Kotas Reviews The Hobbit

Today I saw the Hobbit. First, a little background. The Hobbit was THE book that got me into fantasy literature. I was sick for a week or two one summer as a small kid, and I couldn’t really do anything. I found a copy of The Hobbit amongst my parents books. I read that thing like 3 times...in a row. My grandfather recorded the original animated movie off of HBO or something the next year, and I watched the hell out of that too. Wore out the tape. I love this book, perhaps more than any other book written so far. Be warned, beyond this point thar be spoilers. Skip to the final paragraph for the FACE rating and final word.

This film is not the movie of the book. It is a movie based on the book, and more to the point, it is a movie based on a book as seen through the lens of the previous Lord of the Rings films. This is not a children’s bedtime story, this is an epic tale that is clearly a prequel to an even more epic tale. The themes have been increased in scope, and in doing so have changed some of the underlying nature of them. Bilbo is still our unlikely hero, but he’s much less...bumbling. In fact, the entire set of dwarves, mostly comical figures apart from Thorin in the book, have become more of a rough and tumble assemblage of adventurers. Thorin is an appropriately brooding “King Without a Kingdom but Gonna Get it Back” fellow. Gandalf is, of all the characters, the least changed. Enigmatic, yet with a twinkle in his eye and a penchant for sage advice, as is befitting a wizard.

The opening narration is a particularly good bit of work. Ian Holmes and Elijah Woods reprise their roles as Old Man (er Hobbit) Bilbo and Frodo in the framing device of “Bilbo finally getting around to writing down his story in full.” Both of the actors looked comfortable back in the roles and I enjoyed it. The transition to “60 years ago” was nicely done. I must say, Martin Freeman does a simply wonderful job as Bilbo, always giving off the right impression I would have for the hero in his situation. In fact, the acting is excellent from almost everyone. The dwarves at the party hits all the correct notes from the book, and the cleanup scene is well executed. From this point however, the movie makes some considerable departures from the book. Oh, none of the main story elements are changed, but...well, I’ll get to it.

Take for example the troll scene. I enjoyed the portrayal of our dear friends Bert, Tom, and Bill Huggins. But the scene is different. The dwarves didn’t lose their baggage when a pony fell in the river, instead Fili and Kili are counting up the ponies and realize two are missing. They draft Bilbo to assist in the recovery. The trolls have taken them, of course. Bilbo sneaks in to try and set them free, but due to a bit of bad luck is found out when he tries to pick pocket a tiny knife (for a troll) to cut the rope for the ponies’ pen. Kili leaps in to try and save him...along with the rest of the dwarves. A frightful row ensues, with the dwarves attacking and beating up the trolls with their many weapons, and only stops when the dwarves are forced to surrender or the trolls will pull Bilbo in half. They are in sacks or tied to a spit, but Bilbo manages to stall them for long enough for Gandalf to show up and smite a boulder in twain, revealing the dawn and turning them to stone.

This scene hit all the basic elements of the scene in the book, and served the same purpose. It showcases Bilbo’s inexperience with adventuring, puts the dwarves in a pickle, and Gandalf saves the day. But it is much more the scene it had to be, viewed through the lens of the previous films, rather than a scene from the book. Bilbo was caught this time, not because he was doing something somewhat foolish in order to impress the dwarves, but some rather unfortunate bad luck (grabbed by the troll when he reached for his handkerchief, which just happened to be right where Bilbo was standing to grab the tiny knife) instead of an enchanted coin purse. It is Bilbo, not Gandalf, who keeps the argument going over how best to cook the dwarves, and he does so directly, rather than trying to sound like the trolls. These dwarves are not the comical lot who get stuffed into sacks, but capable warriors put in a tough position (though they are vastly more comical than say, Gimli). Gandalf doesn’t trick the trolls into taking too much time, he straight up splits a fucking boulder to let the sun in. Don’t get me wrong, the scene is actually a lot of fun, but you can see the alterations made in the name of “seriousing it up” a bit for the movie.

