Warning: Spoilers!
The Hobbit movie finally came out in Australia on Boxing day, and I went. It was an event I had been anticipating for months, with fangirling dying cockroach hands being made at every trailer and mention. Frankly though, I was disappointed. Don't get me wrong; it was, as films go, exceptional. The acting, the score, the special effects the scenery (apart from non-moving clouds), the costumes, the shots, the all-round cinematography was, as demonstrated in The Lord of the Rings film, quite phenomenal. However, as film adaptions go, it figuratively made me cry. The Hobbit is one of my favourite novels of all time, with a firmly cemented place in my top-ten. Semi-similarily, my favourite film of all time is, The Lord of the Rings- I must confess, I have yet to read ALL the books- with no preference of the three. I was horrified at the announcement that The Hobbit was to be made in three parts: I had no idea how it could be done well, and it turns out I was right.The Hobbit, unlike The Lord of the Rings, is not an epic. It is simply a happy little adventure tale about a lovable protagonist, with perhaps one or two undercurrents on the theme of greed and desire. It's been padded out, altered and tried to be 'deepified'; thus turning it into a foolish parody of a brilliant novel.
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| As promised, my third-hand copy of The Hobbit, which I inherited from my Grandparents, who owned it before they had kids. The covers are taped on and half the map is missing. I wouldn't trade it for anything, unless I could save someone's life with it. |
The main positives of the film were: the cinematography, as previously mentioned; the acting, with Martin Freeman as an excellent Bilbo, even if I did sometimes expect Benedict Cumberbatch to rock up and save the day; the intro, with beautiful links to The Lord of the Rings film and the first few lines of The Hobbit novel(albeit, changed ones); the Eagles being almost the only redemption for the end of the film; and, as expected, being able to stare at the gorgeousness of Kili for a fair bit of the film.
Negatives of the film included a vast majority of things, but I'll try to restrain myself. The entire section with Radagast was perhaps more suited to a child's film, as complete and utter comedy. He has a minor mention in The Lord of the Rings books, but does not appear at all in The Hobbit; oddly enough then, he does not appear at all in any of The Lord of the Rings films, but does have an utterly ridiculous and detrimental part in the film adaption of The Hobbit. The new sub-plot of the Orcs was completely unnecessary and ended up detracting.Necromancer? I know it's a small amount of sub-plot in the Hobbit, but do we really want another sub-plot not developed in the books to manifest itself in the films? The music, with throwbacks and repeats of The Lord of the Rings was pretty good, however The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit are from a separate set of films, and so I would have liked an entirely new soundtrack instead of the repeated theme of The Lord of the Rings and eagle's theme. The bit with Saruman and Galadriel at Rivendell? Unexplained and unnecessary.
And finally, my most important question is simply: why? Why change it at all? Why make it into a film if you're not going to do a good job? Why not leave it as a happy little adventure tale, one a totally different scale toThe Lord of the Rings?
Final rating: 3 stars and it only gets that because of the beautiful cinematography.
xx
Confession ( who apologises for a drastic change in what she normally writes and also for the huge blocky text!)
