Unexpectedly Surprised

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey begins with an old midget that doesn't look like a midget named Bilbo writing a book about his younger adventures for the benefit of his houseboy, who looks suspiciously like that kid from Radio Flyer. Not the kid who died, the other one. The one who looked like Elijah Wood.

I know what you're thinking: but the kid in Radio Flyer didn't die! He flew away to a new life on his makeshift flying machine! Tom Hanks had years worth of postcards to prove it! You know that's not true. The abusive father (or step-father, I don't care enough to remember) beat that poor kid to death and Elijah Wood/Tom Hanks invented the miraculous getaway as a coping mechanism. You know this!

Anyway, I don't know why this little old dude cares enough about his houseboy to write this story. He could just tell him during his bath, but I guess that wouldn't be a very entertaining story for the audience. Well... not a general audience.

We flashback to the old midget as a younger midget played by that adult movie stand-in from Love, Actually. He seems like a nice guy, but he doesn't have any friends and spends all of his time living in a bunker, cooking food and staring at his favorite wall. The wall with the thing hanging on it.

One day, some old dude claiming to be a wizard named Gandalf shows up at Bilbo's bunker, inviting him to join in "an adventure". I don't know about you, but when some old stranger shows up at my door, calls himself a wizard, and invites me to join him on some vague, dangerous quest, I pack my bags and get excited. But this Bilbo fella just stammers a little and slams the door in the wizard's face, which works just as well.

Later on, some more midgets who don't look like midgets but are playing a different race of midgets show up at his bunker and eat all of his food. Then the wizard Gandalf pops up and drinks all of his wine. Then they all sing a song and fuck with Bilbo's plates.

Dwarves are notorious for their hatred of dinner plates.

Bilbo learns that the midgets (I am informed that they prefer the term "dwarves") are on a quest to liberate their old mountain home from a very angry dragon named Smaug who stole all of their gold and swims in his ill-gotten gains all day, every day, like Scrooge McDuck.

The dwarves are not happy about this, and have decided to evict this scaly usurper, even though they don't know how they're going to accomplish this. Maybe they're hoping they'll figure something out along the way. They invite Bilbo to join them, even though he has no discernible skills aside from looking incredulous. He declines, then the dwarves all fuck off. Later, Bilbo decides he might as well get murdered trying to slay a dragon for a bunch of ungrateful strangers, and runs after them.

Everybody gets into all sorts of shenanigans with trolls and goblins and orcs, in a series of sequences that seem to last forever. Agent Smith from The Matrix and Dracula show up in bad wigs and talk about stuff that doesn't matter. Queen Elizabeth turns into a vulcan and hits on the wizard. Some old hermit covered in bird shit riding a sleigh pulled by a bunch of jack rabbits swings by with a dagger and mumbles about necromancers or some shit. Bilbo hangs out with an albino midget in the dark and they tell riddles to each other. Then a flock of giant eagles spirits our party of little people to a mountain top and the movie ends.

So nothing happens. There are events in the film, to be sure. But nothing much really gets done in the nearly three hours that comprise The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Yep. This is pretty much it. Excitement!

I'll start by getting this out of the way: there's no reason for this simple story to be agonizingly stretched over three films. It's overkill. Every diversion in this film involving Gandalf the Grey and his pal Radagast the Brown is unnecessary.

Taking simple, adventerous moments from the book like Bilbo's encounter with a trio of gourmet trolls or the party's brief sojourn in the goblin realm and bloating them with epic extended action sequences adds nothing to the story. The story's called The Hobbit, not The Dwarves, The Wizard, and Some Midget.

Having said that, I had a blast watching this movie. I really enjoyed it, which surprised me, considering I had no real enthusiasm for the whole endeavor beforehand. I was such a big fan of Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings trilogy that having the opportunity to spend a little more time with Galadriel, Elrond and Saruman The White made me smile. It was like reacquainting myself with old friends.

Radagast the Brown is a character that would have been removed from the story if it had been limited to one film, like Tom Bombadil from The Lord Of The Rings. But the extended scope of this version of The Hobbit allows more room for characters like Radagast to get their due. Sure, his role in the story could have been written out completely and it wouldn't have greatly affected the proceedings. But his being there enriches this cinematic world. It's also nice to see Sylvester McCoy, a.k.a. the Seventh Doctor, get some big screen love.

