Expectations weren’t very high when I popped The Hobbit: An Unexpected journey into the DVD player last night. After all, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which is amazingly ten years old at this point, is easily the best fantasy movies ever made. How can you ever top that? To tell the truth, you can’t.
That becomes my biggest gripe with the first edition of The Hobbit. The books were totally different works, as The Hobbit was made for a younger audience and reflects that, while The Lord of the Rings is quite serious and tells of a serious war for the future of Middle Earth.
The problem becomes that The Hobbit is a roughly 300 page book without the exquisite detail found in J.R.R. Tolkien’s other works. Also, with the lighter tone there is only one option to extend it. Basically, they’ve combined it with aspects of The Silmarillion, a dense work of Tolkien that reads more like medieval literature than a fantasy novel.
You can tell when they’re moving back and forth between the two very different works. One second you are seeing something completely goofy and seemingly out of place, while the sequences from The Silmarillion lend a darker tone to the story. Frankly, although the story is mostly derived from The Hobbit, the lighter toned scenes just seem quite out of place.
More blame can be attributed to the short original work being stretched into three movies of three hours each. Two movies would have been a stretch, but in a way it still works. Jackson’s Middle Earth is a living breathing place, and I’m thankful to be a visitor yet again.
The story also crawls at the start, but once the fantastic action scenes and top rate cinematography take over, the pace quickens greatly. I was left excited about the next edition, which thankfully debuts next month.
Quality: 7/10
Rewatchability: 8/10
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