unnecessary.

The Mixed
* Gollum. I have the same feelings here as I did in LotR. For one thing, I wish he weren’t CGI; I want him to feel like a person. I do appreciate the effort to make him sympathetic, to emphasize his Hobbitish characteristics and drive home that he wasn’t born evil but is just a person the Ring destroyed. But Gollum is terrifying, too, precisely because he is just a person the Ring destroyed. Metaphorically, he could be any of us. And he needs, at certain points, to be terrifying, not just badly behaved or unpleasant to be around in a big, baby blue-eyed, Donald Duckish way. These movies use him too often for comic relief. Yes, sometimes he says and does funny things, but he is not a comic character, and I want him to have more weight. For instance, his final screaming about hating Baggins forever is scarier in the Rankin-Bass cartoon than in this film. I mean, in the Rankin-Bass cartoon.... It was scarier because the acting/direction was more extreme and underwritten by a freaky echo, and it sounded like a curse hurtling down through the ages, whereas here it sounds like a manic weirdo is ranting a bit, and it’s not enough.

* Thorin as Aragorn. I liked the handsome, heroic Thorin overall. I understand the cinematic desire for a handsome, noble action hero. His acting was good. But it does seem a bit repetitious. And I wonder why it just can’t be enough to have a quirky, traditionally Dwarvish Thorin. What’s the message really? That Bilbo’s heroism isn’t heroic enough? That understated guys from the Shire risking their lives for their friends can’t be sexy? I’m not sure I’m happy with the underlying assumptions. (Again, this is a broad social complaint more than a complaint about this movie, which is doing what it supposedly has to to earn back it’s massive budget.)

Personal
I cried--not because the movie was especially a tear-jerker but because The Hobbit is one of the oldest stories in my constellation. It was a major part of my mental landscape when I was three, which is about as far back as my conscious memories go. And while I’ve since largely detached from it and become closer to LotR, they are all entangled, and watching the story retold is a little like watching a lot of family members on screen, reliving their lives... not least because, in my head, several of my fanonical OCs or canon characters from the Middle-earth were, in fact, watching several of their family members being reenacted on screen. These are big emotions. And the Ring is always heavy.

(Reposted from my Dreamwidth blog.)