Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. I was reminded of this when reading the various online reviews of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” this week before seeing the movie on New Year’s Day at the Embassy Theatre in Wellington.
I’ll confess to being something of a Tolkein fan myself. I read the books in the approved order, starting with The Hobbit as a child and only graduating to LOTR as a teenager once I had prised the first volume from the unwilling hands of my elder siblings. I never had much time for the OCD version of Tolkien fandom which predominated in the 1970s. The confustication of Tolkien’s work with science fiction, costumes inspired by the books and fanzines such as I Palintir struck me as ludicrous, as they did the author himself, who referred to these followers as “my deplorable cultus”.
No doubt the hordes of anorak Tolkien fans will find many inconsistencies between this latest Peter Jackson epic and the LOTR franchise of ten years ago. However, having now seen the movie, the negative reviews and other less than impressed feedback I have seen and heard about the movie also strike me as ludicrous. Of course, the movie does not follow the book exactly, nor would it be sensible for it to do so. However, as with “The Fellowship of the Ring” in 2000 the screenplay is as faithful to Tolkein’s work as is consistent with the requirements of an international blockbuster with a huge weight of expectation on it. More than that, it adopts the child-like humour of the original, updates it for the 21st century and rolls it back into the audience in a way that frequently brought laugh out loud moments to me and the rest of the audience.
Many of the story elements are amplified to great effect, for example the introductory background on the destruction of Erebor by the dragon - a few short paragraphs in the book - receives the full blockbuster special effects treatment, and is spectacular. Some poetic licence is taken with other story elements, but I always felt that these were underdeveloped in the original anyway. Thus the wizard Radagast who does not appear at all in the original Hobbit, but does briefly in the Fellowship of The Ring (but not in the movie version) is a much more developed character and is given a more central role to set the scene for things to come. If you don’t realise you’re watching fantasy with tongue firmly planted in cheek, Radagast’s sleigh drawn by a team of rabbits will set you straight.
The only thing I would take issue with - which I hope is not a forerunner of what is to come with the remaining two movies - is the somewhat too-rapid transformation of Bilbo from reluctant conspirator into outright hero towards the end. I found the sudden physicality of his heroism slightly jarring and somewhat ahead of schedule. In the book this comes at a later stage when he is alone and lost and finds the whole dwarf troop depending on him for their survival. That seems to me a style of heroism much more in keeping with New Zealand culture as opposed to the Hollywood style seen in the movie.
Overall though, I would give this movie nine out of ten. It is long, but the time doesn’t drag and there is enough for Tolkein newbies to enjoy, and nothing for anyone else to complain about.