The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Review

[JasonEvans]

This is tough for me, really tough. You see, a huge part of any movie experience is your expectations. Expect something lousy and a mediocre movie can seem good. Expect something fabulous and a good movie can seem mediocre.

So, before I tell you what I thought of the first film in The Hobbit trilogy, you need to understand my expectations. I went into it having heard from some critic friends that it was just so-so. I wanted my expectations to be low. I was trying to put the brilliance of the previous LOTR movies out of my mind, so I could just experience this movie on its own.

I failed. The moment the opening credits flashed across the screen, my expectations were back at a fever pitch. This was PETER JACKSON BACK IN HIS ELEMENT! The LOTR trilogy was one of the finest sci-fi moviemaking epics of the past 20 years! I could not get my expectations out of the stratosphere.

Well, with that set up you can tell what came next. I was disappointed in the film. I didn't think it was bad, not by a long shot, but it wasn't in a league with the LOTR movies. Sigh...

First of all, it was bloated. It runs almost 3 hours in length and really should have been around 2 hours. There are all these scenes of people walking/running across plains and mountaintops and all the gorgeous scenery of New Zealand. It is beautiful but gets tiresome. But, what really bloats the movie is that every important sequence just goes on for too long. The opening "feast" takes forever. Cleaning up the feast is even longer. Each action sequence goes on and on without any real sense of peril (more on that in a moment). The movie often feels like it is going nowhere with no purpose. While Fellowship of the Ring spent a movie allowing us to get to know the characters and relate to their individual stories, this movie spends no time explaining who most of the characters are. They are just a band of Dwarfs, only one or two of whom have any backstory or character development. I truly did not care whether most of them lived or died.



At this point, I want to introduce to you something I call the "Temple of Doom" action scene. Remember Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Recall how all the action pieces in that movie featured absurd coincidences and violations of the laws of physics. For example, at the beginning Indy is crawling all over the floor chasing the poison antidote but it keeps on getting kicked out of his reach at the last moment. A bit later Indy escapes from the crashing airplane by flying through the air in an inflatable raft which then careens down the side of a mountain then going over the edge of a cliff before landing face-up in a river. And we all recall the scene toward the end where Indy battles the bad guys while everyone is riding along in coal mine cars, often jumping the tracks and doing other impossible stuff.

Temple of Doom action SUCKS! There is no sense of peril because the scene is so unrealistic. It often feels like we are on a cheesy roller coaster ride at an amusement park because the action is so silly. In scenes like this, there is no chance to get drawn into the drama of the film. In fact, the exact opposite happens and we withdraw our emotional connection to the characters on the screen.

Well, as you can imagine by now, most of the action in The Hobbit was of the Temple of Doom variety. There is a particular chase scene through the lair of the Goblin King that contains some of the worst Temple of Dooming I have seen since, well, Temple of Doom was in theaters. Ugh!



I also want to talk about the way the movie is projected. I am sure many of you are aware of the fact that Peter Jackson claimed he was pushing the craft of moviemaking into a new frontier with this film because it was designed to be projected at 48 frames per second, instead of the usual 24 fps. Well, 48 fps for this film is both a blessing and a curse. It is crystal clear -- I mean the image on the screen is as lifelike and pure as anything you have seen. I was blown away by it from the first second the opening credits began to roll. A filmmaker who uses 48 fps for a nature documentary is going to make something truly incredible. I'll be first in line for tickets to that. But, it doesn't work nearly as well as it should in a movie laden with computer generated effects. All the CGI characters in this movie end up looking awkward and unreal laid on top of the stark images of 48 fps reality. CGI that looked real and perilous a decade ago in the first LOTR movies now looks cheap and unreal in The Hobbit. It is a pity. It is also worth noting that our eyes are not used to this kind of projection and, as a result, everything looks a bit speeded up early in the movie. Eventually, your eyes adjust, but it adds to the sense of unreality early in the movie and is yet another barrier to drawing us into this world.

Ok, enough of the bad -- there is some good here too.

Whatever, you do, do not get up to get popcorn or go to the bathroom during the scenes with Gollum. He and Bilbo Baggins spend roughly 15 or 20 minutes together on screen in this movie, and it is far and away the best part of the movie. Gollum has more soul and reality than the vast majority of the "human" characters in the movie.

It is a good story, at its core. A bit slow, but we can sense the sweeping epic it will become. The actors at work here are trying hard and give earnest performances. Peter Jackson is a good director, I just think he is so caught up in trying to do EVERYTHING with this movie that he forgot to do some of the little things that make a film great.

