A Second Look at 'The Hobbit'...

Boy, there's nothing like carte blanche is there?

Watching “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”, I couldn't help thinking that again and again.  For a film this patient, this detailed, this concerned with narrative minutiae could only have come from a filmmaking team that had already proven beyond a whisper of a doubt that it could pack the theaters in tight despite a two hour and forty-six minute runtime and a glut of CGI-laden fantasy flummery already cramming our overstuffed cinematic palate.  Having earned New Line Cinema two gazillion dollars over the last decade and practically redefined what we commonly consider an 'epic', Peter Jackson and Company must certainly enjoy a benefit-of-the-doubt factor well north of George Lucas, with considerably more quality-to-effort ratio to boot.  This is immediately evident in Mr. Jackson's latest foray into Middle Earth, adapting, in part, J.R.R Tolkien's slim 300-page piece of whimsy into a bladder-buster of a flick so rich with sidetracks and subplots a reader of the original text would be nearly at a loss to follow along with the beloved 1937 novel.  It is the kind of painstaking, detail-heavy offering one would expect from a director who has already shown the rest of us here in the orc-free world that he's got the goods.  I can see now why the studio is reported to have been delighted then-original helmsman Benecio del Toro was forced to drop out; a captain unfamiliar with the foibles of this fantasy land would simply never have been trusted with three huge films that, let's face it, are attempting nothing less than making lightning strike twice in the same place...three times over.

In other words, Jackson was given free reign on this one, or so it seems to me.  “An Unexpected Journey” certainly didn't have to be nearly three hours, but, then, “The Hobbit” didn't need to be a trilogy.  That said, we don't go to the movies to have our needs met.  We go to the movies to have our fondest desires made reality. And who on Earth, Middle or otherwise, wouldn't want to see the entire nation of New Zealand take yet another crack at the man from Oxford's seminal creation, and take their damn sweet time doing it at that?  I, for one, am freakin' delighted, and I thought “AUJ” was damn fine entertainment.

So enough about how long it is, for Pete (Jackson)'s sake!  There are plenty of movies out there that are longer that say considerably less and don't have nearly as much fun saying it.  True, audiences will have to stick it out: the pay-off for this film is two full years away; but this season's effort represents a pretty terrific down payment on what promises to be a most profitable return-on-investment.

So yes, there are tangents upon tangents in this film, but I'm pleased to report not a single one of them, though springing from the minds of Jackson and his writing team of Phillipa Boyens and Fran Walsh rather than Professor T, feels at all out of place.  Indeed, one gets the sense that if ol' John Ronald HAD written the Hobbit with the same gravitas with which he wrote his later, larger work (a little screed called “The Lord of the Rings”) scenes like those AUJ tacks on would be entirely natural and very much expected.  If one wished to contrast the loyally adapted and nearly-unaltered book scenes against the contemporary ones, that greater sense of weight, thought, dimension, and perspective offered by the new stuff would have to be the watermark to look for to really perceive the difference.  For while there are a few scenes that are pure indulgence (bunny sled chase sequence, anyone?), most of them are genuinely smart embellishments that add to the depth of the experience.  I will concede, however, that hardcore book lovers, those types who know Tolkien's legendary appendices almost as well as the story itself, will likely love it a little bit more than your average viewer.  This is because a considerable quantity of the added material comes not from “The Hobbit” at all, but from the reams and reams of notes Tolkien recorded in the decades-long process of molding Middle Earth.  Some people say that's slick and cry foul.  I say it's all fair game.

Having said that however, I will hasten to add that while nothing feels out of place, there is some stuff that probably should have seen the back of the cutting room floor anyway.

Some purists cry excess at the notion that Tolkien's characters and their motives could possibly be improved upon, claiming more screen time means more chances for the clarity of the tale to be lost. However, the joke is on them, I think.  Indeed, the flashbacks and dramatized backstory billeted (only a tad excessively) in the film's first half flesh out the need to undertake the quest far better than Tolkien himself ever communicated.   I know – blasphemy and the Devil take me for a whoremonger and a liar. But it's true.  I re-read “The Hobbit” mere days before seeing “AUJ” and I found myself wondering then, as I wondered during my first read years ago, why exactly the company of thirteen dwarves felt compelled to retake their ENTIRE kingdom at that time and place.  Wouldn't it be wise to wait for backup?  An army, perhaps, of your barrel-chested colleagues?  And for what exactly?   Your treasure? We know, of course, that the dwarven stronghold of Erebor within the Lonely Mountain is full to the gunnels with gold and jewels, but the kingdom itself is a desiccated wasteland, and the guardian of said treasure is a giant dragon who eats cities and farts fallout. I'm all for impossible quests, but I found Tolkien's explanation, which in the book was one drunken boast shy of “climb the mountain because it's there” to be arbitrary and bordering in unbelievable.

