Inappropriately Grandiose

Rating: 7/10 (24 January 2013)

Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" is a mighty epic fantasy, well over a thousand pages in length in most editions. Although Tolkien intended it to be a single novel, his publishers, for commercial reasons, issued it as a trilogy. (It is still often published in this form). When Peter Jackson adapted the work for the cinema, therefore, it made both commercial and artistic sense for him to make three separate films, "The Fellowship of the Ring", "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King", each based on one of the elements of the trilogy.
Tolkien's "The Hobbit", by contrast, is a relatively short book, in my edition only some two hundred pages long, much shorter than any of the three elements of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. It was originally intended for children (although it is the sort of children's book that can easily be enjoyed by adults) and is much less complex in terms of its plot and in terms of its themes than "The Lord of the Rings". It could easily have been made into a single film of around the standard two hours duration. I was therefore dubious when I heard that Jackson intended to turn the book into another trilogy, rivalling "The Lord of the Rings" in length.
Tolkien's story tells of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins and of his companions, a group of thirteen dwarfs and the wizard Gandalf, as they set out to rescue a hoard of stolen gold from a fierce dragon. It also tells of their various adventures at the hands of the other inhabitants of Tolkien's imagined realm of Middle Earth- trolls, goblins, elves and animals. The book can be read as an introduction to "The Lord of the Rings", which is supposed to take place some sixty years later, because it introduces characters such as Gollum and Gandalf, who will play an important role in the later work, and because it tells of the earlier history of the Ring, which it will later fall to Bilbo's nephew Frodo to destroy.
"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" is the first part of Jackson's second trilogy. Although it is nearly three hours in length, it only covers the first few chapters of Tolkien's book, which means that the original story has had to be padded out a lot. This is done by showing in great detail matters which are only briefly described in the book (such as how the dragon Smaug obtained the gold from the dwarfs in the first place) and even by introducing events which do not occur, and characters which do not appear, in the book at all. Some characters from "Lord of the Rings", such as Galadriel and the wizards Saruman the White and Radagast the Brown appear in the film, although they do not actually appear in Tolkien's "The Hobbit". (Radagast, who only plays a minor role in the later book, was omitted from the film version).
I have given this film a relatively high mark, because it has many virtues, most of them shared with the first trilogy. Visually the film is very attractive, with a brilliantly imagined world of Middle Earth, set against some striking photography of the New Zealand landscapes. The various malevolent beings of Tolkien's mythology, the trolls, goblins and wargs (huge, ferocious wolf-like creatures) are all successfully realised; the vulgar and stupid trolls largely serve as the film's main comic relief. The very talented composer Howard Shore again provides the musical score, as he did for the first trilogy. Several of the actors from the earlier films, notably Ian McKellen as the wise, kindly Gandalf and Andy Serkis as the wretched Gollum, successfully reprise their roles, and there are good performances from newcomers Martin Freeman as the young Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm returns as the older Bilbo) and Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield, the determined and headstrong leader of the dwarfs. The other dwarfs, on the other hand, apart from the fat, lazy Bombur, do not really come across as sharply-defined individuals, but this was also a weakness in Tolkien's book.
I will reserve my final judgement on the wisdom of turning "The Hobbit" into a trilogy when I have seen the other two instalments, "The Desolation of Smaug" and "There and Back Again", but "An Unexpected Journey" has confirmed my initial suspicion that this lighter, shorter book was not really a suitable candidate for the full heroic fantasy treatment given to "The Lord of the Rings". Too often Jackson and his scriptwriters seemed to be guilty of padding out a very slight text in order to produce something inappropriately grandiose, and I found myself wishing that he could have found an alternative format for filming "The Hobbit". 7/10