The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Over a decade after bringing the first Lord of the Rings film to life, director Peter Jackson finally brings us the first part of the first tale set in Middle Earth, that of Bilbo Baggins and his epic quest. Those anticipating a viewing experience on par with the quality of the award-winning trilogy will undoubtedly think my rating is too generous. Knowing the differences between the two as books, I got only slightly less than what I hoped for.

Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) lives the quiet life of a Hobbit until the wandering wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) volunteers him to host a gathering for a band of dwarves on a quest to reclaim their homeland from a dragon. The otherwise careful hobbit lets curiosity get the best of him and he sets out across Middle Earth into places and dangers he never imagined. Surrounded by orcs, elves, trolls, and the forces of darkness, Bilbo tries his best to earn the respect of his dwarf companions while keeping himself alive.

Having read The Hobbit several times, I was fully prepared for the lighter story being told. While The Lord of the Rings is an epic drama with sprinkles of humor and wit, The Hobbit has always been more popcorn friendly. Bilbo is setting out on a treasure hunt, not to save the world. Sure, the quest means everything to the dwarves he travels with but to him and to the audience, the journey to the Lonely Mountain is but a wide-eyed adventure. For the most part, that is exactly what you get with this film. It looks pretty good, it’s exciting, and it’s quite a good bit of fun.

So what holds this film back? More than a little, sadly. For starters, The Hobbit is a much shorter book than The Lord of the Rings, so Jackson runs the risk of spreading this tale far too thin over the planned three films. As all first films must, An Unexpected Journey introduces the main characters and sets the wheels in motion. We start out with a prologue narrated by an older Bilbo (Ian Holm from the LOTR series), which seems to run a tad long but also frees up a lot of time later on by dumping a pile of exposition on you first thing.

Two critical story elements throw a perpetual wrench into the film’s narrative. Even in the book, I felt there were too many dwarves in Thorin’s company. It is cumbersome to try to differentiate and involve that many characters in one story. The fact that they are all dwarves doesn’t help much either. Kudos to Jackson for trying to make them all look different but the end result is remembering only three or four out of the thirteen of them by name.

In an attempt to spread out the story, Jackson pumps quite a bit of expository filler and tangential scenes that form as a loose bridge to the events of The Lord of the Rings. I can understand the desire to throw some foreshadowing into the mix but because most people saw the LOTR trilogy first, much of the foreshadowing feels unnecessary. Perhaps future generations that watch the Hobbit trilogy first will think more highly of those tangents but to me it feels forced. It is wholly unrelated to the story being told and slows the film down. Tolkien fanatics may disagree but to casual observers, it’s a bit of a drag at times.

The biggest filmmaking flaw is the overuse of CGI. The Lord of the Rings flicks crossed the line occasionally but The Hobbit seems to ignore the fact that there is a line at all. Wide shots look pretty good for the most part but when Jackson launches the camera through the action to follow characters around or spin and pan between characters instead of cutting, sequences begin to look almost like a video game instead of a movie. Case in point, much of the scenes involving the Goblins inside the Misty Mountains don’t cut it.

Overall, I was pretty pleased with how An Unexpected Journey turned out. I didn’t mind the songs (a major turnoff for a number of people for some reason), Middle Earth still looks pretty spectacular, and the film sets things up pretty well for the rest of trilogy. The problems with this film largely stem from Jackson’s indulgence. He had some tight budget restrictions on The Lord of the Rings films but takes full advantage of budgetary carte blanche here. I would have been happy with fewer LOTR allusions, quite a bit less CGI, the total absence of Radagast the Brown, and a better ending point (they should have ended with Thorin’s company entering Mirkwood), but I can live with what we got.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5

The Da Vinci Code (2006)

Our culture has been becoming lazier for quite a while now and it is evident in the fact that people would rather sit and watch a movie based on a book rather than read the book itself. With movies, people don’t have to process as much information, or spend as much time getting through the story as they would with the book. As a result, they miss out on all the tiny intricacies that make reading books far superior than watching their movie counterparts. Case in point- The Da Vinci Code.

The most talked about book since Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code is very well written, expertly paced and has lots of neat little tidbits that were simply intriguing to millions (whether they were true or not). The problem with turning such a book into a movie was that the film could either be lacking in the little things that pressed the mind onward, or it could be overfull of them and drag the movie down. The former turns out to be the case.

Without much of the non-verbal elements in the book, character histories are reduced, and the reasons for their actions are left vague because we don’t know what’s motivating them as much as we would had we read the book. It also doesn’t help that they completely changed the ending! Well, not completely, but it’s leaps and bounds different from the book.

And for all the hoopla that the book and ensuing movie caused amongst hard line religious folk, the movie certainly isn’t going to change anyone’s minds about their faith. At least no thinking people will.

Basically, this movie ultimately served two core audiences- those who are too lazy to read the book, and those who want to get up in arms over the story’s content. Evidently, it’s more socially acceptable to go overboard protesting a movie than it is a book. Anyway, for those who read the book, it’s a fairly decent rendition of a very good story, though it won’t be heralded as superior to its source. While a largely forgettable affair, The Da Vinci Code is still pretty good popcorn entertainment but by no means necessary given the quality of the book.

RATING: 3.25 out of 5

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

This movie has guts, plain and simple. Ordinarily, I would have been outraged at some of the decisions that were made in this film. To see certain X-Men characters killed was unthinkable when I entered the theater, and had these deaths not occurred in just the way they did, I probably would have hated this movie. But they killed unthinkable characters in simply mind-blowing ways and never looked back. I repeat: this movie has guts.

Unfortunately, Bryan Singer (who directed the previous two installments of the series) chose to walk away from The Last Stand to direct Superman Returns. The joke would be on him, however, as X-Men would out-earn Superman and also got more love from fans. In Singer’s absence, we have Brett Ratner, of Rush Hour fame, who could have ruined this film, but does a surprisingly good job.

The story is a little all over the place, throwing in shout outs to fanboy favorite mutants just for the sake of including fanboy favorite mutants. The inclusion of more mutants comes at the sacrifice of character and story depth, which the first two films were chock full of. While it’s neat to see mutants like Juggernaut, Beast and Angel, it’s a shame that the story was more or less as deep as the Saturday morning cartoon version from the 90s. An alleged cure for the mutant gene is found, causing the humans of the world to demand mutants all “cure” themselves and rejoin “normal society.”

There are some substantially silly-looking special effects and the series wraps itself up almost too neatly in the end. The best part about X-Men stories is that things are always left a little bit open. There are two “shockers” at the end (one before and one after the credits) that keep potential sequels on the board, but some course correction is never a bad thing.

The little things add up to be a minor nuisance, but the boldness of the film helps you forget about it. X-Men: The Last Stand is a good way to end the series without closing the book on the characters.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5