The Hobbit: An Unexpected Liking
Jan. 10th, 2013 03:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinI was not terribly excited to go see The Hobbit. Not only had friends' feedback been mediocre to poor, but my own personal relationship with the book was defined by frustration and disappointment. Two of child-Tealin's favourite things were Watership Down and David the Gnome,* so naturally adults were keen to recommend I read The Hobbit, as it was in the same vein of light-fantasy adventure, but I never took to it. I was reassured that this was because I was 'too young for it'; I read it again when I was older with the same result and was told I was 'too old.' Shortly after the last disappointment I discovered a different fantasy universe and spent the rest of my teenagerhood enthusiastically immersed in Redwall.
*Did anyone else see this cartoon? I swear it was on Nickelodeon back in the day, but I am coming to think I was the only child in North America who was tuned in at that time because none of my friends has heard of it.
I thought at the time that I just wasn't compatible with Tolkien. In retrospect, I think the real problem was that I was a preteen girl who loved epic adventure: a protagonist who hated the idea of leaving home and was going through something of a midlife crisis was someone I could neither relate to nor cheer on. It is an odd choice for a kids' book, when you think about it. Perhaps instead of suggesting I read it again in a couple of years, those kind adults should have told me, 'wait until you're on the threshold of middle age and have done some travelling yourself, then watch a film adaptation in which Bilbo Baggins is played by a completely endearing actor.' Because ... contrary to expectation and experience, I really enjoyed it.
Two important cards should be laid on the table at this point:
1. I saw the film in 2D, at 24fps (normal frame rate). I believe this made an enormous difference as I was not distracted by gimmicks. The 48fps alone probably would have ruined it for me.
2. I went into it with the sage advice of a good friend, which I pass on to you in case you have not seen it yet: Don't watch it like it's a movie – pretend instead that you're having a marathon of episodes from your DVD box set of The Hobbit miniseries.
Like a lot of people, I was concerned about The Hobbit being split into three movies rather than two as originally planned: the announcement was made late enough in the game that I was worried the narrative/dramatic structure of the films would be thrown into disarray, and I could still remember the self-satisfied wallowing of Return of the King and the bloated King Kong. Was this going to drag the same way?
Thankfully, no – or at least, it didn't bother me. That advice about watching it as a miniseries was certainly a key factor in this: the storyline is very episodic, and there are scenes within those episodes which might have been cause for impatience, if one were expecting the alacrity of a standard movie with a lot of story to tell. But because it was hypothetically a miniseries, I could live in those little moments rather than rushing them on; even though this was effectively self-deception, it made the movie more enjoyable, so I don't mind the implication that when judged as a film and not a miniseries this is a weakness.
The 'miniseries' mindset saw me through about 3/4 of the movie, but just as it was starting to wear thin, I started noticing how incredibly Redwallish it was. It would take me hours to explain the Redwall milieu to those who haven't read the books, and even then I wouldn't have done it effectively, so I'm not going to try – nonetheless, if you have read them and have not yet seen The Hobbit, watching it in that frame of mind might bring an extra dimension to the experience. One of the things that first got me into animation was a desire to bring Redwall to the screen, and here it was (albeit not literally) playing out before me! The joy of that, and the irony that the thing which supplanted The Hobbit in my childhood now made it so much more enjoyable, kept me going right to the end.**
**I am aware that, in actuality, Redwall (1986) resembles The Hobbit (1937) rather than vice versa, but thanks to my own personal timeline this was how perception worked.
Another way in which I enjoyed the movie, which was not available to me when I was nine, was the awareness of the historical context of Tolkien and his writing. The Hobbit was published in 1937, the same year Snow White was released, and if you look, you can see how it lives in the same world. J.R.R. Tolkien was only six years younger than Cherry and was very much a product of the same era – an era with which I've become very familiar, and whose fruits share a recognisable commonality. He grew up hearing news of great real-life expeditions of exploration, archaeology, and anthropology; he went through the harrowing of the Great War; he was an adult during the time of Jeeves and Wooster, and could have taught Sebastian Flyte at Oxford. This awareness, I think, helps me see The Hobbit in its own light, rather than judging it simply on whether it is a story that appeals to me. In it I can see the innocence and optimism of the Edwardians, and the nostalgia for that innocence as seen from the other side of the trenches, in an era we regard as innocent from the other side of the Holocaust and atomic bomb.^ Wrapped up in this meta cocoon, The Hobbit in its very existence carries so much emotional weight that whatever it might lack internally is made up for by the layers of external context and association.
^See also: why Fellowship of the Ring may have struck such a chord with people two months after 9/11
Needless to say, your mileage may vary.