If you want to get critical, you can argue that the very large action set-pieces in the film are really only there to fill out the running time and add nothing substantial to the story. And you'd be right. But they're so well done, and so entertaining, that I'd hate to see them go. It was also great to recognize the voice of Barry Humphries, aldo known as Dame Edna, as the Great Goblin. His final moments onscreen were among the funniest and most entertaining of the entire film, and that stuff wouldn't have existed in a shorter, more concise adaptation of The Hobbit.

The dwarves all began to stand out, feeling more like individuals and less like an undifferentiated mob of caricatures. By the time the film ended, I could actually tell them all apart.

Except this guy. I still have no idea who the fuck this asshole is. I'm not even sure he's in this movie.

That shocked me. Throwing in a character like Azog The Defiler, who had nothing to do with the events of the novel, as a nemesis for the dwarves gives a face to the nameless horde of orcs who hound our protagonists at every turn, and it works. It's an old trick, and not a terribly creative one, but I'm actually glad Peter Jackson and company introduced him.

A great deal of the additional content in this film (and presumably the forthcoming chapters) works more to bridge the simple story of The Hobbit with the more complex and epic The Lord Of The Rings films, and it's a double-edged sword. I would have liked to see a more straightforward adaptation of Tolkein's original novel, but that was never going to happen. The Lord Of The Rings came first cinematically, and we were never going to just get The Hobbit. It was always destined to be the "epic prelude" to The Lord Of The Rings and I've always been at odds with that. I still am, to be honest.

I read The Hobbit first when I was a kid, and I lament the fact that I'll never get that story adapted to the big screen as-is, but I must say that despite my misgivings with the situation, I'm ultimately happy with what I've gotten out of my journey with Bilbo Baggins and his companions thus far. As a companion piece to Peter Jackson's massive The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey works so much better than I ever expected it to work. It's a well made, light-hearted adventure with a colorful cast of likeable characters and I am eagerly anticipating returning to this delightful story next year.

I never thought I'd say that, but here I am, surprising myself. I went into this movie with an open mind, and I left with a smile on my face.

I said smile, Bilbo!

Before I end this, I have to mention the controversial "HFR Debate". As you may or may not know, Peter Jackson shot his adaptation of The Hobbit in native 3D at 48 frames per second. A lot of people are bemoaning this as a mistake, calling the HFR presentation "horrible", or even "unwatchable". I'm always curious to see the so-called "next big thing" in cinema. I'll give a gimmick a fair shot. In fact, the only reason why I actually ended up seeing The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in theatres was because our local movie house was displaying the film in HFR 3D. This clearly illustrates my excitement level regarding the movie.

My verdict? I... liked it. It took me several minutes to get used to the presentation. The opening sequence of the movie was strangely discordant. Characters seemed to jitter around the frame like actors in an old silent film. As Bilbo shuffled around his house, he seemed to move at an unnatural and irregular rate of speed. It reminded me somewhat of a brief moment in Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace, where Qui-Gon Jin and Obi-Wan Kenobi literally disappear from the image in a poorly-rendered burst of speed. Very awkward and off-putting, to say the least, and I was filled with dread as I contemplated the prospect of sitting through three hours of this.

Thankfully, my brain seemed to quickly adjust to this influx of additional information, and this issue simply disappeared. The lack of motion blur due to the higher frame rate was momentarily conspicuous, because of my familiarity with traditional 24 fps projection, but I came to enjoy the added clarity to the image provided by the presentation. There are several moments where the movie looked more like a high-end digital video presentation for television, similar to the bigger budget nature documentaries like Planet Earth and Frozen Planet, but that was never really bothersome.

The additional clarity removed some of the "movie magic" we're all accustomed to, clearly revealing flaws in costumes and sets which would not be an issue in a traditional 24fps presentation, but many of these problems are due to the fact that this was the first feature-length motion picture to be shot in this manner. It's an ever-evolving medium, and over time (if this format becomes more commonplace) filmmakers will learn to compensate for these issues and better utilize this format. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will stand as a learning experience for future directors who wish to take advantage of HFR presentation.

One final note regarding the 3D effects: they were fantastic, simply the best I have ever encountered in a theatre. The presentation brought a real depth to the experience, and I finally understand what James Cameron was talking about when he kept yammering about the screen acting as a window to a new cinematic world. HFR is an amazing boon to 3D, and I doubt I'll be seeing another film in 3D until The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug hits the big screen next December, because this was the first time I can honestly say that the 3D experience completely worked for me, where I didn't feel like I was just pissing away a few additional dollars on my ticket price.

Well done, Peter Jackson. I sarcastically asked you to entertain me, and you gave me a big cinematic hug. I'll be seeing you again next year.

You win this round, you kiwi son of a bitch.