Early on in The
Fellowship of the Ring, Bilbo Baggins laments his unnaturally long life, which has been artificially
bestowed upon him by The One Ring. Understanding that he's overstayed his
welcome in the Shire, he gloomily reflects, “I feel thin, sort of stretched,
like butter scraped over too much bread.”
If only Peter Jackson was offered the same insight.
I would laugh at how apt this metaphor plays for
the very existence of this film if it weren't so exceedingly sad. Indeed,
Jackson dares to take a 300 page book - and a children's book at that! - and
spread its meager storytelling potential over not one film, not two, but three
films. He has the audacity to take a story that really holds no more than one
thematic thread - Bilbo goes to The Lonely Mountain with the Dwarves - and
extend it over what surely will become 10 hours of film! I wonder how Tolkien
would feel about Jackson - the same man who so vividly brought his own Lord of the Rings saga to life a decade
ago - and his treatment of his beloved property now?
It's clear that Jackson was less interested
in creating The Hobbit than in
celebrating his own massively successful Lord
of the Rings saga. For a film titled The
Hobbit, I find it ironic that Bilbo is essentially absent for half the film.
And even when he's present, he's excruciatingly passive, too often relegated to
look scared! Look worried! Look confused! In fact, the film would surely be better titled had
it been called, Peter Jackson's Middle
Earth Masturbatory Extravaganza: Everything Tolkien Ever Wrote That Was Absent
From Lord of the Rings Squeezed into One Film.
Sadly, I can't help but see this film as nothing
more than the greatest manifestation of Peter Jackson's hubris. Jackson is a
supremely talented filmmaker - there's no other man I could think of who
would've dared make three epic films simultaneously. But much like
Christopher Nolan, Jackson is also far from artistic; he's a perfectly
functional director. Where subtlety is appreciated, he slams it home with a
lumbering thud. Where wit and elegance is key, he chooses to drive it into the
audience with monotonous dialogue.
Given what must have been an infinite budget, rights
to the best film-making technology, and access to the world's best actors,
Jackson doesn't leverage his assets to create something potent and memorable;
instead, he overindulges in his greatest proclivities for excesses (this is
after all, the same director who made King Kong battle not one, not two, but three T-Rexes in his remake of King Kong). This entire film is
unnecessarily talky, spewing expository dialogue and pointless backstory as if
he - Jackson did also write the screenplay after all - were paid by the word. Each action sequence is drawn out to the point of boredom, at best, and severe annoyance, at worst. Consequently, this balloons the film's running time to an inexcusable 160 minutes, which is
at least 40 minutes too long and far too cumbersome.
In spite of all its immaculate CGI - and for the sake of giving credit where credit's due, Gollum's performance here is top notch, arguably the film's saving grace - The Hobbit is just plain boring. It has
lost all the joy that was once so vibrant in The Lord of the Rings, lost its sense of adventure and wonderment.
Like a jaded rehash - which, let's be honest, this is a prequel - The Hobbit can't help
but hit each cliched story point like clockwork. Here's the Shire. Here's Bilbo. Here's Bilbo leaving the Shire.
He gets into trouble. He escapes unscathed. Rinse and repeat for the next two hours.
This is no longer a film about a reluctant hero
finding courage to explore the world. It's devolved into a gnarled pit of
visual effects and gross overindulgence in unnecessary technology. It's all
about self-aggrandizement. It's all about greed. It's all about the fucking
money. It's all flash but no substance. It scampers and runs and hurries but
never thrills. It emotes and pretends and yearns but never touches.
When the dust
settles, I fear we will no longer look back on Jackson's legacy as a brilliant
and visionary filmmaker. For all the fleeting grace and gossamer fancy that Lord of the Rings offered, I believe Jackson will forever be associated to and remembered for this heavy, hairy-footed thud.