Jackson and company, with the first of many effects-laden prologues, reveals to us not alternative or heretofore unguessed motives, but a depth and intensity of the motives already touched on in the book on a level Tolkien never tried.  Erebor isn't merely a dwarf fortress; it's part of, or at least kitty-corner to, a teeming city full of colorfully-dressed maidens, playful children, working stiffs, and innocent civilians who are all freakin' slaughtered by the dragon Smaug with just a few paltry broadsides from his fiery breath. As grossly inappropriate as this comparison may be, the attack on the once-lush kingdom was made to look like a fantasy version of 9/11 – a savage, unprovoked blitz that had no military or strategic value whatsoever; a cowardly and wanton act of pure terror and callous, almost gleeful execution of helpless bystanders whose only sin was showing up for work that day. Hell, the dwarves HAVE to face the dragon. Their need for retribution burns so hot and so fierce they would rather run screaming into the lizard's maw than spend one more day alive and guilt-ridden for having survived.  Does Tolkien ever explicitly state this? No.  Neither does Jackson's film, but it does come much closer to presenting a believable and relatable motive, which in my mind makes for a better picture.

I won't belabor the point with a deconstruction of the whole film.  Suffice to say such embellishments and indulgences are to be found throughout 'AUJ'.  Most of the time they work.  A couple of times they don't.  If I had to point to the best of all these 'film-not-book' segments, it would be the 'council' scene about midway through when Gandalf confers with the always-radiant Cate Blanchett as Galadriel and everyone's favorite elderly baritone, Christopher Lee as the soon-to-be traitorous Saruman the White. Together with Hugo Weaving's Elrond they discuss the seemingly disparate odd happenings as possible portents of the return of Sauron; an event we as an audience know is inevitable but about which the various sagely guardians of Middle Earth are still ignorant.  I've never shouted advice to characters on a movie screen before (a matter of personal pride), but I was tempted when watching that scene. “It's SAURON fercryin' out loud!!  Don't listen to Christopher Lee; the guy's made a career out of playing maligned horror loonies!  Hasn't anyone ever read into the fact that he's called Saruman the WHITE but his staff is almost entirely BLACK??  It's called symbolism and foreshadowing and we learn about them in high school English!!”

Much like Gandalf, total enjoyment of this film demands that you enjoy the company of dwarves, for there are many of them and a great deal of the screen is occupied by them at any given moment. Compulsive re-readers of the book will have no problem with this.  Others might.  Only about four of the thirteen are given any real personalities, although some of the more idiosyncratic elements of some of the supporting characters have been preserved.  Most of the dwarves who constitute true characters are also the ones who wear the least amount of makeup and prosthetic features as actors; not an accident, I'm sure. Performance-wise, of course, the tip of the spear is found in the stellar thespianic merits of Bilbo's Martin Freeman, Andy Serkis's Gollum, and Gandalf's Ian McKellan.  No surprise there.

But for a way-too brief cameo by the lovely Blanchett, there is not a woman to be found, making 'AUJ' only the third longest sausage-fest I've ever attended (the other two being ACTUAL sausage-fests in upstate NY).  And let me say, after near-on 90 minutes of dwarf-on-goblin combat, any red-blooded heterosexual man is going to be ready to lick the screen when Blanchett finally does arrive (violence does beget sex after all; let's not pretend it doesn't).  I mean, who cares if she's a telepathic elf who, if my Tolkien 101 hasn't failed me, is actually (Liv Tyler's) Arwen's grandmother?  Right about when you're considering, if not entertaining, your first pee break, ageless Aussie Cate gives you an even more compelling reason to stay in your seat than what you hope is the increasingly open-minded public perception toward pants-wetting.

Finally, a word on the High Frame Rate experience.  I'm a novice when it comes to HFR (48 fps) stuff and the 'soap opera' effect it creates, giving the film the look and feel of a live TV show rather than a bigger-than-life look that can best be described as a 'dramatic elongation' of cinema visuals to which we're all so accustomed.  Novice, but not a beginner.  So I was probably a bit better prepared than most folks when I actually saw it.  Nevertheless, I must report much of the same thoughts that the pros and early critics voiced: it works sometimes and it don't works other times.  When I first saw the sheer volume of mixed reviews to HFR I was taken aback, wondering at how much pussyfooting and half-hearted comments one issue could possibly garner.  But it's the truth.  Wide shots, landscape scenes, and anything with a photorealistic computer effect look incredible – I would particularly cite the mountain trolls scene as one where the all-CGI creatures are stunningly, eye-poppingly real – but closeups, basic movements, or anything with any 'fine' actions like a pen scrawling over paper or a hand reaching for an object, whizz by distractingly fast.  HFR gives your eyes and your brain plenty of credit: nothing actually looks blurry per se; you are SEEING everything correctly; but one has to wonder if the purity of the experience – which Jackson points to as his motive for the change – is worth reprogramming our 24 frame-per-second savvy brains.  Put this under 'we'll see' and look to the future.

Some critics have said the film is too long, too slow, and that Jackson has dug himself a hole; one critic even went to far as to compare 'AUJ' to 'The Phantom Menace'.  While I don't at all agree with the latter, I'm prepared to agree with a percentage of the former.  Again, the book-lovers will adore this film.  As a two-time 'Hobbit' vet myself, I enjoyed and appreciated it.  I also like to think I can appreciate what Jackson and company is trying to do, which clearly is to stretch every Middle Earth muscle they have and revisit Tolkien's world in such a way that it makes you feel as though you stepped back through a ten-year closed portal, putting you right back into the Shire where you can feel the grass between your toes and smell the pungent pipe weed.  But I would also like to be able to look back on 'AUJ' as merely a springboard to the action and intensity of what I hope will be even better Parts Two and Three.  If nothing else, this film has shown me that the rainmakers behind the camera are haven't lost it with age and that the talent in front of the camera is more than up to the task.