The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

[Elkhound]

Anyone see it, and if so did you like it?

[Evie]

Loved it!     There was a fair bit of departure from the original novel, but this being a Peter Jackson film version, I expected that, and at least the departures were more plausible than the ones he made in the LOTR movies.  (And I only found those to be minor irritants rather than major ones.  In this movie, the departures seemed less jarring.) 

[derynifanatic64]

I saw it yesterday with my dad and enjoyed it.  It wasn't the type of movie my dad normally watches, but he liked it too.

[Elkhound]

The breaking of the story into three parts--some people objected to this, but I understand why.  A lot of the backstory and some of the story itself in THE HOBBIT was told in narration; this is OK in a novel, but in film not.  To have Gandalf & Thorin give long speeches explaining about the Dwarves' history and the doings of the White Council would not have worked in a film. 

Jackson originally wanted to do a two-part, incorporating the action that happened 'offstage' in the novel; however, the narrative naturally falls into three parts: Hobbiton to Mirkwood, Mirkwood to the Mountain, the Mountain to Hobbiton.

Hence, there was TOO MUCH plot for two films, but NOT QUITE ENOUGH for three; hence the padding.

I did like the changes to the troll episode--from finding the ruined farm on; it wasn't quite like in the book, but it did show that Bilbo could use his wits when he couldn't physically fight.  The chase to Rivendell was good--kept the excitement up--although I thought that the rabbit sled was a bit silly.

The Goblin Town sequence was a bit too drawn out and a bit too much slapstick--but it made the encounter with Gollum all the more dramatic. 

What will Jackson do with Beorn?  He left out Bombadil from LOTR (and I understand why), and Beorn is in some ways the HOBBIT equivalent--and Jackson has already transferred some of his 'protector of the beasts' function to Radagast. 

[tenworld]

i liked it too. (and I liked the PJ version of LOTR, understanding it was a movie and therefore a different medium)

Since we know now the necromancer=sauron, adding to these movies makes sense, as does showing the White Council.

the rabbit sled was too silly but it was PJs way of reminding us The hobbit was a fairy tale originally.

If he cuts out Beorn I will be very disappointed, and I hope he actually works Beorn into the end battle.  I had no issue with leaving Tom B out of the movie since he doesnt fit in the book very well (who is he?  Tolkien alterego, god, maia?)

for different views see the Tolkien newsgroups - those people are very intolerant of the movies (there was a whole thread on how bad it was that PJ only included 8 of the 10 riddles in the book).

[Alkari]

Don't share all the enthusiasm.    Have to say that I'd just give it a 6 out of 10, because I think that Peter Jackson has become totally overwhelmed by his own self importance and the availability of a very large budget.  Just because you CAN do lots of CGI stuff doesn't mean you SHOULD.   (Cue the endless goblin battle scenes - boring, boring.)  Not to mention endless travel sequences - yes we know they are on a journey, but we don't need all those panoramas.  It was interesting to see / hear the audience approval reactions in various places, and they were invariably where PJ had stuck pretty closely to Tolkien without much PJ embellishment.  Like the Gollum sequence, or the eagle rescue, or the trolls, or even the beginning where the dwarves invade poor Bilbo (though see dwarf gripe below).  

For me, the core mistake that PJ has made is trying to turn what is very definitely a children's book into something of the grand adult scale of LOTR.  I was quite happy with the 'extra' introduction, where they tied it into LOTR, but after that, there were so many things that really annoyed me.  I purposely did not re-read the book before seeing the movie, but when I did so, lots of things annoyed me even more. Like - what happened to the colourful dwarf clothing when they arrive at Bilbo's place?   They all look totally nondescript and merge into one another appearance-wise, yet in the books they have bright individual clothes and different coloured hoods - indeed, the blue hoods of Fili and Kili are actually a plot point where Bilbo is able to tell which ones they are (spider webs).   And WHY all that nonsense about Radagast?  It wasn't important in the book, and it doesn't link to LOTR in any way ... so why waste all the time on it?   Same with the scenes with Elrond, Galadriel and co - why were they there?  They weren't necessary.   Not to mention that I thought Thorin was way out of character.

