2012 in Retrospect - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Disclaimer: There are spoilers for those who want to be surprised as to the details of what changes are made to the story, although I do not speak about the actual ending of the film.

There is a brief line in J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit', in which Bilbo Baggins and the dwarf company are trapped in a fierce storm while trying to cross the treacherous Misty Mountains.

The line reads: "When (Bilbo) peeped out in the lightning-flashes, he saw that across the valley the stone-giants were out and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them down into the darkness where they smashed among the trees far below, or splintered into little bits with a bang."

These stone-giants, whoever they may be, are only mentioned once again later and no more attention is paid to this passing event. However, in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, director Peter Jackson takes this one sentence and transforms it into a massive, special-effects-riddled, action sequence as only Jackson can - completely over the top, probably irrelevant and spectacularly entertaining.

The same words could be used to describe the movie as a whole. For those who don't know, 'The Hobbit' chronicles the adventures of Bilbo (Frodo's aging uncle in 'The Lord of the Rings') in his younger days as he aids a band of dwarfs who seek to reclaim their treasure, stolen from them by the dragon Smaug. Along the way, Bilbo messes with trolls, goblins, Wargs, giant spiders, wood elves and a slimy creature called Gollum who possesses a Ring of great importance. Tolkien originally wrote 'The Hobbit' as a children's book and thus it lacks the length and more serious tone of 'The Lord of the Rings' and ultimately feels more adventurous and light-hearted.

Peter Jackson, however, decided to cut this fairly simple book into three parts and make a 9-hour trilogy out of it, and if that's not over the top, I don't know what is. However, the film is spectacularly entertaining. In fact, it's the most fun I've had at the movies in a long time.

Aside from the aforementioned stone-giants sequence, the escape from the goblins has been extended into a fantastically frenetic chase sequence that features more ways to dispatch a goblin than there are hairs in a dwarf's beard. The entire scene feels more like something out of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, with the same sort of energy and sense of silliness, and less like something out of Tolkien, and yet... it works. The same can be said for the Warg battle amongst the pine trees and the encounter with the trolls.

Speaking of which, some purists might be irked by the fact that Jackson takes Gandalf's role in the conflict with the trolls and gives it mostly to Bilbo. However, I think it enhances Bilbo's character development in his relationship with the dwarfs in a positive way. I will say, though, there is plenty here for purists to find fault with and not everything works as well.

Jackson has taken a lot of material from the 'Lord of the Rings' appendixes as well as a plenty of additions from his own mind to pad out the story. The film does come to a complete halt when it enters Rivendell and Gandalf consults with the White Council. Another fault here is that Jackson assumes that people have seen 'Lord of the Rings' and therefore assumes that viewers know who Galadriel and Saruman are. They aren't given any introductions at all - they're just there. The scene overall really breaks the pace of the film.

Radagast the Brown is also a character that may prove irksome. The wizard, known for his work with animals, is barely mentioned in Tolkien's books, but here he is given a much larger role. He discovers that the evil Lord Sauron is growing in dark power from his destroyed fortress in the heart of Mirkwood and brings these dire tidings to Gandalf. He is also interpreted as somewhat of a goofball who has a bird's nest in his hair and drives a sleigh pulled by...rabbits.

All this comes straight out of Jackson's head and while I appreciate him trying to connect the events of 'The Hobbit' with those in 'LOTR', and Radagast is well portrayed, he just feels irrelevant and too comedic. I do think the events surrounding him are important, I just wish that they had rather been given to Gandalf, who discovered Sauron's reappearance in the books, although admittedly years earlier.

Another, less irksome, addition is to the back-story of dwarfs. I'm not referring to the attack of Smaug and the destruction of the Lonely Mountain (brilliantly summarized in a prologue similar to the one in Fellowship of the Ring with just enough glimpses of Smaug to whet the audience's appetite).

No, I'm talking about rather the story of Thorin and his bitter conflict with the goblins, or with one goblin in particular - the hideous Azog the Defiler. Now, Azog is a Tolkien character, but one killed centuries before these events. Here, though, he a given the role of a personal enemy of Thorin's and this role actually adds a lot to Thorin's character development and does a lot towards our understanding of Thorin and why the dwarfs look up to him as a leader.

Speaking of Thorin, some were apprehensive when photos of Richard Armitage as a much younger-looking Thorin appeared. I am happy to report that he does the role justice, turning the dwarf into a genuine character, one who I felt had been given a short-shrift in the book. Indeed, all the dwarfs are well-portrayed, if not a little underdeveloped. Martin Freeman as Bilbo does a magnificent job filling Ian Holm's shoes and it is wonderful, as always, to see Ian McKellen as Gandalf again. I always preferred his Gandalf the Gray to his Gandalf the White and he doesn't disappoint here. His opening scene with Bilbo is a highlight of the film.

Of course, it goes without saying that Andy Serkis steals the show with his Gollum. Furthermore, Jackson does some tweaking with his dialogue that plays with his schizophrenic tendencies. Aside from that, though, the 'riddles in the dark' scene is pretty much word for word from Tolkien's book (including one of my favorite lines, "Bless us and splash us, my precious!") and is a pretty much perfect scene (discerning viewers may notice a similarity between Bilbo's first use of the Ring and Frodo's in the inn at Bree).

That scene and one other rank among my favorite in the film as a whole. My second favorite is towards the beginning, when the dwarfs sing about their quest, 'far over Misty Mountains cold, to dungeons deep and caverns old'. Composer Howard Shore creates a haunting, beautiful melody for Tolkien's poetry, one that becomes a powerful theme for the movie. While the dwarfs sing, Bilbo listens and so do the viewers, who are swept away as Bilbo was into their story. The quest no longer feels like it is about treasure only, but about something more deeply rooted and meaningful.

Indeed, Jackson's film succeeds in making the dwarfs' quest less about gold and more about restoring the dwarfs' former glory and reclaiming their true homeland. The theme of 'home' plays a large part of Jackson's vision, not only for the dwarfs but for the hobbit who runs out of his without a pocket handkerchief and into an adventure bigger than he could possibly imagine, and yet 'home' is never far from his mind, whether it be his or the one the dwarfs are fighting for.

At any rate, this review has gone on far enough (probably too far) and I hope it didn't take you as long to read it as it did to watch the movie itself. I will conclude by saying The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was an enthralling, entertaining film, although it doesn't exactly reach the same heights as its predecessors, but I loved almost every minute of it. At first, I had my doubts about stretching the book into three films. Now, all I can say is, two more reasons to revisit Middle-Earth? Sign me up!

P.S. I will be looking at 11 other 2012 films to wrap up the year, after which, I will return to the 1990s of the Disney Decades.