"The Hobbit" Review - Sylvester McCoy Has Supersonic Bunnies... Your Argument Is Invalid!

The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Before I even begin, it's important to note the level of criticism there has already been for this film. Though on IMDB users have currently ranked the film as an 8.5 it is well known that there are some extremely rabid fans of the entire Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Meanwhile, of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes, currently only 65% of them can be said to have liked the film. Admittedly much of this has been due to the advanced format by which the film is displayed.



The biggest news as the first installment of "The Hobbit" approached its release date was the highly negative reaction of the critics to the increased framerate in which the film has been filmed. As most reading this have likely already heard on several occasions by now and getting sick of hearing in every review they read, "The Hobbit" was filmed at 48 frame per second rather than 24 frames per second. The unfortunate consequence of this appears to be that the film feels like it is running at double speed, even though the action is playing at normal speed. I say this, admittedly, not as someone who has ever seen the film at 48 fps, but I did watch a version of the trailer displayed in this way and that was my impression. My own experience of the full movie was in 24 frames per second, as God intended, and the highly advanced headache-free experience which audiences have enjoyed ever since "It Came From Outer Space" (an example of the very old-fashioned technique of "3D filming") left them feeling a little peaky.

Critics insisted that, in spite of their misgivings about the new technology, the film did not live up to Peter Jackson's earlier "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy anyway. They seemed to suggest that the dwarves exhibited toilet humour, that the characters were less interesting and fleshed-out than in the other films, that the scenes in the first half are too slow-paced, and on top of all that is the assertion that the film is too damn long. In regards to the prior trilogy, I wasn't really much of a fan. I enjoyed the first film quite a lot, though I did feel like it involved an awful lot of ponderous stopping and pontificating. This I was prepared to accept because I knew it was true to the book. However, like with the relatively recent reboot of the "Star Trek" franchise, a lot of the appeal came from the possibilities opened up for a whole franchise (and we'll see next year whether the sequel to the eleventh Star Trek really carries on the franchise like it's supposed to). The second LOTR film, however, I was less able to tolerate. "The Two Towers" is my favourite of Tolkein's books. It has a number of parts which I absolutely love and the cliffhanger is brilliant. Peter Jackson consistently removes all cliffhangers in his movies of "The Lord Of the Rings", resolving the battle scene in Fellowship Of The Ring rather than finishing with the two main Hobbits escaping while all hell breaks loose around them. In the film of "The Two Towers", exciting elements at the climax of the book are simply left for the third movie, but what's more, one of the most fantastic moments from the middle of the book where a frightened and misguided king is returned to his former glory seems to turn into a cheesy exorcism. Admittedly the ponderous shots of major characters staring into the distance felt more fitting in the extended editions of the films and a one-eyed Orc general adds a great deal more drama to what, in the theatrical edition, was a pretty much interminable and seemingly endless battle scene in "Return Of The King". However, by the time I had seen these rather better paced, longer versions of the films, I had trouble judging them. Everything in them was too familiar.

I entered the cinema to see "The Hobbit" with a decidedly pessimistic view. Critics had damned the film, online reviewers had often expressed a similar view (including some who may well be reading this review themselves), the trailer which depicted serious-faced dwarves singing a sombre song made me think that this was following the same route as the previous trilogy (which irritated me), and to top it all off, that 48fps version of the trailer made the facial prosthetics of the dwarves look utterly ridiculous. In short, I was not at all sure that I would like this film.



So now is perhaps a good time to say, before you read any further, to make this important point completely clear and unambiguous, that I loved this film. This, for me, is one of the best films of the year. (I'm a number of reviews behind and my favourite of the year has yet to be reviewed, so yes, I even preferred this to "Skyfall". It's THAT good, by my reckoning.) So does that mean that the critics' claims were entirely false? Well, not exactly.

( Read more... )