Many of the film’s other scenes are in this vein, making things a bit more serious than they would otherwise have been had the other Lord of the Rings films not existed. There is actually an excellent character moment between Bilbo and Bofur right before the orcs attack them in the cave, but it drives home one of the new themes of the movie: Everyone Needs a Place to Belong. The actors play it well...buuuuuuut it is not exactly Tolkien’s writing here. Same with the entire thing with Azog the Defiler, the Primary Antagonist of this film. There is a whole heaping helping of stuff here that’s dolloped on top of the Hobbit to give it some of the epic scope of the previous films. It’s not badly done, but it seems to be a bit of “trying too hard” to make Thorin into the dwarfiest of all dwarves...for actual reasons as opposed to being stereotyped. There’s a bit during a flashback to the fall of the Lonely Mountain where we learn why Thorin has a severe dislike of elves...which isn’t even in the book to begin with and sets up some antagonism between Thorin and the Wood Elf King in the next film...that doesn’t really NEED setting up. It just seems so...superfluous and a little off putting, making out the Wood Elf King to be “kind of a huge jerk”, way moreso than in the book. Hell, Thorin is totally an asshole to Elrond, when in the BOOK he’s a little standoffish, but otherwise seeks council and rests up for a good long time and they part as friends.

Most of the stuff they added in about the “rise of the Necromancer” and so forth isn’t bad. It’s just..rushed. In the book, the Necromancer is a “far away bad guy who’s been around for a long time” and the reason why Gandalf isn’t with the dwarves for everything after Beorn. This time? Radagast the Brown finds out he’s set up shop in an abandoned fortress and is fucking with Mirkwood. Sauruman dismisses the threat, but Galadriel and Elrond do not take it so lightly. These bits are interesting, but again they “serious up the story” because of how epic the OTHER films were. I know I harp on this a lot, but it really, really changes a LOT of the tone and theme of the story.

Ugh, let’s talk Radagast. I should fucking love this character to death. He’s played by Sylvester “I am the Seventh Doctor” McCoy, and does some interesting wizard shit in the name of healing an animal, has a rabbit drawn sledge, and is all around an eccentric character with some clever tricks, underestimated by his enemies and friends alike. But...he’s got shit all over his face. Radagast lets a couple of birds nest under his hat. The character design for this calls for a veritable RIVER of bird shit to run down one side of his head, face and into his beard. This bothers me on a very fundamental level and I could NOT get over it. In every scene he is in, I just could not stop thinking that he’s gotta bowl you over with his foul bird shit stink. No one EVER calls him out on it, even though it is RIGHT ALL OVER HIS FUCKING FACE and is TOTALLY DISGUSTING. Just awful and it made me hate this character so very much. There’s “eccentric old nature loving hermit wizard” and then there’s “crazy old homeless guy covered in shit.” This falls into the latter category.

On the other side of the spectrum, there is Gollum. GOLLUM. This may be the very best scene in the entire film, is when Bilbo meets Gollum. Andy Serkis nails this performance to the wall, and Gollum is absolutely terrifying. He straight up bludgeons an orc to death with a rock on screen! The dual personality from the other movies is played up a little less here, but is still an essential part of the character. This IS Gollum as he needs to be for this film, given the Gollum from the other films. It is brilliant and wonderful. The other CGI character I enjoyed was the Great Goblin, huge warty pustule covered goiter and all. Just a delightful character, and pretty much spot on from the book too.

The climax of the film is the “Fifteen Birds in Five Fir Trees” scene from the book, but it is VASTLY different from the book, as it is the climax of the film. Everyone heroes it up, though Gandalf’s role is slightly downplayed, and the eagles are shown to be more a tool of the wizard then as acting of their own accord. It’s still a pretty fun showdown and puts the movie in a good place to pick up the story in the next one. Bilbo gets to show why he’s the protagonist of the movie and everyone gets a small moment to shine, all ending on a very clever representation of the Carrock, with a lovely shot of the Lonely Mountain in the distance.

On a scale of five frowny faces to five smiley faces I give this a sold three smiley faces. It did not feel like a three hour movie to me and I enjoyed it very much. However, it is very, very different in a lot of ways from the book, and this may bother people. The main themes of the book are here, and there are some additional ones that add a bit of depth and scope, in keeping with the “movie universe” that the previous films created. Definitely NOT for small kids though. It is PG-13 for a reason.