Perhaps the most exciting thing about Peter Jackson's landmark, blockbuster Lord of the Rings
films was that they made fans, through a combination of stunning
landscapes and intricate special effects and soaring music and dramatic
spectacle, feel as though we were seeing an almost impossible elevation
of the potential size and scope of movies.
Here was a rich, dense, sprawling series of films that thundered like
myths, that were breathtaking in their realization of some pretty huge
ambitions. Sure, they were massive corporate projects that earned lots
of people millions of dollars, but to the regular moviegoer they were
feats that proved the majesty of the movies,
the potential to tell enthralling stories that also played like art.
And so it's hugely disappointing, if not all that surprising, that
Jackson's first foray back into the land of Middle Earth, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,
is such a sullenly, basely commercial and junky affair, a movie that
feels not crafted with Jackson's seemingly divine inspiration but by the
hands of studio executives. Perhaps the reason that Warner Bros. is forgoing the usual console video-game tie-ins for simple mobile games is because the damn movie already looks like a video game, and not a very fun one at that.
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The Lord of the Rings
series succeeded aesthetically because it was such an elegant,
painting-like wonder to behold. The textures and palettes all had the
look of a particularly vibrant illustrated story book, the kind of
immersive vision that exists somewhere between imagination and the real
world. For The Hobbit, though, Jackson chose to film at a high frame rate and with Real 3D technology in mind — because 3D movies
are doing well these days and, hell, doesn't hurt that the tickets cost
more — but the results are frequently hideous. Those among us who have
bought shiny new flatscreen TVs over the past few years are likely
familiar with the dreaded "Soap Opera Effect,"
which turns what should be stunning, glossy images into cheap-looking
messes, all strange movement and lighting, like any network soap or
cheap British show. (Think Children of Men looking like Torchwood.) It's the problem of technology over-thinking or over-performing, and it is on startling, gruesome display in The Hobbit.
When you're wearing the 3D glasses (and admittedly sitting a little off
to the side), this hugely expensive movie looks like it was shot on a
nice handheld digital camera on the cheap. Actors stand in strange
contrast to the digital backgrounds behind them, motion looks too slick
or unnatural. Gone are the somber vistas and rugged terrain, replaced by
eye-aching shine and plastic-y smoothness. The most special
effects-heavy sequences look very much like the non-playable parts of
modern video games — the exposition bits that can amp up the graphics a
bit because they don't have to worry about the randomness of play, the
stuff you see in the commercials, right before the "rated T for teen"
part. I don't know if I just had a bad projector or what, but I spent
the bulk of this long movie distracted by how dreadful
everything looked. With a few small exceptions — The Shire glows with
lovely green, a mountain cave fight/chase sequence is bracingly rich —
this is a dismally unattractive movie, featuring too many shots that I'm
sure were lovely at some point but are too often ruined and chintzified
by the terrible technology monster.
So on its aesthetic merits, The Hobbit
comes up more than short. The trouble is, it's not rescued by many
narrative successes. Jackson has taken largely from the first third of J.R.R. Tolkien's
novel — about an expedition to reclaim a lost dwarf kingdom from a
dragon — but he's also added in some elements found in appendices
detailing an expanded universe that Tolkien included in an edition of The Lord of the Rings.
This is partly to flesh out the story as Jackson believes Tolkien meant
it to be, but it's also meant to satisfy the needs of a supersize film
trilogy based on one mere book. And so we get several pointless and
uninteresting diversions, mostly about dwarves and their bitter enemies
the orcs, that read exactly like the filler they are. Jackson is trying
to flesh out dwarf mythology, because we spend so much of our time with
these little guys, but it feels tediously synthetic, as if there are two
movies competing for attention with neither one getting its due. We go to the goblin caves of The Hobbit
and then, upon deliverance from that dark place, are thrust right into
some kind of honor-and-revenge-based conflict with a snarling, giant,
one-armed orc. It's all very crowded and strangely hurried for a movie
that, all told, takes its sweet time.