I'm sorry, but PJ could have made two very good classic 'children's movies for all ages' out of The Hobbit - instead, he is simply going for the money and has spoiled things as far as I am concerned.  I went to the movie with an open mind, but came out feeling dissatisfied and vaguely angry.   I thought the Narnia books were far better served as film adaptations, so I may or may not be bothered seeing the next two Hobbit movies.  I have always loved the book, and I just don't think it is being well-served by Jackson.

[Elkhound]

 I purposely did not re-read the book before seeing the movie, but when I did so, lots of things annoyed me even more. Like - what happened to the colourful dwarf clothing when they arrive at Bilbo's place?   They all look totally nondescript and merge into one another appearance-wise, yet in the books they have bright individual clothes and different coloured hoods - indeed, the blue hoods of Fili and Kili are actually a plot point where Bilbo is able to tell which ones they are (spider webs).   And WHY all that nonsense about Radagast?  It wasn't important in the book, and it doesn't link to LOTR in any way ... so why waste all the time on it?   Same with the scenes with Elrond, Galadriel and co - why were they there?  They weren't necessary.   Not to mention that I thought Thorin was way out of character.

YMMV and you are entitled to your opinion, but. . .did we even see the same movie?

The dwarves were nondescript and merged into one another?  Did you even look at their hair and beard styles?  These kept them distinct even when their cloaks were off.

Radagast was not 'nonsense'.  Put the goings-on with the dwarves into a wider context of the 'geopolitics', if you would have it, of Middle Earth; it brought up the existence of The White Council and explains why Gandalf will have to leave Bilbo and the Dwarves.  (Would you have him leave without explanation as to why he has to go, and explain after Five Armies "oh, we were taking care of the Necromancer" [whoever he may be--anyone who doesn't know the story won't realize how important that is]; it most certainly does tie in with the larger story.  Also, the connection with Radagast will be important when they have to beg for help from Beorn (I don't see how they will be able to cut him out!); Gandalf's kinship with Radagast who is Beorn's friend is the basis of his asking Beorn for help--without that connection, Beorn would have told them to go jump in the Anduin.

And I don't think that Thorin's characterization was off at all.  Thorin is proud, aggressive, VERY conscious of his status as royalty-in-exile, and has a big chip on his shoulder about all the indignities--real or imaginary--that have been heaped on his family and tribe over the centuries.  In short, he is someone who was brought up to believe that he shouldn't have to take cr*p from anyone, and when he does he should give it right back.  The book softens this, but if you look in HOME and the appendices to LOTR you see this much more strongly.

[Alkari]

We did see the same movie, Elkhound - it's just that 'putting things into the wider geopolitical context" as you try to explain it is NOT filming The Hobbit as Tolkien wrote it, a wonderful children's book that can and should stand on its own.  The book is not, and was never intended to be, an adult mythical fantasy story along LOTR lines.  Sure, the dwarves had different beards and hairstyles in the movie, but again, that is not how Tolkien described their appearance, and as I explained, the different coloured clothing was actually a recurring point in the book for Bilbo to ID them.  Yes, Thorin is greedy, but in the book this aspect only shows gradually, and the way he becomes overtaken by greed and power once he actually sees Smaug's hoard and physically touches the treasure is one of the plot points that determines his reaction to Bard, the Dale men and so on.  But PJ has shown him already like that, when they haven't even reached the Mountain, which leaves him precious little room to 'go' as a character.  Sorry, it's poor script writing.

We don't need a stupid sequence of Radagast and a sleigh pulled by rabbits (how utterly ridiculous!) in order for Gandalf to explain how he knows Beorn.  What happened to good old dialogue? In fact, following your post I just re-read the Beorn part of the book to check I hadn't missed something - and sure enough, Radagast isn't mentioned at all!  Gandalf simply explains to Bilbo and the dwarves that Beorn is someone he knows, that he is a skin changer, that he has cattle and horses which are nearly as marvellous as himself, that he roams far and wide as a bear, that no one really knows where he comes from and "he is not the sort of person to ask questions of."   Please tell me why THAT explanation, delivered by Gandalf in Ian McKellan's superb way, would not be perfectly adequate for a Hobbit movie.  It leaves Beorn as someone ancient and mysterious, just as he should be.  And as Radagast played no part in the LOTR movies, putting him in here makes even less sense - he is simply irrelevant.  

