The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey reactions (SPOILERS)

[Plane Sailing]

Honestly, as heretical as this sounds, I might even have cut the troll scene. It took up a lot of time, and really didn't accomplish much in the way of storytelling.

I thought the scene set up a couple of storytelling things very nicely.

1) it is the first point where Bilbo finds he is a little braver than he thought he could be - trying to rescue the horses back from the trolls
2) Bilbo is the one who has his wits about him enough to delay the trolls when it looks that all is lost
3) it raised the question of why trolls are so far south, are bad things afoot? foreshadowing what we will learn about the mirkwood and the necromancer etc.

For me, these were some significant storytelling benefits which came out of the scene.

The other problem was that it felt very much: Dwarves get in trouble, then deus ex machina. Repeat. The times the movie got away from this pattern was much better.

Can't really blame the film for that, because that is pretty much the source material right there

Cheers

 

[Hand of Evil]

Well, I thought it was great. My brother, not a gamer and has never read the book, said he could have sat there for another 3 hours, he was so taken with it.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Honestly, as heretical as this sounds, I might even have cut the troll scene. It took up a lot of time, and really didn't accomplish much in the way of storytelling.

Cutting this scene means no wealth and gold in the hobbit hole.

 

[MarkB]

Cutting this scene means no wealth and gold in the hobbit hole.

Not to mention no Glamdring and Orcrist and Sting.

Plus, they had "Bilbo's trolls" in Fellowship of the Ring. It'd feel weird to leave them out now.

 

[GreyLord]

Well, The Hobbit isn't Lord of the Rings, and that's a good thing. Jackson's LOTR is an abomination deserving only contempt and censure. The very idea of Faramir trying to steal the ring from Frodo!

In any case, it appears that Jackson was able to hire an actor who can credibly portray a hobbit, and who is the right age, to boot. Elijah Wood was far too young for Frodo. The dwarves are differentiated nicely, though there are too many of them for each to have a shining moment. They also got a boost to their stats, apparently, because they kick tail hard just about every fight they get into. In the book, they were often rather useless.

The Bilbo/Gollum scene is nicely handled. The addition of one sentence ("You told me to ask you a question, so there it is.") helped, I think, make Gollum's (initial) acceptance of the last riddle a little more credible; Bilbo was throwing it back onto Gollum for pressuring him.

I didn't mind the over-the-top rock giant scene, nor the over-the-top Radagast the Brown scene. I think it was because I went into the theater expecting cheesy goodness, and got that, plus some really good movie squeezed in there, too. The changes he made to character actions were improvements, I think, unlike in LOTR, where the changes didn't make any sense (Faramir trying to steal the ring from Frodo? Oh, come on!!!).

So, I recommend seeing The Hobbit, and have, for the present, taken Peter Jackson off my "We hates it forever, preciousssss!!!" list.

They weren't that useless. In the book they fought their way out of the under the mountain. That's not really running away completely, that's fighting your way out. And then, of course if you have an army of Goblins at your back, you DO run away if you want to live...unless you're an idiot.

That said, even with that, later in the book, the come out of the mountain against an entire ARMY. Sure, quite a number of them get killed, but some survive. That's not exactly wimpy dwarves. If 13 of them can make that much of an impact (along with the bear) on a battle involvings thousands in three other armies (then 4, then 5), they couldn't be that wimpy.

 

[cavalier973]

They weren't that useless. In the book they fought their way out of the under the mountain. That's not really running away completely, that's fighting your way out. And then, of course if you have an army of Goblins at your back, you DO run away if you want to live...unless you're an idiot.

That said, even with that, later in the book, the come out of the mountain against an entire ARMY. Sure, quite a number of them get killed, but some survive. That's not exactly wimpy dwarves. If 13 of them can make that much of an impact (along with the bear) on a battle involvings thousands in three other armies (then 4, then 5), they couldn't be that wimpy.

They do fight their way out of the goblins' cave, but in the book (if I remember correctly), they only fight long enough to get out of the main cave, then run like a bat out of a burnt stump. In the movie, however, it's like watching level 15 4th edition fighters cutting their way through waves of minions. They are freakin' awesome. I was using a bit o' hyperbole when I said that the dwarves were "useless" in the book. Sorry if I gave offense.

 

[Iosue]

I had no problem with the White Council scenes, nor with the Azog scenes, which I thought were good use of background material to set up the Battle of the Five Armies and the expulsion of the Necromancer from Dol Guldur that will happen in later movies. The part where the movie dragged most for me were the warg chase scene, the stone giant scene and the escape from goblin-town. Not that I minded having them in the movie; I just thought they could have trimmed them down a bit.