LOTR fans will want to see it and will be pleased they did, though I imagine most will feel as I do that it was good but not nearly great. I don't think this film will be the runaway boxoffice phenomenon that the other movies were, because I don't see many people giving it repeat business. In other words, it will make $300-$350 million at the boxoffice, but not nearly the (inflation adjusted) $430-$480 million that the first 3 LOTR movies did.

Well, that's about it for now. I hope I did not disappoint to many of you. Actually, if I did perhaps that is a good thing. Lowered expectations may really help you to enjoy this movie a bit more than I did.

-Jason "as always, I will be interested in hearing what the rest of you thought about it" Evans

[CameronBornAndBred]

I'm going to see it this weekend with my girlfriend; she is dying to see it and I am not. Reading this review does not help my optimism for a "better than I expected" experience. Hell, I thought the LOTR series movies drug on forever...I've watched them about the grand total of once since they came out on DVD. The idea of sitting through a three hour movie, no matter how good, is not something I relish when I know that it is a pretty day/evening outside. Maybe the weatherman will be wrong and it will be absolutely miserable outside the theater.
Anyways, knowing that I'm going into the movies with low expectations, I'll report back with how they matched up to my experience. I'll report hers as well, since she is looking forward to the movie more than Christmas.

[JasonEvans]

The idea of sitting through a three hour movie, no matter how good, is not something I relish when I know that it is a pretty day/evening outside. Maybe the weatherman will be wrong and it will be absolutely miserable outside the theater.

There has been a real trend toward long movies this holiday season. It happens every year with the Oscar contenders that have more to say and want to be more art than light entertainment, and that is fine. But, this years seems to be a step worse than usual.

It all started with Skyfall checking in at 143 minutes, almost 2 1/2 hours. Quantum of Solace was 107 minutes.
Then we got Lincoln at 150 minutes, exactly 2 1/2 hours.
The Hobbit is 166 minutes. 2 3/4 hours.
This is 40, a comedy, is checking in at 134 minutes, 2 1/4 hours.
Zero Dark Thirty is going to be more than 2 1/2 hours, with a run time of 157 minutes.
And Django Unchained gets the prize, clocking in at exactly 180 minutes -- 3 hours.

By comparison, last year's big end of year movies were much shorter. The only major winter release that was longer than 2 hours and a half hours was Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, which ran 2 hours 40 minutes. The Oscar contenders were all shorter.

The Artist was 100 minutes.
The Iron Lady was 105 minutes.
The Descendants was 115 minutes.
We Bought a Zoo was 124 minutes.
Hugo was 127 minutes. So was Tinker Tailor.
Extremely Loud was 129 minutes.
Even the lengthy biopic J Edgar was just 137 minutes.

-Jason "I dunno what is up this year, but picking a theater with soft seats is probably a good idea!" Evans

[DukeHoo]

My girlfriend isn't interested in seeing this (she never liked the book), so I will likely see it with some friends instead. Still, this review kind of confirms my worries about the movie, particularly regarding padding. The Hobbit is not a long book, and it certainly isn't as dense as the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I always felt that the LOTR movies had good pacing for three hour movies simply because Jackson had to be very judicious with what he cut and what he left in. From your review, the first Hobbit movie sounds like they tried to include every little detail in order to give the movie the same "epic" feel as LOTR. That sounds it could make the movie a bit of a slog.

[DukeUsul]

I'm a big fan of long movies. If I'm going to pay movie theater prices for admission and snacks, I insist on being entertained as long as possible. 90 minute movies just seem such a waste of money.

EDIT: That being said, I need to be entertained for three hours. If it drags, it's no fun.

For those that don't know, they expanded The Hobbit by reaching into the Appendices of the Lord of the Rings books. There's quite a bit of backstory that was not in The Hobbit novel that was included in the appendices - and that's the only possibly way they were able to expand what's a relatively short story into three (THREE!) three hour films.

Even given that they had that extra material, it sounds like they may have been better off keeping it to just two parts, as originally intended.

[Lord Ash]

I, for one, love long movies when they are good! If you haven't watched the extended editions of the LOTR movies then you've missed some GREAT stuff... a lot of the humanity and humor that was in the books that got cut for the movies. I won't even watch the regular versions; saw them once in the theatre, and that was enough!

[snowdenscold]

Are they really making this a trilogy? Even with the first movie at 3 hours?

That was fine for LotR with it's massive amount of source material, but The Hobbit was a single, shorter book. Will it be stretched too thin for 3 long movies?

[davekay1971]

Are they really making this a trilogy? Even with the first movie at 3 hours?

That was fine for LotR with it's massive amount of source material, but The Hobbit was a single, shorter book. Will it be stretched too thin for 3 long movies?

