Before we begin looking at The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and its two sequels, let us pour one out for the Hobbit film series that could have been. After the phenomenal success of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, it was inevitable that a live-action Hobbit movie (or movies) would follow. The studios had to delicately untangle the various film rights for Tolkien’s children’s book, but they must have known it would be worth the effort: a Hobbit movie would almost certainly rake in hundreds of millions, if not billions, at the box office.
When the Hobbit movie was finally announced, it was to be a duology, with Guillermo del Toro as director and Peter Jackson in a producing role. I was excited. I’m not a huge del Toro fan, but he seemed like a good choice for the material, and would allow for the Hobbit movies to both fit the world of Jackson’s Rings movies, and be their own thing. That latter point is key: The Hobbit is a very different book than The Lord of the Rings, in genre, tone, and style, and a director like del Toro would help ensure the movie versions kept that distinction.
Two movies also seemed like a good choice. The Hobbit is slim enough to be easily told in one movie (as Rankin-Bass did), but two would allow the scenes to breathe and add more detail and backstory. The choice of subtitles boded well, too: An Unexpected Journey comes from the title of the book’s first chapter along with one of Bilbo’s own scratched-out titles for his “memoir” (“My Unexpected Journey”), and There and Back Again is the book’s actual subtitle. The subtitles suggested two films that would neatly divide the book into the story of Bilbo’s journey to the environs of Erebor (likely ending with the Dwarves imprisoned by the Elvenking), and then picking up with what happened There—the confrontation with Smaug and the Battle of the Five Armies.
Then, for whatever reason, del Toro left the production and Jackson stepped back in as director. I was disappointed that we wouldn’t see del Toro’s vision, but I was happy to see Jackson’s take on the book. After all, his Rings movies are extraordinary. Who didn’t want to see Jackson tackle Tolkien’s other hobbit book?
Unfortunately, the Hobbit films came traipsing along into a cinematic landscape vastly different than their animated precursor. The Rings movies had earned a dragon’s hoard worth of gold, both in money and in Oscars. New Line had taken a big risk with the Rings trilogy, but now they knew any foray into Middle-earth would prove immensely profitable. So it was announced that The Hobbit, despite being shorter than any single volume of its sequel, would also be a film trilogy. The perfect subtitle There and Back Again was dropped in favor of the heavy The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies. Now things did not seem so well, at least to me. Many people seemed happy to hear there would be three movies, since that meant spending more time in Middle-earth, but The Hobbit’s narrative scaffolding simply couldn’t support the weight of that much movie. These films needed to be blockbusters, after all, and blockbusters can’t dawdle and take in the scenery like a hobbit on a hike.
So instead of two movies that could breathe, we got three, purely to make more money, and one of the great classics of children’s literature ended up, like its eponymous hero decades later, feeling, “stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” That the movies deal with the theme of the destructive power of greed is either an incredible irony, or Jackson’s own self-critique of the entire enterprise.
An Unexpected Journey was at least able to keep its suitable subtitle, and it’s the best of the movies, because it’s the one that most closely resembles the book. We even get songs! We only get a brief snippet of “Down, Down to Goblin Town” and nothing of “Tra-La-La Lally” (which is probably for the best), but we get a lively rendition of “That’s What Bilbo Baggins Hates!” and a beautiful, dirge-like “Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold” courtesy of Richard Armitage’s Thorin and the Dwarves.
The Shire scenes are the movies’ best, since they capture the book’s wry humor and delightful premise of a fussy, middle-aged fellow suddenly roped into a fantasy quest (I particularly like the horizontal fold-out section of the contract detailing all the ways Bilbo may die horribly). Martin Freeman is perfect as the young(er) Bilbo, his interactions with Gandalf and the Dwarves a roiling mix of annoyance, fear, and growing intrigue. The silent shot of Bilbo, the morning after the “unexpected party,” realizing the Dwarves have left without him, is masterful, as Freeman’s face registers his simultaneous relief and surprised disappointment. Ian McKellen nicely tweaks his Gandalf to be more mysterious and mischievous, as he initially is in the book, compared to the wiser, more careworn Mithrandir we meet in The Lord of the Rings. This Gandalf has very much earned his reputation as a troublemaker. And god, is it good to see the Shire and Bag-End again.