Other than that, a very good movie. Holy crap, was Martin Freeman born to play Bilbo. The movie was classic Peter Jackson in that it had these over-the-top action sequences, but then you'd have a fantastic, intimate moment of the finest of acting. Bilbo's moment of pity with Gollum was PERFECTLY played. It would have been extremely easy to make it "good enough", to perform it very obviously, and get the point across in a decent, if maudlin way. Instead, Freeman's performance was understated, yet got across Bilbo's internal conflict and ultimate feeling of pity in an extremely clear and empathetic way. I don't know why, but I thought there was something quintessentially English about it; I don't think an American actor would have or could have played it in just that way. I'll happily put up with a slightly draggy stone giant scene if it gets me something so absolutely perfect as that.

 

[Umbran]

My wife and I saw the film last night. We both know and enjoy the original book, but I am more of a Tolkien fan than she is. So, for example, she doesn't know the background about Dol Guldur and such. I was okay with the length, but I have greater tolerance for the repeated, long, "hey, look, New Zealand is beautiful!" shots. The movie was not so good as it didn't have my wife checking her watch occasionally after the 2-hour mark.

Like several here, I feel the opening Frodo scene could be left out. With Gandalf around, he doesn't need to establish continuity that way. The Radagast scenes we both enjoyed. For one thing, Sylvester McCoy is a bit of a genius. For another, it is useful to help set up whey Gandalf will be away later. I think they played up Gandalf's suspicion that it is the Enemy overmuch - in the original that sits for 60 or so years after this adventure. It can't be that much in the forefront now.

I think the giants were way, way overdone. That looked a lot like a scene for the sake of an effects scene. And the Goblin King was a touch too erudite for my tastes.

There's one really small change that seems to me to make a notable difference in character - how Bilbo leaves the house the morning after the party. In the original, he's sort of fast-talked out by Gandalf, if I recall correctly. In this, he more actively chooses to grab the bull by the horns. I don't mind the change, but it is a notable one, and means something for the character, I think. Similarly, how he violently saves Thorin's bacon makes him a bit different from the Bilbo we see in the book. Again, not bad. Just different.

I understand the whole presence of "Moby Orc" - he's there to give at least a single thread of continuity over all three movies, and makes a few things happen in ways that are slightly less arbitrary than in the original, which does sometimes seem just like a chain of unfortunate events that happen to the dwarves for no particular reason. However, they do add to the dragging on a bit, so I'm a bit ambivalent about him.

 

[Umbran]

They weren't that useless. In the book they fought their way out of the under the mountain.

In the original, they fight their way out of one chamber - and that's mostly Gandalf and Thorin doing the fighting, and the rest is running in the dark.

That said, even with that, later in the book, the come out of the mountain against an entire ARMY.

Yes, but that's kind of a flaw in the original - the dwarves aren't demonstrated as very able warriors in the book before that. Here, they've established that they're badass, so when they sally forth from the mountain later, that won't seem quite so suicidal.

 

[Janx]

The wife and I saw it Saturday night.

It was long, but we liked it.

The begining scene with old Bilbo and Frodo served a couple functions. 1) it gave elijah wood a chance to be Frodo again after 10 years. 2) it also let old Bilbo set up the deviations in the film from the book when he says "I never told you everything that happened"

Since we know this tiny book has been split up into a trilogy, it explains why we got the extra scenes with Radaghast and the Necromancer. That stuff wasn't really in the book. But now we got those scenes, because you can bet, one of the movies will focus on the taking out of the Necromancer, where in the book, it was "Gandalf went out and did some stuff involving a necromancer, but he's back now"

the Pale Orc is really just the same trick Jackson did with the leader Uruk Hai in Fellowship, or the big fat general in Return. He gives us a singular, recognizable villain to hate, rather than a plain mass of never ending orcs.

last on my list of observations is this. When Fellowship came out in December 2001, we were all pretty bummed about 9/11. We were fixing to bomb Afghanistan back into the stone age. When I watched that film, Gandalf's monologue to Frodo bore some relevance to the situation (scene where Gandalf is pondering which way to go in Moria).

Once again, some tragedy has struck and Gandalf once again has some wisdom for us when he tells Galadriel that he eschews Saruman's strategy of seeking power to combat evil with force. He says that it is the small acts of goodness that tip the balance.