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I suspect that another of Jackson's reasons for including all this extra dramatic battling is that, on its own, The Hobbit
is something of a children's book. We've got wacky, food-crazed
dwarves, a mean old dragon, and a funny little guy to take us along on
the journey. Jackson doesn't deny his movie the kiddie flourishes —
there's snot humor and butt jokes and lots of other goofy stuff
involving some trolls, plus two little musical numbers involving all the
dwarves — but he then tries to complement them with the big, booming
faith and honor stuff and it never properly congeals. One moment we're
on a sprightly children's adventure, the next we're talking in big
fashion about all that warlike serious business. It's a discordant mix,
and I'd imagine it will leave both kids and adults out in the cold.
The film is not without its
bright spots, rare as they may be. Ian McKellen is a feisty, spirited,
mysterious Gandalf as ever before, and Martin Freeman nicely and
genially projects everyday hobbit-ness, even if he's a tad underused in
the film. (Yeah, in the movie called The Hobbit,
there's barely any time to focus on the darn Hobbit.) Cate Blanchett
turns up once more as the ethereal elf Galadriel, lending the movie a
cool classiness and a welcome dose of feminine energy. And, of course,
we're back, for one mesmerizing scene, with our beloved Gollum, so
winningly and creepily played by Andy Serkis, and here yet another
marvel of computer innovation. In some ways Gollum's innate
cartoonishness works better now than it did in the original trilogy,
which is probably the only time that can be said of this movie. There
are one or two moments in Gollum's pivotal scene where he's given a bit
too much modern humor to play, but all told he's the most welcome sight
in the film. Maybe that's just the newfound purist in me, yearning for
the old days, but I suspect it has more to do with Gollum being the only
genuinely realized character we've so far encountered in this new trio
of films. Everyone else is a snoozy lesser version of someone else,
especially the ridiculous bloodthirsty orc leader, who snarls and growls
like something out of the Underworld movies. Sometimes, in the jumble of the The Hobbit's
many cluttered and dull action scenes, the frantic blur looks like any
sequence from one of those schlocky '00s B-movies; all roughly hewn CGI
clashing around nonsensically, with this orc fellow leading the charge.
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Despite all the technical advancements, if we can call them that, most moments in The Hobbit feel like Peter Jackson is sadly trying to make all those familiar LOTR elements
work for him once more, without ever really being able to reignite the
old flame. The supposedly awe-inducing visit to the elf city of
Rivendell is a ho-hum experience in this new frame-rate-ruined world. A
silly battle sequence involving a wizard, a silly Radagast the Brown,
riding around pell-mell on a rabbit-drawn sled looks like an
interstitial from late-era Super Mario. Even Elijah
Wood, appearing briefly as Frodo, looks strange — a pale ghost of
himself, as if stitched in from another movie by some forlorn and
desperate hand. The film is inevitably resonant with memories of the
original trilogy, and little about it can hold up to the comparison.
There's too much effort in the wrong places — action instead of story,
technical tricks instead of actual design — and the constant
rhythm of arbitrary event after arbitrary event becomes tiresome well
before the film's two hours and forty minutes have lurched to a halt.
I'm sure there are kids who will like this wan, distracted effort — they
might not yet have anything else to compare it to, depending on their
age — but as a human who remembers what came before, I'm afraid The Hobbit
left me nothing but frustrated, sad, and tired. Frustrated that these
big-budget visionaries seem to consistently feel they have to taint
their earlier masterpieces with techno-junk followups, sad that once
magical lands now flicker cheap and garish in my head, and tired at the
prospect of two more of these things. I exited the theater trying to
remind myself that Attack of the Clones was way better than Phantom Menace and that Revenge of the Sith
was better still. I then realized how depressing it was that I was
making that comparison. Oh, Middle Earth. What has become of you?
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