Recent movie watching...

The Hobbit (please note that I did actually love this film... these are only reasons I didn't love it more.)

I have been looking forward to this film since long before it was even in the works ( as I think any Lord of the Rings fan has): as a zealous fan of Tolkien, The Hobbit book itself, The Lord of the Rings  film trilogy, Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage. But I was (and am) increasingly disturbed to learn that Peter Jackson and company have decided to stretch the story to three films. Is there enough material for three films? Undoubtedly there is. But in the hands of Jackson & co.... I have very little faith that three films is anywhere close to a good idea.

I originally felt this way on hearing that material from Tolkien's other work was going to be included - but I had my hopes unreasonably raised after hearing good things from American viewers who got to see it weeks before the Australian release.

Mostly because of the additional material, the film has serious issues with tone. All the scenes at Bag End were pretty faithful to the source, tone-wise (though I can't help feeling that the omission of the colour coded dwarf hoods was a mistake - we need a straightforward way to identify all those dwarfs at a distance!), but much of the rest of the movie didn't hang together at all. The movie just couldn't seem to make up its mind just what it wanted,in terms of tone. Because Jackson and co. wanted to return to the epic feel of The Lord of the Rings, much of The Hobbit's own atmosphere and theme was swept aside in favour of extra story. The Hobbit is at heart a children's tale, and the inclusion of some pretty graphic violence shocked and angered me, and severely challenged the film's right to wear a PG rating. Bilbo's story and character development were all but smothered by the constant spotlighting of the dwarfs' backstory, and, much as I love Thorin and Richard Armitage's perfect portrayal of him, the story is called The Hobbit, not The Dwarf.

I was actually fuming in the theatre during all the crappily computer generated 'pale orc' scenes. The journey from Bag End to Rivendell didn't need them, they detracted from the sense of 'little hobbit out in the big world' which, weirdly enough, come to think of it, was done better in The Fellowship of the Ring, and they felt like padding because they were. And a three hour movie should be looking for scenes to cut, not scenes to add. Stupid. Pale. Orc. Hate. So. Much.

The goblin king's face looked like a deformed testicle, so that was gross.

If I had made this film I would have put all the history of the dwarfs and the dragon in a brief montage during the 'Far Over the Misty Mountains' song, because that's really all the time it needed... Plus we would have got to listen to that beautiful singing a while longer!

Riddles in the dark was good, Martin Freeman was delectably perfect, it was nice to see Gandalf again, Radagast was boring, Rivendell was wasted, and so was Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire.