4.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for considerable violence, action and relentless dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.14.12
A decade after The Lord of the
Rings: The Return of the King and its stunning — but definitely well-deserved
— 11 Academy Awards, director Peter Jackson has lost none of his ability to
amaze and delight.
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| Bilbo (Martin Freeman, center) can't imagine why so many dwarves — including, from left, Bifur (William Kircher), Dwalin (Graham McTavish), Bofur (James Nesbitt) and Oin (John Callen) — have decided to join him for dinner on this otherwise average evening. The poor hobbit is about to find out, which won't ease his mind any. |
The Hobbit: An Unexpected
Journey is breathtaking in every sense of the word: a glorious return to
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, with its heroic little folk, their unlikely and
often quarrelsome allies, and a host of dire and deadly creatures, each more
ghastly than the last.
Jackson and his numerous
production teams certainly had nothing to prove, when it comes to
world-building; their Lord of the Rings trilogy delivered the true “sense of
wonder” that made 21st century filmgoers appreciate what it must have been
like, a century ago, when audiences first glimpsed the moving images of
primitive one-reelers. We can only lament that Tolkien himself never had the opportunity
to witness the grand and glorious means by which Jackson brought his
imaginative prose to the big screen.
And yet, amazingly, Jackson has
upped the ante again with this first installment of The Hobbit (with two more
to follow, in successive Decembers, as before). All the realms of Middle Earth
are back, as if we’d never left them; one imagines that some massive chunk of
Jackson’s New Zealand simply has remained, wholly transformed, for all this
time.
All this said, questions have
been raised.
Turning Lord of the Rings into
three expansive films made sense: one for each book. But The Hobbit is a
single, much slimmer volume, with a kid-friendly story that (by design) lacks
the narrative complexity of Tolkien’s heftier trilogy. Pundits have wondered
whether the decision to turn THIS saga into a nine-hour experience might be
more than a little self-indulgent.
Ah, but Jackson and his
co-scripters — veteran Middle Earth colleagues Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens,
along with newcomer Guillermo del Toro, a masterful fantasist in his own right
— had a secret weapon. We tend to forget that Tolkien concluded his Lord of
the Rings trilogy with 125 pages of notes and appendices that also added
considerable back-story to The Hobbit: more than enough to justify this
unexpectedly ambitious big-screen adaptation.
Additionally, as James Cameron
did with Avatar, Jackson has taken advantage of technological advancements to
deliver a whole-immersion experience that’s almost too real at times ... and
definitely will startle folks (about which, more in a moment).
