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Old 12-14-2012, 09:30 AM   #7
Boromir88
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I saw the movie's midnight showing, and here are my thoughts/reactions. If you prefer not to see any spoilers, watch the movie first before reading this...

The opening starts out fairly good, with Bilbo and Frodo. I don't think it's entirely necessary to have this "right before the Long-Expected Party" moment, but it brings back familiar faces to set up the story, and doesn't harm it. Old Bilbo takes us back not right to the "Unexpected Party" but to a prologue of the coming of Smaug and flight of the Dwarves. Erebor and Dale look fantastic. But the prologue also contains one of the more glaring changes that I don't like, nor do I think it's necessary...

Thranduil arrives with his elf army as the dwarves are fleeing the mountains. They are calling for Thranduil to aid them, but then Thranduil simply refuses and marches his army back home. It really doesn't make sense to me. I believe it's supposed to set up the hostility between Elves and Dwarves (can't really take us all back to Thingol and Doriath). However, I don't see how it's necessary to manufacture this animosity between the two races. You could have just dealt with the tension when the Dwarves are captured by Thranduil, and not manufacture this "Thranduil somehow magically arrives in Erebor when Smaug comes (even though Smaug's arrival is a surprise)...and despite marshalling an army he then flat out refuses to do anything, marches them back home. Thorin will remember this!" It paints the Elves as villains who seem perfectly content with a dragon taking up abode in the North of Middle-earth and Thranduil like fool, for marshalling his army and then deciding "mmk, pleasant show, let's go back."

Now we get to the beginning of The Hobbit with Gandalf's arival in Bag End. Some differences here, Bilbo doesn't try to cordially get rid of Gandalf by telling him to return for tea the next day, but basically tells him to bugger off and slams the door in his face. Then for whatever reason, Gandalf took that as a sign to just go ahead and mark the door anyway. Dwarves come busting in, Dwalin first and despite Bilbo's protest to get out of his hole, Dwalin just helps himself to food and pigs out. It's the same for the rest of the Dwarves who start filtering in, Bilbo throws fits telling them to get out, but he goes ignored completely and Dwarves raid Bilbo's food supplies.

Instead of Bilbo expecting to host Gandalf and being confused by a company of Dwarves sporadically showing up and Bilbo busying himself with trying to be a good host, but wonder how and why these dwarves just keep knocking on his door. You get quite a different feeling, as Dwarves just keep coming in to apparently raid all of Bilbo's food and refuse to know they're in someone's home who is yelling at them to get out. Not a change that I liked.

For some reason Jackson decides it must be elaborately explained why the Dwarves are on this quest to slay Smaug in the first place (because you know, having your home taken over by a dragon isn't good enough reason). Enter some strange prophecy story where Thorin is supposedly the one destined with the task and when the ravens return then Smaug's reign will end. I understand having to set up the dwarves motivations, but it's unnecessarily complicating the story. Like I said, what dwarves being kicked out by a dragon and they want their home back isn't simple enough to follow and explain? Thorin apparently attended some meeting of the 7 dwarven lords and he was told this "quest" was for him. It's also explicitly told that Dain refuses help, which well...I don't understand, considering the importance Dain plays in the Battle of Five Armies.

The two dwarven songs are fantastic and do in ways make up for this overly complicated "prophecy/quest" story. Bilbo refuses to sign the contract and the dwarves leave without him. Then the next day Bilbo seems to have a change of heart, realizing the emptiness and boredom of his hobbit hole that was previously filled with a bunch of dwarves. This one I don't mind, because it would be hard to explain the adventure that woke up in Bilbo from the stories (where it also seemed like in the books the music of the dwarves sparked this new found spirit). Here Bilbo seeing the emptiness is quite telling and it's this which sparks his adventure spirit. It's about as good as can be expected.

I will bypass the trolls, because that's fairly good, as well as entertaining. I really just want to get to the appearances of Azog and Radagast in the films. And I really don't see a point for them. Well there is a point, Azog to set up an antagonist in the first film, and some cheap thrills as the baddie "on the hunt" for Thorin and company. Radagast's only narrative purpose is to inform Gandalf that bad things have returned to Dol Guldur, but there is no reason this could not have been done by Gandalf later, when he visits Dol Guldur. The other stuff with Radagast is quite frankly ridiculous and only looks to be time filler. And thus I finally saw what the critics had been talking about, there is no point to Radagast except to stroke Jackson's ego as some sort of story-teller.

