TO MOST fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth books, “The Hobbit” always felt like a bit of throat-clearing before the epic quest of “The Lord of the Rings”. Published in 1937, it was his first stab at describing his invented world. Not to Peter Jackson, apparently. In the hands of the director of the wildly successful Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Tolkien’s shorter, picaresque tale takes on the bloated dimensions of a mountain troll.
The story takes place 60 years before “The Lord of the Rings” begins, in a “brighter, happier Middle Earth.” Yet the film staggers under the weight of all the menacing material that Mr Jackson has injected in an effort to tie it to his darker sequels. Equally menacing, perhaps, is the fact that this film, subtitled “An Unexpected Journey”, is the first of another long trilogy that Mr Jackson plans to pump out of this slender novel.
It starts promisingly enough. Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, is recruited by a band of dwarves to help reclaim their lost kingdom from the dragon, Smaug. Martin Freeman plays a perfect Bilbo, incarnating the quintessential English qualities of pluck and decency with which Tolkien endowed his hobbits. A comedic pile-up of dwarves at his door sets the befuddled tone. Ian McKellen returns as Gandalf the Grey, played more kindly than wizardly this time. Adventures pile up thick and fast, starting with the party’s capture and near-roasting by mountain trolls, one of whom is a bit of a foodie.
The trouble starts when Mr Jackson starts to shoehorn in the back story. Many wondered how the director would get three films out of a 272-page book. Now they know. It makes some sense to put the dwarves’ quest into the larger context of the gathering storm in Middle Earth—the parallel activities of elves and wizards are sprinkled throughout the book and Tolkien indulged his imagination further in a lengthy appendix to “The Lord of the Rings”. But Mr Jackson has avidly seized on this material and dropped it in rather clunkily.
The “shadow of an ancient horror”—the evil force that returns as the ultimate baddie, Sauron, in “The Lord of the Rings”—appears here as a pack of pursuing wolves, orcs and the evil goblin Azog. Meanwhile, the guardians of Middle Earth, a group of elves and wizards known as “The White Council”, are brought out of the footnotes and on to the stage. The elves Galadriel and Elrond, and the wizard Saruman, reprised by their famous actors, convene in a wooden meeting in which Saruman dismisses their fears of a rising menace. Other oddities obscure the party’s basic quest. There is a lengthy new role for a wizard barely mentioned in the tales, Radagast the Brown, whose addled appearances made this correspondent cringe, and a bizarrely camp performance by the Great Goblin which makes sense only upon learning that the monster is voiced by Barry Humphries, better known as Dame Edna.
Mr Jackson has said that Tolkien’s story runs at break-neck pace and he wanted to develop the characters more. The film accordingly builds up Thorin Oakenshield, the exiled dwarf king, as a pale echo of Aragorn, the exiled king in “The Lord of the Rings”. An opening flashback shows him bent on avenging the loss of his kingdom. Yet his motivation is obvious and there is little depth to this character, or many others. Too many chases and schmaltzy good-and-evil dialogue make it rather standard Hollywood fare.
By far the most affecting part of the film is the long underground confrontation between Bilbo and the creature Gollum, a riddling match of wits played just as Tolkien wrote it. The amazing Andy Serkis returns as the emaciated freak in CGI with glowing blue eyes. This Gollum is complex, by turns endearing and vicious, and truly tragic in the loss of his “precious”, the One Ring of power. The ring itself is vividly depicted: slipping almost with intention from Gollum’s rags to be found by Bilbo. It spins magically onto his finger and sets off the quest to save Middle Earth.
Those unacquainted with the book may well find the film thrilling, stuffed with rollercoaster action scenes, familiar musical motifs, first-rate costumes and panoramas as sweeping and impressive as ever. The production company has tripled in size—and it shows. The film is shot at 48 frames per second instead of the usual 24. This heightens the detail, but can leave sets and actors looking fake and bleached. There is a depressing sameness to the dazzling surface of these heavily digitalised action films; at times this feels like “Avatar” meets “Harry Potter”.
“The Lord of the Rings” trilogy was close to perfect, and it has the Oscars and diehard fans to prove it. In “The Hobbit” Mr Jackson seems to have let his love for the material blind him to the merits of a simpler story. The result is more an instalment of a franchise than a compelling film.
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