5. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Dir. Peter Jackson)
I know, I know: how could The Hobbit – a relatively simple 300-page novel aimed at children – match the power of The Lord of the Rings trilogy? We’d be mad to expect the same magic twice over, wouldn’t we? It didn’t stop us from holding out hope, anyway, given that Peter Jackson found himself back in the director’s chair and lots of cast members agreed to reprise their roles – including the wonderful Ian McKellen as Gandalf. But then we heard that Jackson had – for reasons we still don’t know fully – decided to split the short book into three films, each one running at roughly 170 minutes. And that’s where the problems set in.
An Unexpected Journey has so many amazing things going for it – the wonderfully affable Martin Freeman, for one, who, as Bilbo Baggins, brings a well-needed human spirit to proceedings. But the film ultimately strains because the story has been stretched beyond recognition: gone is the slight and speedy narrative of Tolkien’s source material, having been replaced with a story so crammed full of excessive baggage that things begin to go stale.
Though there’s tons of technical innovation to be had throughout and lots of hugely enjoyable sequences, An Unexpected Journey is ultimately too lagging a film to get to grips with: an adaptation whose tone and structure appear to be utterly unconvinced in themselves. I mean, almost three hours for just 6 chapters? That’s a serious push: adaptation is all about what you leave out, after all.
If only somebody had suggested this thing be cut down by forty minutes, it might’ve emerged as another masterpiece. It’s almost there, but not quite.
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