We get some mindless action to spice up the movie now as Azog is on the prowl with his warg-riding orcs, and attacks the party, driving them towards Rivendell. Rivendell's cavalry (led by Elrond) comes to their rescue. Thorin is distrustful towards Elrond by they accept his invite and eventually Thorin agrees to show Elrond Thror's map. And now I will say I did like Thorin's character better than I expected. He carries a distrust towards Elves, but I did imagine him as being very guarded. His reaction to be wary of Elrond is understandable, I just don't think we needed the whole "witnessing Thranduil refuse to aid the dwarves during Smaug's attack" to manufacture that hostility/mistrust.

It is here we get the White Council meeting (well Elrond, Gandalf, Saruman, and Galadriel at least). Another good part in the movie in my opinion. Now obviously the timing of this meeting is distorted, and it might only be to try to relive the Middle-earth feeling from the LOTR movies. But Blanchett and Lee are masterful on screen, I could legit watch any movie involving them. We get Saruman's blatant contempt for Radagast (as Gandalf informs them Radagast has discovered something bad has come to Dol Guldur) and Saruman brushes this off as Radagast being an unreliable source (afterall he's just a druggie forest wizard with birds nesting in his hair and a pet hedgehog). There is some really good dynamics set up here, and that is to be expected whenever you put actors with the caliber of Blanchett, Lee, McKellan and Weaving together. I am definitely interested to see how the rest of these White Council meetings turn out.

Unfortunately, we also get some nonsense from Elrond to not allow Thorin's party to continue with the quest, which has been mentioned by Agan. I don't get it either.

The stone giants are meh. I mean CGI wise they look great, but it's just more time waste that has no purpose but to have dwarves stumbling through some fight between the giants. Party gets to the cave, Bilbo decides he's tired of Thorin getting on him all the time about being a burden and thus he wants to sneak out and just go back home. He doesn't get the chance, as the party is captured by dwarves.

I love the look of Goblin-town, as the dwarves are taken to the Great Goblin (Bilbo gets separated and thus meets Gollum). Seeing it is Thorin, and Azog has a price on his head, the Great Goblin wants to ransom Thorin to Azog. At least this change in the story makes sense. But upon seeing Orcrist the goblins go nuts and want to just kill them all, a battle ensues. I'm ok with it, maybe because I expected a battle here, but it was good.

The Riddles scene between Gollum and Bilbo are easily the highlight of the first film, and my favorite part. There are some big differences here, but that I won't spoil. The differences make sense as far as adding to the movie and fitting nicely with what the narrator in The Hobbit tells us about Gollum's history.

Bilbo returns to the Dwarves, but there's really no understood reason why, considering before the Goblin capture he was whiny about Thorin being mean and thus just wants to go back home. But he's back with them, and for a fabricated reason suddenly wants to help them again.

The conclusion is turned into another fight scene. And this is I believe the overall issue with dividing up The Hobbit in three films. The book comes to a natural and logical conclusion where everything is brought together in The Battle of Five Armies. But now, Jackson is trying to create an entire movie narrative over a few chapters and other random stories from the appendices getting smushed all together.

Therefor, you're just confused how everything is relevant and a bunch of material has to be manufactured to weave all these separate events together. I think it's summed up well by Esty, and those who say it comes off looking like a fan-fic. I do believe, I can not fairly get an idea of everything until the story is complete with the other two movies. I was intrigued enough to see how everything gets brought together, but as far as this first movie...

The Lord of the Rings was a large enough book to contain Jackson's obsessive need to film and plunder everything. It never felt like too much, or too long, because there actually were so many narratives, and sub-plots that existed for the movies to be built upon. In my opinion, The Hobbit was not a big enough story for Jackson, and therefor he's plundering any possible avenue that is vaguely related to The Hobbit events, to try to mangle together a story. Since afterall, he has to create a narrative over a few chapters within one very small story. In my opinion, it didn't work, but I still don't think I can know until the entire story gets told (erm shown on screen).
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