Also returning from the Rings trilogy is Ian Holm as the older Bilbo, and (briefly) Elijah Wood as Frodo. The frame story puts us right before Fellowship begins, with Frodo heading off to meet Gandalf and Bilbo hiding from his well-wishers and relatives. It’s a nice tie-in with the larger story to come, and it is, frankly, the only one in the entire trilogy that works. It makes sense, too, that Bilbo would want to put down his memoirs in the Red Book before his long-planned departure from the Shire.
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A Spindle Splintered
What makes far less sense is that it takes a good ten minutes just to get to the book’s famous opening line, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Instead, we get a lengthy prologue like we got in Fellowship of the Ring. It’s the first sign that these films are going to be stretched to the breaking point to adapt a children’s adventure into nine hours of epic cinema.
The prologue in Fellowship was necessary, especially since this movie hadn’t been made yet. It was also effective, giving audiences a crash course in Middle-earth history and the story of the One Ring. But part of the joy of The Hobbit is for the reader (or viewer) to discover the story and locales along with Bilbo. We don’t need a lengthy preamble where we meet Thorin, Balin, Thranduil, discover the Arkenstone, and witness Smaug’s attacks on Dale and Erebor. The whole trilogy is already weighted down from the get-go with needless flashbacks and exposition.
Later, we get another lengthy flashback to the Battle of Moria where the Dwarves fought Orcs led by Azog the Defiler (the “Pale Orc”) and Thorin earned his sobriquet Oakenshield. Like the prologue, it’s overlong and ultimately pointless. We get nothing like the liquid cool of the Elves in the Battle of Mount Doom in Fellowship, or the raw power of Sauron as flings aside entire lines of soldiers with a swing of his mace. It’s just tedious, brown-tinted, green screen brawling. And unlike in the book, Azog doesn’t even die. We meet him soon thereafter in the ruins of Weathertop (sigh) with his big white Warg (the Wargs in this trilogy are far more lupine than the ones in the Rings movies. I do like the distinction, as it gives a little more depth to the fauna of Middle-earth and the Orc cultures. Northern Orcs ride wolves; Southern Orcs ride hyenas; both are called Wargs).
Jackson also throws in a flash-sideways, as we meet the wizard Radagast the Brown, who is portrayed by Sylvester McCoy as a flighty hippie who, for inexplicable reasons, appears to have birdshit smeared in his hair. Radagast heals a hedgehog, his house is attacked by giant spiders, and later, he recounts getting ambushed by the ghost of the Witch-king in Dol Guldur. Radagast is only briefly mentioned in the book, and now I understand why. He’s annoying.
Radagast meets up with Gandalf and Company right after their run-in with the trolls (whose stone forms we glimpsed in Fellowship). The troll scene is appropriately tense and gross, though Jackson cuts out the more fairy tale-ish elements like the talking wallet. Azog then makes his move against the Dwarves, and we get a Warg-chase scene that makes the limp Warg scene in Two Towers look grand by comparison. Radagast races around on his bunny sled and the Wargs give chase and none of it makes any visual sense, nor does Gandalf’s discovery of a stone slide that leads to Rivendell. The movie feels as if it has run out of ideas and gas, and we’re only at hour one of ten.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBziFv88jA
Gandalf brings Bilbo and the Dwarves to Rivendell. They have salad for dinner (despite Tolkien’s Elves being notable hunters in the books) and then Elrond reads Thorin’s map in the moonlight. Despite revealing the location and time window of the Lonely Mountain’s secret door, Elrond deems it “unwise” to enter Erebor. Elrond’s skepticism is the first of a running plotline where people second guess the wisdom of Thorin’s quest, despite the fact that this scheme has been co-authored and endorsed by Gandalf, aka Olórin, wisest of the Maiar (this becomes especially dire in the second movie).
Also in Rivendell at this exact moment, somehow, are Galadriel and Saruman. The gang’s all here to have a meeting about the Morgul knife that Radagast found, despite the fact that Gandalf just met Radagast, so none of the other attendees could have known they’d have a pressing matter to discuss, and Gandalf also seems surprised to find the Lady of the Wood and the White Wizard present (also why isn’t Radagast, who fought the Witch-king and was just nearby, not psychically called to the meeting?). Perhaps we are supposed to surmise that two weeks or so have passed (as it does in the book), but the movie certainly makes it seem like this is all happening in the space of an hour or so.
Worse is Jackson’s strange desire to take Sauron’s title “Necromancer” literally, and connect it to the Ringwraiths, who in the world of the movies were somehow defeated and buried in mountside tombs. Nothing in Tolkien’s legendarium suggests how exactly that would work, but whatever. Perhaps some ancient lady of Arnor punched the Witch-king and knocked him out for a few solid centuries. “No living man may kill me” apparently had even more loopholes than we expected.
