Same Old Vanilla Fantasy: Why It's No Surprise that The Hobbit is Just Okay

"Hashish, you say?"

What a difference a decade...

and seven harry Potter movies...

and four Twilights...

and three Dark Knights....

and more than a dozen other fantasy epics...

....makes.

Ten years ago, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was something special. it was a never-before-seen event that delivered a fantasy world more tangible than any that had preceded it. It was expansive at a time when fantasy and sci-fi, outside of Star Wars, was still treated with a light touch and barely a modicum of respect from audiences and auteurs. But Jackson's LotR trilogy changed things. More specifically, the success of the trilogy changed things. Jackson showed Hollywood that big-budget fantasy not only had a place in the market, but it could dominate the market, kick off a franchise, earn awards, produce multiple DVD releases, and force audiences to sit in awe at a 3-hour video game--albeit with a gripping story, stunning effects, and amazing performances--all after a marathon filming schedule. The result: today, we are inundated with  fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero epics and franchise starters by the boatload. Few of which even bother to demonstrate a hint of either gender, racial, or cultural diversity among its casts. Fewer still indulge in anything other than broad, rote examinations of the sweeping moral, ethical, and social issues that form at the core of their narratives. Thus, LotR, with its lily-white exaltation of wartime brotherhood, begat the current trend of ambitious but generally oblivious epic entertainment that now welcomes The Hobbit. The Hobbit is indeed gorgeous and technically proficient with a delightfully slight and inoffensive, if not particularly electric, narrative that has been extended to epic proportions. Yet, aside from its 48 frame per second frame rate--which makes the movie either look like an awesome 3D ride or a sped-up soap opera--Jackson's latest is no different than anything that has graced the silver screen in the past ten years, and that's okay because only the most die-hard Jackson apologists and Tolkienites expected anything different.

The 1977 animated adaptation of The Hobbit, clocking in at a scant 77 minutes, was the first adaptation of The Hobbit I ever saw, and one of the earliest "feature" length pieces of animation I recall watching. It wrapped the tale of Bilbo Baggins and his journey to defeat the dwarf-smashing dragon Smaug with such completeness and brevity that I was shocked it was only a precursor to a much longer, darker tale. Unfortunately, as much of the online community is well aware, Jackson abandoned such brevity in favor of kickstarting a new Tolkien trilogy. Despite all arguments and proclamations to the contrary, there's no way that was a decision dictated purely by creative desires. Essentially, Jackson has turned The Hobbit into a multi-film experience in the vein of Deathly Hallows and Breaking Dawn. It has been split into a series to meet the supposed needs of an audience that craves serialization, despite the very real possibility that said audience is likely growing tired of such nakedly greedy shenanigans. More to the point it reduces, ironically, a swift, light-hearted tale to a cardboard cut-out epic, with a HFR!

The best response to this movie came from my girlfriend:

"They went all that way and spent all that time, and they still didn't get to that damn dragon? Come on!"

Sadly, my response was:

"With Lord of the Rings movies, that's pretty much how it goes."

That is heartbreaking. As an audience, we should not be so accustomed to such ploys. Yet, in the age of the geek epic, such is to be expected, for good and ill. In the case of The Hobbit, the expansion mostly works against the material, as there is a clear, if unnecessarily complex, impetus for the narrative to move forward as quickly as possible: Thorin Oakenshield and a company of dwarves from the demolished dwarf-kingdom of Ebenor "The Lonely Mountain" must reach a secret gate at an opportune moment so they may sneak into their former kingdom and reclaim it from the evil dragon, Smaug. Simple. And, in any standard quest action flick or heist flick, which this resembles to more of a degree than Jackson and company may be willing to admit, this would take two maybe two and a half hours of screen time to wrap up. Extending the narrative only serves to draw attention to foibles that could have easily been accepted or glossed over in a shorter, more surefooted narrative.