At 3 hours per movie...yes. I was initially in favor of going ahead and fleshing out the "behind the scenes" stuff from the Hobbit (ie: the White Council and the Necromancer) to tell the story as it relates to the early buildup to the War of The Rings. But if PJ is going to inflate the films with overly long scenes and languid pacing, that's a bad thing. It sounds like he could have delivered a tight, well paced movie with the same content at about 2 hours. Hopefully he'll have the next 2 better paced, even if they're shorter.

[Pacer]

Everyone knows that Temple of Doom is the worst... (Well... that's ingrained in my mind so fully, that it is hard to incorporate Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls and make an honest assessment of which is worse).

But I think the opening sequence of the antidote is solid. The rest can go to hell, but I don't think the antidote scene should be lumped in with the rest or cited as an example of the problems with TOD.

[davekay1971]

Jackson showed a tendency toward unrealistic action sequences that increased as the LOTR trilogy went on. The action in Fellowship, both in the Chamber of Mazarbul and later at Amon Hen, were excellent. In Two Towers, the action again was largely excellent, but Helm's Deep had it's Legolas skateboarding on a shield moment that was a sign of trouble to come.

In ROTK, just about every action moment involving Legolas was a groaner, as Jackson tried to get that Chamber of Mazarbul Legolas vs. the Troll "oh WOW!" moment again. Legolas vs the Olyphant was terrible, a terrible pseudo-climax to the great Pelennor Fields battle.

I don't mean to sound hypercritical of Jackson - what he did with LOTR, one of my favorite works of fiction, was absolutely exceptional. He brought the world of Tolkein to life. His incorporation of Tolkein artists in realizing that vision was a stroke of genius. The casting was spot on. The tough decisions that made an "unfilmable story" into a very, very good screenplay were almost uniformly well done.

My concern is some of the tendencies we see in him as a filmmaker - mainly pacing, some action choices, some infiltration of cheeziness when he strays from the source material, might have combined with a bit of self-indulgence since he now has the power to do exactly what he wants with the story to make The Hobbit a flabby, inefficient story.

I'll be seeing it in the theater, because I absolutely love the world of Tolkein, I love what Jackson did with it in LOTR, and I want to give him a chance with The Hobbit. But Jason's review, along with many of the Top Critic reviews on Rottentomatoes, has me concerned.

[JasonEvans]

I'll be seeing it in the theater, because I absolutely love the world of Tolkein, I love what Jackson did with it in LOTR, and I want to give him a chance with The Hobbit. But Jason's review, along with many of the Top Critic reviews on Rottentomatoes, has me concerned.

First of all, Dave hits the nail on the head about Legolas' battle scenes being really lame and cheesy. They kind of thing does spill over into this film, though there are so many characters in all the fights, we don't get a good sense of who is who (nor do we care) for there to be one special fighter who is vastly superior to the rest as we had with Legolas.

Secondly, regarding what other critics are saying -- here are some snippets from Rotten Tomatoes --

An Unexpected Journey is a competent, entertaining effort but it neither enthralls nor amazes in the way its predecessors did.

While it's great to be back on Middle Earth, there's a nagging sense throughout that the magic is gone and that we've been here (and back again) before.

It's easy to spot the padding in this over-long, character-packed, bladder-testing, 162-minute first installment.

I found myself concentrating more on the strange look of the film and less on the film itself.

An Unexpected Journey is a bit ropey, excessive and padded in places.

Why did I pick those quotes? Well, they all come from reviewers who gave the film a "fresh" review on RT. In other words, that is what the people who liked it are saying! Yikes!!!

Frankly, if I was to give it the simplistic fresh/rotten rating, I too would rate it fresh -- though with many words of criticism. It is a classic 3 out of 5 stars kind of movie... and we all had been hoping for another 5 star effort from Jackson.

--Jason "I continue to try to dampen expectations for all of you... in the hope you will be pleasantly surprised" Evans

[jimsumner]

I'm a big fan of long movies. If I'm going to pay movie theater prices for admission and snacks, I insist on being entertained as long as possible. 90 minute movies just seem such a waste of money.

.

Wait until you have a sixty-year-old bladder.

[DukeUsul]

Wait until you have a sixty-year-old bladder.

Mine's bad enough at 35, I know it's just gonna get worse!

[Lord Ash]

It does make me sad to hear that the film is ehhhh, but the visuals of the dwarves made me suspicious from the start.

And I, for one, cannot wait for the third film... The appendix was always one of my absolute favorite parts, with the stories of the dwarves and the orcs of moria, and I think they'll make a great movie. Plus, there should be some scenes with Aragorn and gollum together on a long trip which should be fun...