The White Council scene draws heavily on sketches made by Tolkien that appear in the Unfinished Tales. But whereas Tolkien’s council is a chance to see Gandalf’s wit and wisdom up against Saruman’s arrogance, Jackson simply has Saruman ramble while Galadriel realizes the Dwarves have left. Were they imprisoned? Why do they leave secretly and make it seem like Gandalf is covering for them? What is going on?
Either way, the Dwarves and Bilbo encounter stone giants having a fight (like every scene in these movies, it’s one that’s both brilliantly realized by the Weta design team, and runs for at least a minute too long) and are then captured by goblins right as Bilbo was about to desert the Dwarves and head home (I’m not sure why Bilbo would choose to leave in the middle of the night atop a giant-infested mountain when the Dwarves don’t seem to want him around anyway. Surely he could wait till morning when he’d have less chance of falling into a crevice).
Bilbo’s separated from the Dwarves and winds up in Gollum’s cave, where he discovers the One Ring. The Gollum scene is great, and Andy Serkis reminds us why Gollum was the breakout character of the Rings trilogy, with his beguiling mixture of twisted innocence and lethal danger. The Dwarves, meanwhile, are brought before the scrotal-chinned Great Goblin, who decides to sell them to Azog.
I love the grotesque design of the Great Goblin. He’s appropriately gross and intimidating, distinct from all the other Orcs we’ve encountered, and absolutely looks like someone who’s spent a few decades or centuries mouldering in a mountain hole. The rickety bridges and walkways of Goblin-town are also well done, though it’s not long before they’re swaying and flying like they have the gonzo physics of a rocky outcrop in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.
Then it’s out of the frying-pan and into the fire, as Tolkien titled it, only instead of fleeing from a council of Wargs, Thorin and crew are attacked by Azog and his Warg-riders. Bilbo gets his big heroic moment as he saves Thorin from being wolf-chow, and then the Eagles arrive and whisk the good guys away to the Carrock, while leaving Azog conveniently alive for the next two movies.
Atop the bear-shaped Carrock, Thorin embraces Bilbo, and then Bilbo glimpses Erebor and decides the hard part’s over, though of course the shot of a dragon eye emerging from a pile of gold tells us he’s being a little overly optimistic (frankly, the view of the vast, dark forest called “Mirkwood” ought to have clued him in, as well).
While we still have two movies to go, Bilbo’s story arc has more or less been completed, as he’s proven himself to both the Dwarves and himself as a capable and brave companion. Fortunately he has the Ring now, which gives him an excuse for how much he’ll disappear from the action, and narrative focus, of the next two movies.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is not without its pleasures, and has enough of the book’s whimsical tone and character work here and there to make it a worthwhile watch, but it’s too bogged down by its need to be a prequel to The Lord of the Rings. Who knows what we might have seen from del Toro? Or even Jackson at the helm of a duology? I suppose it doesn’t help to dwell on the might-have-beens. All we have to decide is what to do with the Hobbit movies that have been given to us.
Austin Gilkeson has written for Tin House, McSweeney’s, Vulture, Foreign Policy, The Toast, and other publications. He lives just outside Chicago with his wife and son.
There is a lot of good in all three films. Just enough for a brave editor to cut it into Tolkien’s actual storyline, i.e. one really, really good movie version of The Hobbit. Maybe a long movie, but one.
Actually, Peter Jackson was originally going to direct before Del Toro. But then Jackson got into a lawsuit with New Line Cinemas and they took the movies away from him and gave them to Del Toro. It’s not officially clear why Del Toro left, but given how long Del Toro was working on preproduction, I’m guessing there were a lot of arguments and creative differences that dragged out preproduction until Del Toro left to get other stuff done. By then the lawsuit and associated bruised feelings were over, so Jackson got the Hobbit back.
I like Patrick Rothfuss’s take on the Hobbit movies (https://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2012/02/concerning-hobbits-love-and-movie-adaptations/).
Fundamentally, The Hobbit was a little children’s book that did well for what it was. It did not have enough plot to support a trilogy of epic action movies.
Starting to read this review and being reminded of the opening scenes, I got the urge to watch this movie again. Then as you got deeper into the movie, you reminded me of all the reasons *not* to re-watch this.