When you read the book, it contains enough action and plot to fill two good movies, but all the other stuff is basically just PJ padding to get money from 3 movies rather than two.  The wider Middle earth geopolitical context is not necessary to the story of Bilbo's journey, because we see that journey through his eyes - and he is pretty much ignorant of most things outside the Shire.   He's heard of a few things,and he's fascinated by elves, but that's it.  Which was one of the subtle points in the book anyway, because Bilbo starts out ignorant and  a year later ends up back in the Shire changed by his journey.  "You are not the hobbit that you were" exclaims Gandalf as they arrive back and Bilbo stops to say that 'Roads go ever ever on' poem.   But in the eyes of the Shire folk he is "no longer quite respectable" as Tolkien so elegantly wrote it.   The inclusion of all the extra stuff and the attempt to give it some sort of grandiose mythical air loses the near-innocence of Bilbo the burglar's journey of discovery, and the subtlety of how Tolkien sets up his later massive LOTR, Silmarillion, etc through this simple children's story.  

I am far more willing to forgive the occasional liberties that Jackson took with LOTR, because I didn't think they would ever be able to film those books given their scope and because I thought he managed to 'get' most of the books' power and their sweep, even if poor Gimli got turned into a caricature and Legolas became some weird sort of action man in that ridiculous elephaunt sequence, when he was and should have been just an archer.  But The Hobbit is essentially a simple book: it didn't need any of that stuff, and IMHO Jackson has 'lost' the book in his efforts to transform it into something it is not.  Sure, there were many good things in the movie and on balance they outweighed the bad, hence my 6 out of 10 rating, but I saw the movie with two other avid Tolkien fans of longstanding (and I mean of 40+ years standing!), and we all reacted the same way.  

[Elkhound]

We don't need a stupid sequence of Radagast and a sleigh pulled by rabbits (how utterly ridiculous!) in order for Gandalf to explain how he knows Beorn.  What happened to good old dialogue? In fact, following your post I just re-read the Beorn part of the book to check I hadn't missed something - and sure enough, Radagast isn't mentioned at all!  Gandalf simply explains to Bilbo and the dwarves that Beorn is someone he knows, that he is a skin changer, that he has cattle and horses which are nearly as marvellous as himself, that he roams far and wide as a bear, that no one really knows where he comes from and "he is not the sort of person to ask questions of."   Please tell me why THAT explanation, delivered by Gandalf in Ian McKellan's superb way, would not be perfectly adequate for a Hobbit movie.  It leaves Beorn as someone ancient and mysterious, just as he should be.  And as Radagast played no part in the LOTR movies, putting him in here makes even less sense - he is simply irrelevant.

I agree that the rabbits were silly. I've said so several times.  But Gandalf does say to Beorn "you knew my cousin Radagast"--that's the basis of his asking for his hospitality.  Who?  Well, we know who. 

And would you have Gandalf vanish with no explanation at Mirkwood, show up at Five Armies, and then give a long speech explaining about what the White Council is and what they do and how they had driven out the Necromancer?  That would be dull to all but die-hard JRRT fans, who are not a large enough group to justify a high-budget movie.  The rule in film is 'show, not tell'---and Jackson has shown us who the Necromancer is, why he's dangerous, what the White Council is, and that they are going to do something about the Necromancer.

Film and literature are two very different arts; when you are making a film of a book you can do a page-by-page transcription, but it tends not to work as well, especially for audiences that don't know the book, or you can do a free adaptation which attempts to tell the story and set out the themes in a way native to the medium.  Jackson, for all his flaws, has done the latter.

To get back OT for the board, this is why part of me hopes that the Deryni novels don't get filmed, because whatever approach the director takes, whoever he (or she) ends up being, lots of people will be very dissatisfied and will kvetch and nitpick and fuss over why the director was an idiot for not making the film they wanted, and those who liked it will respond with why they liked it and it will degenerate into namecalling and hurt feelings on both sides and general polarization of the fandom.  We've seen it already in Harry Potter.