It's been a busy week and weekend! Despite having a cold I've been able to get out and about and do a number of things that I'll forget to write about if I don't do so immediately. So, pausing the language discussions for a minute, I'd like to discuss The Hobbit, among other things.
I saw The Hobbit about a week ago at the Multikino which is located to a considerable distance to the northeast of downtown Krakow. The theater would not have been out of place in an American shopping mall, though I will admit that the seats are more comfortable here than they are at home.
The film itself was suitably epic, with the special effects and large-scale battles that we've come to expect from Peter Jackson. As in the not-Wagner Lord of the Ring[s] Cycle, the film starred New Zealand. It also featured Ian McKellen and a cast of actors you've definitely seen before, but you aren't quite sure where. One half-expects a Christopher Walken cameo.
This interpretation featured the same kind of ponderous, epic dialogue that was present in the first three films. While the tone of this film was somewhat lighter than in the previous three, it just felt a little too dark and heavy for a novel that was ultimately intended as a kid's book. The film also leans heavily on its predecessors, with Elijah Wood showing up mostly to say hi, and Saruman the White showing up despite not having been introduced canonically until the Lord of the Rings. In this film Saruman is condemned to sound rather more like a bumbling and indecisive Jimmy Carter than the scheming Richard Nixon he becomes.
The Middle Earth National Security Council scene in particular is mostly a "hey, remember these guys?" sort of shoutout than anything else. I also think the producers may have saved a little money on CGI by directly ripping off at least one scene from one of the previous movies. Scott Mendelson at the Huffington Post commented that the film has trouble standing alone independent of the trilogy that came before, and I think I tend to agree with him. Read his review here.
I fear that the producers and director are trying to stretch the material a little bit too far. The Ring trilogy takes up three books, three movies, and nine hours. I believe the writers of the current Hobbit trilogy have been and will continue to be hard-pressed to be able to have one book take up three movies and nine hours. Unfortunately, this difficulty posed by a shortage of material seems to have solved by making virtually the entire film an extended running battle. Half of Gandalf's lines consist of "run!" And the company of dwarves has the rather astonishingly good luck of being able to plow through roughly an army division worth of goblins without so much as a scratch. Even Klingons were never that good.
Dialogue and character development never were the strong suits of the Lord of the Rings movies, and that continues to be a major weak spot in this particular film. Thorin Oakenshield will go snarling at Bilbo for no particularly good reason, only to very suddenly change his opinion at the end of the movie. Indeed, Thorin is played exactly as Aragorn was. Each of the dwarves is interchangeable. The changes in Bilbo's character are inexplicably sudden, and I fear that since the book is now split over three movies it will be much harder to see the fundamental "coming of age" that defines that particular character.
In favor of the film, I will say that the cinematography is spectacular and the action scenes are well-done. There is some decent humor, and I was impressed at how quickly the lengthy running time of the movie flew by. However, this latest installment of the Ring Cycle is just a little too Wagnerian for my taste.
I give this film two stars out of four. It's worth seeing for the spectacle and for Martin Freeman as Bilbo, however it just feels a little bit like Lord of the Rings Lite.
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