The scenes in the Shire are fantastic. And Gollum/Bilbo riddle-game is perfection. Apart from that, not much to see here.
One of the things that really jarred me when I first watched this (that I don’t really see mentioned elsewhere) and that told me this movie was not crafted with the same loving care as LoTR was the scene near the end, when the pines were burning and Thorin strides dramatically to meet Azog. You know what that scene was scored to? Used the same music as the music from Weathertop in LotR, where the Nazgul closed around the hobbits. Not quite sure if the intent was deliberate to parallel Thorin with the Witch King, but…that musical thematic dissonance threw me so hard out of the Hobbit Trilogy, I don’t think I ever recovered. That scene told me that the people making this movie had so little thought of the importance of musical themes, but simply wanted “dramatic music” for Thorin. Disgraceful.
Good review. This is the only one of the Hobbit movies I actually saw. It was enough to cause me to steer clear of the sequels. Completely bogged down by the overriding need to link it to tLotR movies, and need to have a CGI porn fest. I good call on the ‘prologue’ scene; I felt that was a very unnecessary move, though I can see why they went that way. It would have always been a temptation to have a prologue to show Smaug’s initial attack on Erebor all those years ago–and hey–it worked well in Fellowship!
I’ve heard of, though not seen, multiple fan edit on the internet that take all three movies and and edit them down to one 2-3 hour movie that seems somewhat coherent and sticks more or less to the book story.
My thought on the first movie was “That was a good movie that was 30-45 minutes too long.” The same applied to the other two. I’m on the fence whether it would have been better as one or two movies, but I know for sure that three was the wrong number.
This is the second place I’ve seen it implied or stated that the dwarves did their own singing. I agree that the song was absolutely mesmerizing, but was it really the actors singing with no tonal manipulation? I was a music major as an undergraduate, and at my (admittedly small) school, there was only one student with a deeper voice than me and only a couple who were as deep, and this song was right at the edge of my useful range. I find it hard to believe that a group of people chosen primarily for their acting abilities would happen to be able to sing notes (beautifully!) that are outside the range of the vast majority of trained singers.
I didn’t mind a lot of the changes in the storyline since I could recognize at least some of them as being based on actual backstory created by Tolkien, such as Sauron hiding out at Dol Guldur, Gandalf investigating there during the time he left the dwarves on their own, and Sauron being driven out of Dol Guldur. I found one thing really annoyed me, though: the changes to the pine trees scene. I didn’t like it when Thorin jumped down to battle Azog, nor when all the other dwarves joined in. But having Bilbo do something as bold as leaping down to save Thorin and sticking his as-yet unnamed blade into a warg’s skull really, really annoyed me. The moment when Bilbo found that kind of bravery and drew blood with his blade the first time was supposed to be the same moment he named his blade Sting. I knew they needed a huge dramatic finale for the movie, but this still ticked me off.
One of the things that I wonder about the dishes scene is why would a single middle-aged Hobbit who very pointedly doesn’t like to be bothered have enough dishes and flatware to feed 14 people?
Maybe they’re family heirlooms, dishes his family has used for generations, making his distress at the idea of damaging any of them even easier to understand.
This is me for LotR and The Hobbit
There are some great, high quality fan cuts of the Hobbit movies available. I tried the Maple Cut (made by Maple Films), and I am never going back. It’s cuts the love-triangle and the things drawn from the appendices, and it adds back in more of the dwarves, tightening the focus of the film. I highly recommend checking out fan cuts if you want to watch these movies but dread all the things that didn’t work.
I do still enjoy the first movie but ultimately I agree that this is the definition of bloated.
We have enjoyed the many documentaries/special features that come with the extended editions (there really was a lot of care/effort put into the movie itself) and I also got the impression Jackson was not happy with the trilogy decision and it also came somewhat late in the game which is probably at least part of why the second and third suffered.
But I do agree to an extent that some of the signs are there here. I don’t mind TOO much that they’ve ‘epic-fied’ the Hobbit because I kind of liked the idea of viewing The Hobbit from a more ‘mythic’ lens…and honestly I really wanted to see all those backstory/Appendix scenes. That said Jackson definitely overindulged a bit (I think this is much more apparent later, for me) especially in some of the battles (to the point where I actually think a lot of the ‘extra’ stuff I wanted to see didn’t even make it in!).
And I HATED the whole trope of Azog and Thorin being a personal nemesis to each other and trying to add that whole subplot to it. Almost as much as the love triangle (I don’t hate Tauriel, I Just hate the love triangle).
