Yeah, I saw it. I did. Not in 3D, though, my eyes can't handle 3D. And no, I didn't discover that two weeks ago.... I've known it for years. I avoid 3D movies as much as I can.
Anywho, here it is. The Hobbit: There and back again.... no, wait, that's the book. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. That's the first movie of two.... or three... nah, two.... NO! THREE! NO MORE ARGUING! Have to make three movies, because it makes more money..... wait, scratch that, that doesn't sound good in a press release.... Because the fans what it! No, that's not true, the fans were already cautious when we said two movies.... Hmm.... because we want to get a bit of the Silmarillion and Book of lost tales and the others into the movie! That's it, the fans wants Silmarillion to be adapted to the big screen! And it will look good with three big boxes next to the three big boxes of The Lord of the Rings. Yup, that sounds good....
Ok, ok, I'm just poking fun. I don't know how they were thinking, all I do know is that the fans have been waiting for 10 years. And here it is. And I saw it. And here's what I though about it:
Music; enthralling. Visuals (without 3D): stunning. Actors: great, mostly. Pacing: on point... mostly.
The first thing I though about the hobbit was negative. The prologue about the dwarves were..... not bad, but felt really misplaced and why is Bilbo narrating it? Should have been Balin or someone. It is hard here not to draw the parallel to the Fellowship. Some people hate the prologue, some love it, I... like it, that prologue didn't feel out of place and Galadriel narrating feels appropriate. Bilbo narrating the rise and fall of the Dwarves just feels... irksome Adding to it that it feels badly paced in a way I cant really describe makes it feel....I don't know. Crammed into a corner and forgotten until 2 days before release when someone found it and threw it in where it didn't belong. I wish one of the dwarves had told it at the gathering in Bag End.
Moving on to the prologue with Bilbo and Frodo. This is where the movie should have started. In a hole on the ground, just like the book. Elijah Wood seems to have outgrown Frodo, but only just. It bothered me a few minutes, but was then forgotten. This part was just what this movie needed as a starting point, with great nods to the Fellowship. Let's jump down into the rabbit hole.
So then we meet a 60 years younger Bilbo sitting in front of his house smoking his pipe when Gandalf shows up and recruits him to an adventure. The part when the dwarves show up is a little too fast-paced, as if they are afraid to linger on any of them, or Bilbo for that matter. But both songs are there, and that I love. Unfortunately, the best line in the song when the dwarves clear out the dishes disappeared in production or something. They get to "that's what Bilbo Baggins hates", but the last line; "so carefully, carefully with the plates" IS the line where you kind of draw breath, sigh of relief and is sure they were teasing the poor hobbit all along. That line should have been there....
Off to the Adventure! Let's go get that treasure. In the book, it is the treasure they seem to be interested in, at least that is my impression. The Arkenstone more than anything In the movie, it seems to be more about reclaiming the homeland. Between Hobbiton and Rivendell Bilbo and the 13 dwarves and 1 wizard meet 3 mountain trolls, 1 dotty wizard and a pack of orcs. The trolls are great, right out of the book, but the gag of how Bilbo is discovered is NOT funny. Jokes with bodily fluids is, in my humble opinion, for kids under the age of 5.... They should have kept the books solution. Next on the scene is Radagast the brown. Just like Gandalf the grey, he is a wizard. What is it with wizards and colors? I must say, this was never my vision of Radagast. My own personal vision of Radagast has always been more like Aragorn, only a wizard and surrounded by animals. Maybe that's the romantic in me. This Radagast is.... kinda cute. It's your dotty old grandfather that you love and want to take care of now, when he's old and has a foggy grasp on the world. The encounter with Radagast doesn't feel like it's been crow-bared in there, unlike the orcs. THEY feel like they've been thrown in to get a chase scene and to force the dwarves where they don't wan't to go. The enmity between dwarves and elves are played up a lot from the beginning Why Thorin is so pissed with the Quenian elves of Rivendell, I don't really get. It's the Sindari and their king Thraduil (father of one Greenleaf Greenleaf.... ehm, I mean.... Legolas Greenleaf....) who stood them up. But, I guess dwarves are like everyone else. Elves are elves to them, just like dwarves are dwarves to the Elves.... Anywho, the dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf end up in the valley of waters and the Last Homely House, where Lindir, of all Elves (who actually appeared in the book The Fellowship of the Ring for like 2 pages, never to be heard of again until I started writing yaoi fanfiction about him) greet them and says Elrond isn't home. Buuuut..... it takes only about 50 seconds for Elrond to come home, riding a horse, sporting shining, sexy armor. *Fangirl death.* And then they do what hobbits like to do. Eat, drink and talk. A LOT! Gandalf has a little meeting with Elrond, Saruman and Galadriel, the latter whom seems to be there as astral projection or something. This scene feels a bit forced, I can't really say why. Maybe it has more to do with my wanting the story to be about Bilbo, so, let's jump-start that part again. After some arguing about an old map, Elrond sends the dwarves and Bilbo on their merry way again, or, actually, the dwarves sneak off and leaves Bilbo behind, but the hobbit catches up with them and they're off. Off into mountains with stone giants and thunder storms and an underground kingdom with goblins. The goblin king is big and ugly and makes me think about how Shrek would be if he was evil. The goblin king, again, not what I expected. I pictured him like a small, conniving little.... yeah, a little like Gollum, actually, like they were cousins or something.
Speaking about Gollum..... There are some discrepancies between this scene and the one in the prologue of the Fellowship, but who cares? It's the Riddle Scene, the one everyone wanted to see. Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be little to no suspense in this scene. They could have played this up a bit, I think Taken it slower, made it seem harder, both for Bilbo and Gollum. Especially the 5th riddle which Bilbo in the book answers more or less accidentally. Anywho....
A bit later, the movie fans who doesn't read books get the explanation as to why the people in Lord of the ring is going on about eagles all the time. And then.... the movie ends. It is a good place to end the movie. Bilbo and the dwarves are over the Misty Mountains, now they can actually see the Lonely Mountain in the distance. The end.... for now.....
Seeing as they are already halfway through the book, I do feel a bit skeptical as to how they're gong to manage 2 more movies. Brilliant or catastrophe, we'll see. One year from now... I dread the encounter with Beorn, as I have a hard time imagining that actor as Beorn. I want to see Mirkwood, hopefully it's not confusingly like the forest in Harry Potter. Dark forest + giant spiders could get harmfully close to one another. (Besides, who is it crying plagiarism every time someone says "wizard"?) The glimpse we got of King Thranduil had me thinking he seemed well-cast, looks-wise. How he will look next to his son, we'll see.
Until next move's out, I'll say no more...
No comments:
Post a Comment