Score! Thief! Music! Baggins!

Rating: 8/10 (15 December 2012)

I am a fan boy. The LOTR films are my favorite film collections of all time, including The Godfather. That said, while watching The Hobbit today on opening day, I realized how drastically important the score is to these films. Chiming back to the LOTR, the score truly drew the viewer into the heart of the film. It was the third leg of the joy and success of it, the other two being cinematography and script/acting. Now I am not complaining that this is not a copy of the Fellowship of the Ring, nor was that was I was hoping to see. The Hobbit, on the other hand, is a rather cold rendition, a rote calling in of story and plot, brutally hindered by a musical score which serves to do nothing but act as background. Howard Shore may have been under orders, or a defiant desire to create a brand new piece with little relation to LOTR musically. This musical departure was like a knife in the dark, or a shot from left field. Imagine seeing Jaws without the essential soundtrack, or Close Encounters, or Star Wars for that matter. Granted, it is a sadly focused complaint to only bitch about the score, but I'M SERIOUS, it derailed the love for The Hobbit. There were normal Jackson-esque liberties with the story, such as a completely different circumstance of Bilbo actually finding the ring (I assumed this might support Gandalf's suspicions of finding the ring in the next two films, but Jackson did lay it out in the Fellowship backstory quite clearly...) The Dwarfs are excellent, beautifully cast, and less slapstick than the book lends to. In fact, The Hobbit is much darker than the book, although there are moments of absurdity and even stooge camp. It's fun, but it is largely dialed in, dark, and seems like the first leg in an action trio instead of the first film you want to grow to love the characters and story with. Perhaps the director change from Del Toro to Jackson actually resulted into a dialed in film. There isn't much heart, but there are great action scenes. The best big bad guy of the past 20 years, the Great Goblin (Barry Humphries), is my new favorite. His quivering jowl is impossible to look away from, except his eye and expression steal the movie. We are left at a convenient spot for film 2. Jackson is going to have to work some major magic wonder in the second film to make up for the rather mundane first. The next two films, in total package, need to be better. Sorry, Pete.