Where the LOTR movies were a bit too lean, and benefitted from their extended editions, the Hobbit movies were already extended. Good fun, but definitely moved at a different pace than the LOTR movies.
I found it easier to think of the films and the book as being two entirely different beasts. The low-point in the films was the river sequence (which bordered on the ridiculous) whereas I kind of liked the final act.
I think there was another problem which had nothing to do with Jackson. Bilbo’s perspective on events is a critical part of what makes the book work and inevitably this got lost in the transition to screen.
If we’re going to indulge in a bit of “what could have been”, imagine if Peter Jackson had made a stand-alone adaptation of The Hobbit first, and only after it had proved a smash hit, been granted freedom to adapt the Lord of the Rings. Rather than the familiar three volumes, he could have based the series on the Tolkien’s original division into 6 books – that’s still two books (and three films) shorter than Harry Potter. Rather than gluing so much onto The Hobbit that it fell apart at the seams, we could have explored some of the chapters of LotR which had to be skipped over to fit even a 21st Century Director’s Cut. Alas, we can but dream…
Definitely 3 movies was way too much, but more significantly for me was while LotR almost seamlessly matched my imagination and didn’t use CGI unnecessarily , the orcs looked great! – The Hobbit reinvented the look of both orcs and wargs, and added extended video game like, super-hero style action sequences that didn’t suit the world of Tolkien in general and especially not The Hobbit in particular. The encounters with trolls and goblins in the book were sufficient dramatic tension and action without having to resurrect Azog and his minions. And then, while manufacturing ridiculous new material, they reduced the wonderful interlude with Beorn to almost naught.
Don’t mind me, I’m just s grumpy old traditionalist …
One of my friends says that while the book is the hobbit version of events, the movies tell the dwarf version.
@11. Amen! I’ve got a “book edit” of The Hobbit that aims to come as close as possible to the book story using the material of the films. (The editor even went so far as to edit Smaug’s color exiting Erebor so as to make him mostly red.) It’s not perfect, but it’s a version of the film I enjoy introducing people to (instead of dreading). Meanwhile, my nieces are perfectly happy with the old Rankin-Bass version, which they will watch at the drop of a hat if given the chance.
17. Very true!
In that regard, I think it would still have been possible to make a film in which Bilbo was the central character – the hapless innocent abroad – as a sort of black comedy (not unlike the book). The problem is that this would have been so tonally different from the rest of the franchise that Jackson’s fanbase would have ended up hating it.
“Bilbo gets his big heroic moment as he saves Thorin from being wolf-chow”
This is, perhaps oddly, the bit that annoys me the most. Bilbo’s first kill with Sting is a spider. If he’d killed a wolf with it first he’d’ve called it Fang!
I just wish they could have waited to make The Hobbit until after Christopher Tolkien stepped down from running the Trust. Then they would have had much more material to use, including some from Unfinished Tales, that would have fleshed out the story nicely. I’ll admit, I never liked The Hobbit. Even Tolkien in later years said he made a mistake in how he wrote it, and talked down to children in it, which he hated. Besides the bloat, I’m so disappointed that several opportunities were lost, especially a serious battle between the forces of the White Council and the Necromancer. Where were the “devices of Saruman” that were supposedly deployed in their attack? The books give you the feeling there was a small army battle, probably with forces from Lothlorien. The remaining bloat, having nothing to do with the books, just made things worse. The last movie is pretty unwatchable. 2+ hours of cgi battles where you become numb and stop caring.
The one thing I thought these Hobbit movies genuinely contributed to the underlying Middle-Earth saga was giving Gandalf a reason to GAF about Smaug. In the broader LOTR context, taking out a powerful potential ally of Sauron is completely sensible. Rather than just “today I decided to help some dwarves wipe out an endangered species, LOL YOL2”, he’s actively playing the long game against a looming threat.
@@@@@ Ragnarredbeard
Of course Bilbo has a complete set of dishes to entertain! Hobbits love food, and food is meant to be shared. Maybe not with the Sackville-Bagginses, but you know, maybe with an adventurous younger cousin or two.
Honestly, the Hobbit movies brought the flaws of the usually great LOTR movies to the forefront. Once the dwarves burst out of the woods and started fighting trolls and goblins like video game characters, the films lost me, and they never got me back.
