Our story opens with a lengthy history of the Lonely Mountain, the rise of its power, the greed of its king, and finally its fall to Smaug the Dragon. Added to this you have the fact that the elves declined to aid the Dwarves in the fight against the mighty dragon, thus explaining Thorin Oakenshield’s animus toward elves.
With that prologue, the story picks up with Bilbo working on his memoir of his great adventure on the very day that Gandalf is expected for his birthday party (see the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring). It was fun – though unnecessary – to see Frodo (Elijah Woods) as he leaves Bag End to intercept Gandalf. More importantly, this gave an opportunity for Bilbo (Ian Holm) to provide a bridge to his younger self (Martin Freeman).
Finally, our story begins. Gandalf and the dwarves arrive at Bilbo’s home and enlist him into the cause of reclaiming the Lonely Mountain from Smaug. Bilbo refuses but then chases after them to join. The plot generally follows the book though it is massively augmented with other events in Middle Earth. This is useful in a big picture sense but detracts from the story, especially since this is supposed to be Bilbo’s memoir. Furthermore, many events are turned into huge battles. The flight from the goblin caves is turned into a running fight where all of the dwarves survive essentially unscathed. No sooner are they out of the caves than some orcs on wargs show up and the dwarves are helpless and must climb trees. Really?
The band is safely carried away from the orc threat by giant eagles and deposited on a picturesque peak where they can see the Lonely Mountain in the distance. The dwarves talk among themselves that perhaps Smaug is dead, as he hasn’t ventured out in many decades. The movie ends with the great piles of gold suddenly disturbed to reveal the head of a dragon; Smaug yet lives.
Though generally enjoyable, this isn’t The Hobbit. This is a prequel to Lord of the Rings, bringing in characters who have no business in the story and outlining events that are referenced in other works. Radagast the Brown Wizard never appears in The Hobbit but he has a sizable role here. Saruman (Christopher Lee) scolds Gandalf and Galadriel (Cate Blanchet) gives him tentative support. In the book, Gandalf often vanished from the party without much explanation but the movie version isn’t going to leave that a mystery. It is no wonder that Peter Jackson is stretching this into a three movie epic. The Hobbit was a modest book, smaller than any of the three books of Lord of the Rings and yet we are promised as much film time as the trilogy. Of course, the trilogy left out some things; that certainly won’t happen with The Hobbit.
One of the benefits of being so long is that all those dwarves get a bit of personality. Thorin was noteworthy in the book for being the dispossessed King of the Lonely Mountain and Bombur was a plump fellow who cooked but the rest were just a collection of names. Now Balin is an old veteran who is an adviser to Thorin. Dwalin is a monster fighter with a bad attitude, Bofur is an amiable dwarf and friend to Bilbo, Kili is a master archer, Ori is the youngster of the bunch, and so forth. I expect some of the ones I haven’t mentioned will get their due in the next two movies. Each dwarf is very distinctive in appearance so that it is hard to confuse them. I wonder if these personalities are taken from the writings of Tolkien or are they from the imaginings of Peter Jackson.
Despite its flaws, it is a fun movie; too much movie but still enjoyable.
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