You can hardly turn around these days without sensing it in the air. I am, of course, not referring to the pending Mayan apocalypse scheduled to hit us tomorrow, but to the theatre release of The Hobbit. As I mentioned recently, our middle daughter, at the wizened age of 8 (soon to be 9), has really been pulling all of the right cords to get me to take her to it. In a final act of desperation, I agree if she gave a fair effort at reading the book.
Sadly, she gave more than a fair effort and is almost done with the book, so today I took an exceptionally long lunch and cashed in my promise, taking her and our oldest (soon to be 11) to see the first showing.
I will not spend time dissecting the movie here – I’m a middling book reviewer, and that skill by no means extends to film. In fact, in film more than anywhere I go for the visceral enjoyment ahead of all else, preferring the excitement of adventure to the melancholy of deep thought. In talking it over with the girls – who have a much fresher appreciation for the source material – we can all agree that the film is not true to the book.
But that’s not really why you should want to watch it.
If you want a recap of the first 1/3 of the book in film, you’ve not only come to the wrong place, but I have to wonder why you’re watching at all. If, however, you are looking for a new chapter from Peter Jackson about Middle Earth, you can do no wrong. The movie was engaging and entertaining, and if at all it dragged it was quick to pick itself back up again. There were plenty of familiar faces from the first film, and there was an obvious effort to tie the whole franchise together.
I’m going to draw a lot of ire here, but if you compare the LOTR trilogy with Star Wars, then its fair to say this prequel trilogy would be compared to Lucas’ attempt at a prequel trilogy. As such, I can heartily say, there is no Jar-Jar, pod racing, or other fluff. While all of the material may not be true to The Hobbit, and there are certainly some embellishments and additions from Tolkien‘s original stories, they at least worked (in my opinion) to give this first film a complete arc while still playing to a larger tapestry. It was a solid film, one that you hardly noticed spent three hours to show you only 1/3 of a story.
Plus, we were all excited to see us some Gollum.
Related articles
- …And Another Thing: That Special Magic that Turns 2 into 3 (Concerning Hobbits) (sfsignal.com)
- The Hobbit breaks box office record (newsfixnow.com)
- “In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit…” (misternizz.wordpress.com)
