
Understand that the scrutiny with which the live-action film The Hobbit is described here comes from more than just a fan but a Tolkien-ologist that has coveted and studied the book with love for over twenty years.
Suffice it to say, the Peter Jackson movie adaptation was extremely entertaining and funny, but utterly devoid of the spirit, realism, and meticulous attention to written Tolkien details that made The Lord of the Rings film trilogy such a masterful blend of on-screen magic and incredible story-telling.
[this review contains spoilers about the film]
Peter Jackson and company’s loose interpretation of The Hobbit was fun as a return to Middle Earth but continually disappointing as the novel’s story was repeatedly ignored or trumped by blatant disregard for reality or seriousness and replaced by overtly cartoony CGI and terrible Hollywood writing throughout the entire three-plus hours of film.
This movie was made to be visual eye-candy and comedic relief, thus utterly dumbing down, chopping up, and replacing the background, the history, and the legendary story with a mishmash of disjointed Hollywood ideas used purposefully to stretch one story that would have filled one three-hour-plus movie beautifully to three greedy shells of Tolkien's original story.
So it is now with The Hobbit trilogy. What was once a cornerstone of Jackson’s career – his amazing makeup and effects team – gave way to a cheaper and easier method of CGI as is seen most clearly in the cartoon character of the White Orc Azog. While Tolkien had Azog die in battle, Azog now miraculously survives the fight so that we, the moviegoers, have the visual 3-D stimulation of seeing a sled pulled by rabbits and the poorest visualization of Radagast the Brown ever (let’s make him an idiot that lives with bird crap on his face) running in circles, so that Azog’s mindless minions follow them around and forget the dwarves they are hunting (none of which happens in a Tolkien book).
The lines are often so awful that whole scenes often seem to stop and crumple in ruin, like when the Great Goblin (which also looks awful in its carton CGI) gets cut by Bilbo and says something to the effect of, “That did it!” as he falls to his death.
Lastly, Bilbo’s great character arc from the book is trampled, quite like Peter Parker’s in Spiderman 3. In the movie, he is Thorin’s doormat until he earns the dwarf’s respect by saving his life . . . yet this never happens in the book! Instead, in the novel, Bilbo slowly finds his own courage and begins to get the dwarves out of jams (such as the excellent barrel scene, which I can only assume will be ignored in the next film); this growth and reception are natural progressions that eventually pit his wit and fear against the wicked and cunning dragon Smaug.
To sum up, not only does the look, feel, and writing fall far short of anything pertaining to Jackson’s first trilogy, but the protagonist is ruined as well, so that the stellar acting – and it was stellar with Martin Freeman and Sir Ian Mckellan and the rest – becomes wasted amidst this flurry of outside story plots, twisted Tolkien ideas, and an overall 2-D, IMAX, 3-D, 3-D 480FPS film experience made specifically for five-year-olds and extremely stoned human beings who will sit with short attention spans and soak up the computerized-eye-candy version of Middle Earth.
Impulsive Review Grade: B-
By R.J. Huneke