Lord of the Rings 2.0 . . . Or, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Review

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a lush movie evocative of the Middle Earth we've come to expect of Peter Jackson.  And that's about it.  Fans of The Lord of the Rings books will probably love this movie.  Fans of the movies will wonder what the big deal is.  It's another Lord of the Rings movie and all that entails.  A lot of CG (some of it admirable, some of it bafflingly bad), a lot of character prosthetics, and a staggering array of hints, peaks and taunting references to a world that has passed into legend.

It's hard separating this movie from the previous trilogy, and Jackson has done that on purpose, consciously building a prequel to the Lord of the Rings movies.  Framing the story around an older Bilbo sitting down to write out the true story of his adventures, it sets it in the days immediately preceding the birthday/going-away party witnessed in the The Fellowship of the Ring.  The juxtaposition between the two is jarring and creates an oddly reminiscent tone that will be touched on a few times in the movie.  Indeed, much of the back story is told as tales within tales, or remembrances around a campfire.

The core of the story you probably already know.  It's the story of Bilbo Baggins's adventure, when he set off with thirteen dwarves and a wizard to recapture the Dwarven homeland from a rampaging dragon.  The grand spectacle of scale that we saw in The Lord of the Rings is again present, but the focus is necessarily narrower.  It is a tighter, more intimate story about dwarves trying to reclaim their home.  As such, whenever the films departs from that narrow story, it suffers.  And it does this often.  Irruptions of story from the later trilogies muddle the movie, and ponderously bad dialogue (full of fart jokes, digressive asides, and a kind of tongue-in-cheek parody of Tolkien) dilutes the story of Bilbo and the Dwarves.

The Real Protagonist

Interestingly, for a movie called The Hobbit, Bilbo is not actually the protagonist of this story.  He is the viewpoint character, from whose eyes the audience receives the story, but Thorin Oakenshield is the actual protagonist.  The company of Dwarves follows Thorin, Bilbo follows Thorin; Thorin is the only character with a tangible goal (it doesn't hurt that he's also a Dwarf prince): to reclaim his home.  Bilbo has various motivations, but the story does not belong to Bilbo; it belongs to Thorin.  This might be a relic from the book, but by disengaging Bilbo from the story, it made for a much weaker movie.  Despite the pleasure of watching Martin Freeman on screen, he serves as a placeholder for the audience and does little more than amble along after the Dwarves.

Ultimately, I wonder what the point of this movie really is.  Not having read the books, I'm left without the sense of wish-fulfillment that many fans have brought to the movie.  These are not characters that I've been imagining since I was a child; nor is it a story I've treasured.  It is simply a movie, and not a particularly compelling, or engaging one.  It seems like Lord of the Rings 2.0, an excuse for Peter Jackson to put on the fuzzy hobbit-feet one more time.

So, if you're a fan of the books, I'm sure you'll love this movie and you don't need my recommendation to see it.  If you've never read The Hobbit, I'd recommend you give this movie a pass.  It's superfluous, muddled and not worth the price of admission.