Tolkien Tuesday: Reconsidering "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey"

The first film in Peter Jackson's three-part adaptation of Tolkien's novel shows all of the director's strengths and weaknesses as a director.

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Welcome to Tolkien Tuesdays, where I talk about various things that I love about the lore and writings of Tolkien, whether in a chapter reading or a character study or an essay. I hope you enjoy reading these ruminations as much as I enjoy writing them and, if you have a moment, I’d love it if you’d subscribe to this newsletter. It’s free, but there are paid options, as well, if you’re of a mind to support a struggling writer. Either way, thank you for joining me!

For this week’s Tolkien Tuesday I wanted to do something a little bit different and take a look back at the Hobbit trilogy. These days it’s common to sneer at these films, not least because it seems in hindsight a mistake to have taken Tolkien’s slim novel and turn it into three bloated films. Moreover, it’s revealing, I think, that Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films are still widely quoted and referenced on social media, while The Hobbit films have been almost completely ignored. Way back when they first hit theaters in the early 2010s I was one of those who repeatedly went to bat for the trilogy, arguing with folks that, contrary to what the critics (and many viewers) thought, they were actually good cinema! Needless to say, my point of view about their artistic merit or lack thereof has changed and developed in the intervening decade and, while they are entertaining, I’m not so sure that I can honestly say that they’re good. 

Let’s begin with An Unexpected Journey, which covers roughly the first third of the novel. For me the biggest flaw in both this film and the trilogy as a whole is the unrelenting emphasis on action spectacle at the expense of good storytelling. For me, the most egregious of these is the battle between the Stone Giants while the company begins their crossing of the Misty Mountains. This whole sequence is based off of a bit of a throwaway line in the book about the Stone Giants playing football and, somehow, becomes an entire set piece of its own. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with a bit of action, but this is one of those cases where it just seems to draw out the action for no other reason than that it makes for exciting spectacle and a potential theme park ride. And then, of course, there are the similarly superfluous fight scenes pitting Dwarves against Trolls and Dwarves against Azog and his Orcs, neither of which are book-based and thus doubly frustrating. 

I’m still of two minds about the whole Azog storyline. It’s easy to see what Jackson was after here; he wanted to take The Hobbit and dress it up with some epic trappings, to make it more tonally consistent with The Lord of the Rings. However, this plot sits uneasily beside the Bilbo-centric part of the story, and this is made worse by the fact that the real Azog is dead by this point in the story, while his son Bolg has taken up the vendetta against the Dwarves. I’m not a book purist by any means, but this is one of those elements of the story that I just don’t think work as well as Jackson and company seemed to think it would. 

However, there are some things that really do work quite well. As he showed in The Lord of the Rings, Jackson is quite adept at drawing out richer emotional moments in the story. I enjoyed the meeting between Gandalf and Galadriel, in which the former speaks movingly of his belief in the everyday courage of the seemingly unimportant, so at odds with Saruman and his fetishizing of power. Likewise, I really quite enjoyed those moments when Bilbo–so memorably and perfectly brought to life by Martin Freeman–finally comes to understand why the Dwarves are so desperate to reclaim their home of Erebor. It’s these little moments that give An Unexpected Journey, and the trilogy as a whole, its heft.

An Unexpected Journey is also at times quite funny, particularly in the beginning, wherein the dialogue hews quite closely to that in the book. I’m sure I’m not the only one who chuckled when I heard Ian McKellen’s Gandalf express exasperated incredulity that he was reduced to being “good morninged” on the doorstep by none other than Belladonna Took’s son. Likewise, it’s delightful to watch the Dwarves wreak havoc on poor Bilbo’s house, even if some parts of the sequence do become a bit earthier than Tolkien ever would have imagined (Jackson is, it has to be said, something of a vulgar filmmaker at times). 

And, of course, there’s also Andy Serkis’ outstanding work as Gollum. He’s chilling and compelling and even funny, and it’s clear to both Bilbo and the audience that he is very menacing, indeed. If I have one complaint, it’s that the CGI used to render him is at times a little too seamless, so much so that he can seem uncanny. Indeed, Jackson goes all-in in his use of CGI in this movie, most notably in his rendering of the Pale Orc, Azog who, like Gollum, is just a bit too flawless to ever seem real in the same way as those created using practical effects. While I can see why Jackson would go this route considering the enormous strides made in mo-cap between LotR and The Hobbit, I think it ends up being to the films’ detriment. 

Likewise, Jackson took some big swings with the lore, drawing on those elements that were only alluded to in the book to sketch in the details about Gandalf’s doings while Bilbo and the others are going to Erebor. The telescoping of time–so that, for example, the corruption of Mirkwood takes place during the course of the novel rather than centuries before–works decently. Less successful, I think, is the idea that the Witch-king of Angmar was somehow actually killed and buried at Rhudaur with the other Ringwraiths. While I can kind of see what Jackson was going for–giving some sort of explanation to why Sauron took on the name of the Necromancer–it just doesn’t quite work given what we already know about the nature of the Ringwraiths and their leader. 

The Hobbit, both this individual film and the trilogy as a whole, is something of an odd beast, and I don’t think it could ever have been anything else. From the moment that Peter Jackson took over the direction, it was always going to have to be several things: an adaptation of Tolkien’s novel first and foremost, but also a sort of coda to his work in The Lord of the Rings. It probably goes without saying, but The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey never comes close to the same artistic heights of The Fellowship of the Ring. Nevertheless, it’s a fun movie, and I applaud the decision to make Thorin into a (very hot) epic hero rather than a curmudgeonly old Dwarf king. 

Next up, we’ll take a look back at The Desolation of Smaug, which shows many of the same strengths and weaknesses as its predecessor.