As far as a movie in and of itself (or a few episodes of a miniseries, as discussed earlier), there isn't really that much to say about The Hobbit that can't be summed up with 'Remember Lord of the Rings? Basically, that.' Anyone who wanted a return to the comforting familiarity of the previous trilogy's production design and cinematography shouldn't be disappointed, at least if they see it in 24fps and in the back half of the theatre. The Peter Jackson Flying Camera, the occasionally syrupy lighting, the CG creatures and lumpy latex, the occasional whiff of a New Zealand tourism ad ... if you didn't like it the first time, you won't like it now. Some of the sets look a little more hastily made or CG than the original, and some of the CG looked a little cheaper, but not tragically so.
The acting in general is a little more cartoonish than what you get in LotR, but this is in keeping with the more naive tone of The Hobbit, and in the case of the dwarves (the most cartoonish of the lot, with the exception of bit-part baddies) more or less essential to telling them apart. Martin Freeman is fantastic, and it was so nice at last to like Bilbo Baggins. There are more than a few shades of John Watson in his performance, but to be fair there are similarities in the characters conceptually, and it's not like having Watson around is a bad thing. Radagast might be annoying to some people, and might have been so to me had I been in a different mood, but I enjoyed his Manic St Francis schtick well enough ... and I admit, the knowledge that Sylvester McCoy once played Birdie Bowers did make the rabbit-sledging scenes really funny.
I hadn't picked up the book since I put it down nearly twenty years ago, so I don't remember enough of the story to comment on what they might have changed – most of the movie was like rediscovering lost memories, as opposed to appraising their rendition against what was in my head. There was one part towards the end which I thought they'd changed, and I was surprised how well the changes worked in a plot-and-character-arc kind of way, but I checked today and the part I was remembering comes later in the movie, so nevermind. It all worked, and bits that were added in from The Silmarillion or other writings didn't feel too much like filler most of the time, because that's what you have time to go into when you're making a miniseries. The only time I was disappointed in the storyline was when they seemed to lose track of Bilbo a bit: One of the great things about Fellowship, which got lost a little in the later trilogy, is that for the most part they tried to make it Frodo's story; The Hobbit is best when it's Bilbo's story, but for a stretch in the middle it wanders, and loses heart as a result. I didn't notice this so much at the time, but felt the difference when Bilbo became the focus again, so I think it would be more annoying the second time through when I knew what was happening.
More than anything, though, THE SCORE! I need to buy the soundtrack and squirrel it away for a rainy day when I need some epic music that I haven't heard a thousand times before.
A curious thing, though, to send it off: As much as I enjoyed watching the film, time with the characters, and visiting Middle Earth again, I'm not really keen on seeing it again. Maybe the desire will grow – after all, I only saw it a couple days ago, and it's quite an investment of time – but usually I can tell after the first viewing whether it's a movie I'll be seeing again, and this one I was happy to have seen and enjoyed once. Take what you will from that.
*Did anyone else see this cartoon? I swear it was on Nickelodeon back in the day, but I am coming to think I was the only child in North America who was tuned in at that time because none of my friends has heard of it.
I thought at the time that I just wasn't compatible with Tolkien. In retrospect, I think the real problem was that I was a preteen girl who loved epic adventure: a protagonist who hated the idea of leaving home and was going through something of a midlife crisis was someone I could neither relate to nor cheer on. It is an odd choice for a kids' book, when you think about it. Perhaps instead of suggesting I read it again in a couple of years, those kind adults should have told me, 'wait until you're on the threshold of middle age and have done some travelling yourself, then watch a film adaptation in which Bilbo Baggins is played by a completely endearing actor.' Because ... contrary to expectation and experience, I really enjoyed it.
Two important cards should be laid on the table at this point:
1. I saw the film in 2D, at 24fps (normal frame rate). I believe this made an enormous difference as I was not distracted by gimmicks. The 48fps alone probably would have ruined it for me.
2. I went into it with the sage advice of a good friend, which I pass on to you in case you have not seen it yet: Don't watch it like it's a movie – pretend instead that you're having a marathon of episodes from your DVD box set of The Hobbit miniseries.
Like a lot of people, I was concerned about The Hobbit being split into three movies rather than two as originally planned: the announcement was made late enough in the game that I was worried the narrative/dramatic structure of the films would be thrown into disarray, and I could still remember the self-satisfied wallowing of Return of the King and the bloated King Kong. Was this going to drag the same way?
Thankfully, no – or at least, it didn't bother me. That advice about watching it as a miniseries was certainly a key factor in this: the storyline is very episodic, and there are scenes within those episodes which might have been cause for impatience, if one were expecting the alacrity of a standard movie with a lot of story to tell. But because it was hypothetically a miniseries, I could live in those little moments rather than rushing them on; even though this was effectively self-deception, it made the movie more enjoyable, so I don't mind the implication that when judged as a film and not a miniseries this is a weakness.