[davekay1971]

It does make me sad to hear that the film is ehhhh, but the visuals of the dwarves made me suspicious from the start.

And I, for one, cannot wait for the third film... The appendix was always one of my absolute favorite parts, with the stories of the dwarves and the orcs of moria, and I think they'll make a great movie. Plus, there should be some scenes with Aragorn and gollum together on a long trip which should be fun...

As I noted above, I'm giving the movies, all three, a chance in the theater, albeit with lowered expectations. One hope I have is that a common theme among the reviews is that this first film improves as it progresses. Once Jackson FINALLY gets Bilbo and the Dwarves moving and, in particular, through Rivendell, most reviews indicate that the film takes off, with improved effects and pacing. If that holds up through the 2nd and 3rd films, particularly if PJ takes the criticism this film is receiving to heart and is willing to take the 2nd and 3rd films into the editing room and work on pacing, they should be excellent films. My understanding is the first film ends roughly at the attack by the orcs and wargs following the escape from the Misty Mountains. That leaves, probably in the 2nd film alone, the attack on Dol Guldur, the fight with the spiders, and Bilbo springing the Dwarves from Thranduil's kingdom. I suspect the 2nd film will also include the arrive to Laketown and will end at Bilbo getting his first sight of Smaug in his lair (and what a sight that would be to end a film!) That film could be a full 2+ hours, still leaving plenty, as you noted, for the third film.

I would love to see the Moria story as a separate film, from the founding to Thrain's misadventures to Dain's battle and concluding with Balin's ill-fated attempt to retake it. I know that'll likely never happen - an original Middle Earth story, not based on any one book, encompassing enough time to go through multiple characters...not exactly box office gold. But, it would be geek catnip.

Separate thread maybe, but a Tolkein geek like me could easily get into a discussion of which Middle Earth story, aside from LOTR and The Hobbit, would you most like to see filmed.

For me it's:
1) Beren and Luthien
2) Angmar vs. Anorien
3) Moria
4) The rise and fall of Numenor
in that order.

[Lord Ash]

As far as I remember, the entire of the story of the Hobbit (including Laketown and Smaug) are ALL covered in movie #2. #3, IIRC, will be largely the appendices from ROTK... so plenty of Azog and the hunt for Smeagol and the like. Now, I could be wrong, but I thought I read that somewhere.

And I would basically kill to watch Gothmog, Captain of Angband, cut his ruin through countless captains and heroes. I'd also love to watch the Morgoth/Fingolfin fight. Or what about Ancalagon versus Earendil (a dragon that breaks mountain ranges with his weight?! Yes please!), or a glimpse of Glaurung?

Hm. I seem to have a thing for bad guys.

BTW, Radagast looks stupid in the movies, from the stills I've seen.

[JasonEvans]

BTW, Radagast looks stupid in the movies, from the stills I've seen.

I cannot even begin to convey how poorly this character is portrayed in the movies. It is horrid. He's just awful.

-JE

[Udaman]

Did you see it in 3-D or regular? Is this one worth seeing in 3D?

[Lord Ash]

Jason, that makes me sad. Radagast is one of the five! They got too silly and "creative" with him from the looks of it. He should be like a more socially awkward Gandalfy type... Wise and powerful, but not in love with company (although obviously happy when someone like Gandalf visits.).

Did Jackson go all ewok on this one?

[JasonEvans]

Did you see it in 3-D or regular? Is this one worth seeing in 3D?

I saw it in 3D at 48 fps. The 3D was quite good, but I rarely feel that 3D truly adds to the moviegoing experience. They always show us 3D at the critic screenings, so maybe I am just jaded to it, but I think you could pass on this 3D and it would not be a big deal.

I would see it in 48 fps though, as I think you should experience this cinematic achievement. As I said, it is distracting at times and hyper-real, but it is cool to look at. Plus, Jackson wanted the movie to be seen that way.

Jason, that makes me sad. Radagast is one of the five! They got too silly and "creative" with him from the looks of it. He should be like a more socially awkward Gandalfy type... Wise and powerful, but not in love with company (although obviously happy when someone like Gandalf visits.).

Did Jackson go all ewok on this one?

Well, Radagast just comes off as strange. He acts like a squirrel in human form much of the time, seeming really twitchy and nervous. He does not convey any sense of power or wisdom. He is faced with a threat and he immediately runs in panic and fear, barely bothering to find out what the threat even was. He is certainly not a "socially awkward Gandalf."

I wouldn't quite describe it as "going Ewok," but he is certainly not portrayed as a meaningful ally nor as someone who would be useful in a fight.

-Jason "Sarumon appears in The Hobbit film, even though I think he was not in the book" Evans