Movie Review: The Hobbit
When I first learned that this was going to be a multiple movie series, I was a bit concerned. The Lord of the Rings was a three book series that was squeezed into three movies. How would they stretch a single average sized novel into three movies without it dragging out and boring us to tears?
It turns out the answer is by adding in parts of Lord of the Rings that was skipped over and omitted and also by including some bits and pieces of the Slimarliiion to flesh out some of the parts of the story and expand the clarity of some of the more difficult and vague parts of the story.
This installment of The Hobbit takes us from the unexpected party at Bilbo's place where he meets the dwarves all the way up through the caverns of the Misty Mountains where Bilbo finds the ring and the company is rescued by the eagles.
I was actually very pleased with a number of things in this movie. The dwarves are very well done and their culture which is glossed over in Lord of the Rings is developed and reveals them as master craftsmen without equal. We also begin to see the the origins of the legendary mistrust between dwarves and elves that is shown but never really explained in LOTR.
We get to actually meet Radagast the Brown, one of Gandalf's colleague wizards held in disdain by the (as yet to be) traitorous Saruman.. As I recall, in the books, Gandalf recounts a tale of meeting with Radagast, but in the book, you, as the reader, never actually meet him.
The orcs are developed a bit better around a central figure and we see something of the orc culture and society (if only in a glimpse).
On thing that I was disappointed in was that in spite of the several opportunities that presented themselves, the Seven Rings of the Dwarf Lords was never mentioned. In the whole of the series The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and the Silmarilliion, we find out what happened to the Nine Rings of Men and the Three Rings of the Elf Kings. We learn that some of the Seven were captured by Sauron, and there is speculation that the others were destroyed by dragons but beyond that we learn very little about the Seven Rings of the Dwarf Lords. Since it is obvious that the movies are going to take some creative license with the story, it might have been a good opportunity to at least tell us about the fate of the ring that Thror.
This was an excellent movie. Well worth the time to see it even at premium show times and prices. I will say that having seen it in 3D, that was nice, but 3D is overrated and in retrospect, I would have been just as happy to see it in normal optics.
So when the turkey runs low and the presents are all opened and the attention spans of the kids runs out, pack up the family and go see The Hobbit.
It turns out the answer is by adding in parts of Lord of the Rings that was skipped over and omitted and also by including some bits and pieces of the Slimarliiion to flesh out some of the parts of the story and expand the clarity of some of the more difficult and vague parts of the story.
This installment of The Hobbit takes us from the unexpected party at Bilbo's place where he meets the dwarves all the way up through the caverns of the Misty Mountains where Bilbo finds the ring and the company is rescued by the eagles.
I was actually very pleased with a number of things in this movie. The dwarves are very well done and their culture which is glossed over in Lord of the Rings is developed and reveals them as master craftsmen without equal. We also begin to see the the origins of the legendary mistrust between dwarves and elves that is shown but never really explained in LOTR.
We get to actually meet Radagast the Brown, one of Gandalf's colleague wizards held in disdain by the (as yet to be) traitorous Saruman.. As I recall, in the books, Gandalf recounts a tale of meeting with Radagast, but in the book, you, as the reader, never actually meet him.
The orcs are developed a bit better around a central figure and we see something of the orc culture and society (if only in a glimpse).
On thing that I was disappointed in was that in spite of the several opportunities that presented themselves, the Seven Rings of the Dwarf Lords was never mentioned. In the whole of the series The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and the Silmarilliion, we find out what happened to the Nine Rings of Men and the Three Rings of the Elf Kings. We learn that some of the Seven were captured by Sauron, and there is speculation that the others were destroyed by dragons but beyond that we learn very little about the Seven Rings of the Dwarf Lords. Since it is obvious that the movies are going to take some creative license with the story, it might have been a good opportunity to at least tell us about the fate of the ring that Thror.
This was an excellent movie. Well worth the time to see it even at premium show times and prices. I will say that having seen it in 3D, that was nice, but 3D is overrated and in retrospect, I would have been just as happy to see it in normal optics.
So when the turkey runs low and the presents are all opened and the attention spans of the kids runs out, pack up the family and go see The Hobbit.