The 'miniseries' mindset saw me through about 3/4 of the movie, but just as it was starting to wear thin, I started noticing how incredibly Redwallish it was. It would take me hours to explain the Redwall milieu to those who haven't read the books, and even then I wouldn't have done it effectively, so I'm not going to try – nonetheless, if you have read them and have not yet seen The Hobbit, watching it in that frame of mind might bring an extra dimension to the experience. One of the things that first got me into animation was a desire to bring Redwall to the screen, and here it was (albeit not literally) playing out before me! The joy of that, and the irony that the thing which supplanted The Hobbit in my childhood now made it so much more enjoyable, kept me going right to the end.**
**I am aware that, in actuality, Redwall (1986) resembles The Hobbit (1937) rather than vice versa, but thanks to my own personal timeline this was how perception worked.
Another way in which I enjoyed the movie, which was not available to me when I was nine, was the awareness of the historical context of Tolkien and his writing. The Hobbit was published in 1937, the same year Snow White was released, and if you look, you can see how it lives in the same world. J.R.R. Tolkien was only six years younger than Cherry and was very much a product of the same era – an era with which I've become very familiar, and whose fruits share a recognisable commonality. He grew up hearing news of great real-life expeditions of exploration, archaeology, and anthropology; he went through the harrowing of the Great War; he was an adult during the time of Jeeves and Wooster, and could have taught Sebastian Flyte at Oxford. This awareness, I think, helps me see The Hobbit in its own light, rather than judging it simply on whether it is a story that appeals to me. In it I can see the innocence and optimism of the Edwardians, and the nostalgia for that innocence as seen from the other side of the trenches, in an era we regard as innocent from the other side of the Holocaust and atomic bomb.^ Wrapped up in this meta cocoon, The Hobbit in its very existence carries so much emotional weight that whatever it might lack internally is made up for by the layers of external context and association.
^See also: why Fellowship of the Ring may have struck such a chord with people two months after 9/11
Needless to say, your mileage may vary.
As far as a movie in and of itself (or a few episodes of a miniseries, as discussed earlier), there isn't really that much to say about The Hobbit that can't be summed up with 'Remember Lord of the Rings? Basically, that.' Anyone who wanted a return to the comforting familiarity of the previous trilogy's production design and cinematography shouldn't be disappointed, at least if they see it in 24fps and in the back half of the theatre. The Peter Jackson Flying Camera, the occasionally syrupy lighting, the CG creatures and lumpy latex, the occasional whiff of a New Zealand tourism ad ... if you didn't like it the first time, you won't like it now. Some of the sets look a little more hastily made or CG than the original, and some of the CG looked a little cheaper, but not tragically so.
The acting in general is a little more cartoonish than what you get in LotR, but this is in keeping with the more naive tone of The Hobbit, and in the case of the dwarves (the most cartoonish of the lot, with the exception of bit-part baddies) more or less essential to telling them apart. Martin Freeman is fantastic, and it was so nice at last to like Bilbo Baggins. There are more than a few shades of John Watson in his performance, but to be fair there are similarities in the characters conceptually, and it's not like having Watson around is a bad thing. Radagast might be annoying to some people, and might have been so to me had I been in a different mood, but I enjoyed his Manic St Francis schtick well enough ... and I admit, the knowledge that Sylvester McCoy once played Birdie Bowers did make the rabbit-sledging scenes really funny.
I hadn't picked up the book since I put it down nearly twenty years ago, so I don't remember enough of the story to comment on what they might have changed – most of the movie was like rediscovering lost memories, as opposed to appraising their rendition against what was in my head. There was one part towards the end which I thought they'd changed, and I was surprised how well the changes worked in a plot-and-character-arc kind of way, but I checked today and the part I was remembering comes later in the movie, so nevermind. It all worked, and bits that were added in from The Silmarillion or other writings didn't feel too much like filler most of the time, because that's what you have time to go into when you're making a miniseries. The only time I was disappointed in the storyline was when they seemed to lose track of Bilbo a bit: One of the great things about Fellowship, which got lost a little in the later trilogy, is that for the most part they tried to make it Frodo's story; The Hobbit is best when it's Bilbo's story, but for a stretch in the middle it wanders, and loses heart as a result. I didn't notice this so much at the time, but felt the difference when Bilbo became the focus again, so I think it would be more annoying the second time through when I knew what was happening.
More than anything, though, THE SCORE! I need to buy the soundtrack and squirrel it away for a rainy day when I need some epic music that I haven't heard a thousand times before.
A curious thing, though, to send it off: As much as I enjoyed watching the film, time with the characters, and visiting Middle Earth again, I'm not really keen on seeing it again. Maybe the desire will grow – after all, I only saw it a couple days ago, and it's quite an investment of time – but usually I can tell after the first viewing whether it's a movie I'll be seeing again, and this one I was happy to have seen and enjoyed once. Take what you will from that.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-11 03:01 am (UTC)...In Israel. Not sure if that counts.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-11 04:45 am (UTC)