Instead, The Hobbit is a bit of a slog, mostly in the beginning as with most LotR movies. It spends a significant amount of time on a gathering of heroes that develops maybe 5 out of its 15 heroes. Admittedly, that's a lot of character work to cover, and I understand and applaud Jackson's decision to focus on the needs of the few over the many. However, the audience knows they're going to be with these characters for at least two more years, so some attention should have been devoted to ensuring that we at least knew every dwarf's name. That said, the central characters of this installment are fairly worthy attention, despite being retrograde rips on Frodo, Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas. Martin Freeman does solid work job as the unsure, but secretly thrill-seeking Bilbo. He gives Bilbo an eagerness and bristling nature that makes the character tougher than Frodo yet still a bit uncomfortable amongst the warrior dwarves. Richard Armitage's Thorin is essentially Aragorn as an angry, stubborn dwarf, but one whose story is far more personal than Aragron's ever was, which allows the audience to better connect with the character. Ian McKellan brings the requesite mischevious pluck and wit to Gandalf that makes Gandalf a far cooler wizard than Harry Potter will ever be, but not quite as cool as Dumbledore. Of course, Andy Serkis is on hand to bring life to everyone's favorite manic-depressive, ring-addicted Halfling, Gollum, just to show everyone on board how to bring some real life to the party. The rest? Well, I'm still trying to remember their names. 

Character development is but one, odd, victim of The Hobbit Franchise Expansion, as the pacing is the element that suffers most from Jackson and the studio's franchise planning. Granted, all LotR movies are long, with a tendency to meander into moments of awe and philosophical navel-gazing before breaking out into full-on Orc slaughterfests, but in the case of The Hobbit, sluggish pacing works against the narrative and alienates an audience that is losing the capacity for long-term attention spans by the second. The Hobbit is a narrative that is as propulsive as it is episodic. Sure, there are diversions along the way, such as the giant spider battles and the rescue from the Wood-Elves, but the narrative is mostly focused on Bilbo getting the dwarves back to Ebenor, a task that is Herculean in terms of commitment required not duration. Essentially, adding a cliffhanger at the 2:30 mark turns The Hobbit into a very expensive mini-series, one that needed no such narrative cliffs and would have been better served as one complete, potentially 3-hour, film. More to the point, The Hobbit was designed as a children's fantasy novel. Parents out there: how many of you think any kid under 14 is going to sit through this experience after surviving 8 Harry Potters and four Twilights? Honestly, even for those of us with a high tolerance for long features, this is pushing our ability to stay focused and awake.

The saddest flaw the expansion spotlights is the lack of diversity. Yes, Tolkien's European -style fantasy has always been lily-white and male-dominated, but after years upon years of these narratives--looking at you, Avengers. Opting for Hawkeye, who is for all intents and purposes visually indistinguishable from Captain America, over Black panther is pretty inexcusable--is tiring. In 2001, LotR was so novel that its vanilla-ness was less of an issue, albeit one that was noticeable. In 2012, kids know that an African-American can be President just as sure as they can recognize the population of the world is not one color; an all-white, predominately male--Cate Blanchett's Galadriel is literally the only female with appreciable screentime--cast in a European fantasyland may be acceptable--and I wouldn't encourage Jackson to change a thing about the source material--but it starts to really seem unnatural, which is par for the course. Now, Jackson has no responsibility to comment on changing demographics or gender equality, but one has to wonder at what point a contemporary audience should start to balk at being fed the same stories about the same people over and over again. Maybe this is just my breaking point, and it's not yours. It doesn't have to be, but after a decade, I wonder if it wouldn't kill Hollywood to let a director give this kind of treatment to the Arabian Nights or the Journey to the West. Just for a change. I know it might not be profitable over the oceans, but would it hurt to give it a try?  

All things considered, The Hobbit may be a mildly entertaining technical wonder and a step forward for 48 fps cinematography, but it is a relic that reflects just how behind the curve Hollywood can be, as if that was ever a surprise.