The first movie did not have SuperLegolas, action scenes that were clearly there to be ported into the inevitable video game, and of course She Who Must Not Be Named.
Plus the first movie has Andy Serkis, yes, my precioussssss
I did watch all 3 of these movies, but knowing how much bloat there would be, I made sure not to pay to see any of them (borrowed the DVD of the first one from a friend, and checked out the others from the library). I generally agree with the criticisms listed above, except that I really enjoyed Radagast in the movies. I thought McCoy’s performance was fun and sweet, and he was the one piece of extra plot in this trilogy that I thought enhanced things.
I like Radagast too, except for the bird poop all over his head. That’s just stupid. Somebody must have thought that would be funny since he had an inhabited bird’s nest under his hat.
Agree on virtually every point. Also, as @5 & @22 pointed out, there was too much CGI. CGI, obviously, has made for some great movies that could not otherwise have been made. But there is a time and a place – and a limit. Espionage movies, for instance, don’t play well with CGI, even James Bond. Excessive unrealistic CGI harmed Skyfall (ex. the crash of the Underground train) and helped to ruin the atrocious Spectre (ex. the asinine and implausible Day of the Dead precredits sequence). In the LOTR movies, Jackson balanced the extensive use of CGI with other effects techniques, down to the last buckle on a prop costume, so you never felt like you were drowning in it. In contrast, the Hobbit trilogy looked like it used a LOT more CGI, in to its detriment. Maybe it didn’t, but it sure felt like it did, and, since I hadn’t expected that, it was not a preconceived notion on my part.
“The whole trilogy is already weighted down from the get-go with needless flashbacks and exposition.”
In a way but there was a whole new audience out there that did not know the original material; just enjoy it or not for what it is.
Ditto “Foundation” currently playing — I haven’t read the Azimov originals but I’m enjoying it, notwithstanding that it’s apparently somewhat removed from those stories.
I have seen enough to know that I will never watch these abominations, and I will never forgive Peter Jackson for his greed and inability to rein in his puerile sense of humor.
Good analysis. LOTR movies were great, The Hobbit is pretty awful. Radagast is actually one of my favorite characters from the world, and his portrayal in these movies turned me off the whole trilogy – as well, of course, as the made-for-amusement-park-ride goblin scenes and the points mentioned in the post above. Huge disappointment and missed opportunity.
“There is a lot of good in all three films. Just enough for a brave editor to cut it into Tolkien’s actual storyline, i.e. one really, really good movie version of The Hobbit. Maybe a long movie, but one. “
It’s actually been done. The original one is here: https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com/
I personally thought that one was still a bit long and made my own using TolkeinEditor’s cut as a start. I can send links if anyone is interested.
One of the other big problems with the look of the movie is that they filmed and played it at a MUCH higher framerate than LotR. The end result is just uncanny enough that it makes scenes with real actors and real props and real, practical effects that they put a hell of a lot of work into look like CGI.
As far as the content of the movies… The executives at New Line demanding a single relatively short book and whatever relevant background material could be stapled to it become a HUGE EPIC ACTION-PACKED TRILOGY JUST LIKE LORD OF THE RINGS really is the biggest single problem with the whole mess. As someone who was a fan of Tolkien well before the movies came out, I knew going in that there’s just not enough there, even with folding in stuff from Unfinished Tales, for three movies. That decision alone completely screwed up the pacing, which starts out a minor issue in the first movie, a somewhat major one in the second, and almost completely smothers the third to death.
@8 – In the description of Bag End: “…And lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats – the hobbit was fond of visitors.”
I remember watching the first movie with the family. It had this big, long intro about the glorious kingdom of the Dwarves, going over how awesome it used to be.
At the appropriate moment, I managed to crack everyone up by simply saying, “but then everything changed when the Fire Dragon attacked.”
Agree with almost everything in this article.
I thought the movie just barely worked–not quite as The Hobbit but as stories about things that were happening in middle earth around this time. In between not hating the plot and loving the leisurely scenery shots, it inspired me to see the next one in the theaters. Which was a poor decision.
The point that Bilbo’s journey was basically complete in this movie was spot on and something I hadn’t quite realized on my own. It meant the next two struggled to tie things together, padding with invented stories that didn’t work like the love triangle and bloated action sequences.
In the book we continue to get the Bilbo’s eye of view of everything, which grounds the epic on a human (hobbit) scale. It was obvious there was a lot more backstory to the heroic archer Bard or the elf army; it wasn’t at all obvious we needed to see it.