A hobbit falls into place as an unlikely burglar in a plot to reclaim a dwarf’s mountain kingdom from a gold besotted dragon.
Summary:
Bilbo baggins is minding his own business, smoking his pipe weed and enjoying the solitude of his hole – as hobbits are want to do – when Gandalf the Grey, an old acquaintance, comes to call and provides him with the proposal of an adventure. Though Bilbo refuses, rushing to hide in his home, a wizard is not turned away so lightly. A host of dwarves arrive that night and quickly liberate everything they can find from his larder as Bilbo stands by helplessly fearing this seemingly slovenly pack of bearded mongrels don’t break too terribly much. When Gandalf returns followed closely by the leader of the troupe, Bilbo is drafted into service as their burglar – though he has never burgled a thing in his life. He refuses them, but when he wakes in the morning to an empty house, he has a change of heart and finds himself on…. an unexpected journey.
My Thoughts:
I am really happy Peter Jackson directed this series as well as the LOTR series. While I do think it would have been incredible to see Guillermo Del Toro’s vision, all I ever think of when I hear his name is the faun from pan’s labyrinth and the long faced creatures with big eyes and scroll marks on their faces from Hellboy. And I can imagine the orcs transformation in to that end. As it is, I feel like the “feel” of these two separate (if connected) series allows us a continuity that might have been severely compromised with a different creative team at the helm. That being said, there were a few moments when I wondered if Jackson didn’t recycle some ideas.
The beginning sequence was a bit long for my liking. While I do appreciate the connection of the two series through this… prologue, of sorts, I don’t think half of it was necessary. For one thing, I don’t think we ever needed to know what Bilbo was doing when Frodo was waiting for Gandalf at the beginning of Fellowship. I found myself waiting for them to “just get on with it” when we came back to Bilbo at his desk again. To me, this part felt more like someone considered how they could cut apart the end six films and put them back together in a different way to sell yet another “cut” of the films.
James Nesbitt, James Nesbitt, James Nesbitt, James Nesbitt, James Nesbitt, James Nesbitt! I don’t remember when it was exactly that I was looking at the promotional picture with all the dwarves’ faces smooshed into one poster sized rectangle and realized Bofur was James Nesbitt. I’m certain it was not the first, and probably not the tenth – it does take a while to get over trying to pick apart what the Hell those prosthetics are doing to Rawrmitages incredibly sharp nose. It doesn’t really matter I suppose, but I saw that he was going to be a part of the series and I squeed aloud. James Nesbitt is an amazing actor – if you’ve seen Jekyll, you don’t need me to tell you that – and so I was immediately filled with equal parts joy and dread. Joy because YAY! JAMES NESBITT. Dread because what if he was lost among the collective dwarf dross? Happily, my dread was not founded. He has a much bigger part than I honestly anticipated and I assume that is because Peter Jackson recognized what they had in him.
If something bothered me most about the costume choices in this film, it was Radagast the Brown’s bird poop ‘do. I know he’s all about the animals and what not, and that’s totally okay, but having bird poop run down the side of your face is disgusting and unhygienic to boot. I think that part of my issue with it is that no one seemed to have issue with it, that Radagast – while I understand he was preoccupied with necromancers and bad things in his forest – never once realized he had something on his face (it looked like it had been accumulating for quite a while) and tried to chip it off. Perhaps I’m more focused on him because I don’t want to think about the giant spiders.
When it comes to the Goblin King sequence I’m kind of on the fence as to how I feel about it. For one thing, I love him and his weird tumor jowl. Whoever designed him did an amazing job and while he was obviously CGI, I was too enthralled with being appalled to notice. I do have a problem with the goblin chase scene as it felt a little like a rehashing of the escape from Moria scene in Fellowship. But I am happy we got to see what goes on with the dwarves while Bilbo is dealing with Gollum.
The discrepancies from the books actual plot bothered me. I’ll admit that in all probability my problems with the plot additions are not as bad as some peoples’. But then, I know myself well enough that I did not re-read the novel before I went and saw the movie. Adaptations are always necessary when converting books to movies (when converting anything to film, I suppose) so I do not generally take issue with changes. I do however, wonder how on earth Peter Jackson pulled and pinched and prodded enough out of Tolkien’s world to turn a children’s story into a three movie epic.
Rawrmitage! That is all.
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