Dear Internet,
I write to you
today with my reportings on The Hobbit Movie. No, not the Peter Jackson spectacular
but the Rankin Bass creation. In 1977, Rankin Bass beat Peter Jackson to the
punch by 35 years; in 2012 Peter Jackson will probably punch the guy who
directed it because it’s poor. No, I’m being extremely overly critical here for
the sake of an unfunny sort-of-pun. Now I write to you under the assumption that you already know the story of the Hobbit since you took the time to find this obscure Blog Post about an obscure movie with a similar plot to a huge movie and one of the greatest selling books of all time. If you don't know the plot then I apologize.
This film is an
animated, made for TV movie and the first thing I should say about it is that I
love the story of the Hobbit. The entire set-up of the adventure story where a
group of companions go on a quest together, running into mishap after mishap on
an episodic basis is one that I love and The Hobbit is probably one of the best
and most imaginative renditions of this idea. It paved the way for most of the
fantasy worlds we see today from Eragon and Dungeons and Dragons to A Game of
Thrones and its numerous sequels. Through the eyes of the Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins
we are taken on a journey over Hill and Under Hill through forests and fields
it’s like a road trip in an entirely new world.
When I was
younger I would have argued that The Hobbit was superior to The Lord of the
Rings because Bilbo and his company have more adventures. Little did I
understand the importance of the character interactions and development in Lord
of the Rings and whilst the Hobbit is more in it for the ride – hell half the
dwarves are just a list of names whilst the rest fall into these
characterisations. Balin is old and nice, Dori is also nice. Kili and Fili are
young, Bombour is fat. Thorin Oakensheild is a bit more interesting, he is
intensely proud and doesn’t suffer fools gladly but is, at the same time loyal
and a good leader. Gloin is Gimli’s Dad.
In contrast of
this, however Bilbo is really rather interesting. He is shown to be kind,
accommodating, a fierce lover of a comfortable life-style and above all
peace. A typical Hobbit but underneath it all he has a yearning to prove
himself and, as suggested by his love of maps a secret desire to see the world.
He is well meaning but at the start a bit useless. That is before he finds the
ring and saves himself from Gollum. From this point onwards he becomes
distinctly more of a leader, more resourceful, sneaky and clever. He becomes
the Gandalf of the group when Gandalf leaves in the middle of the story.
Eventually Bilbo’s decision to steal from the dwarves, giving their most prized
possession to their enemies proves to be the most interesting moment of the
whole tale as he is doing what he does for noble intentions. To prevent a
massacre but he is also manipulating people. It’s a complicated dilemma which
flies in the face of the black and white/ good and evil nature of Tolkien’s
world.
I think that
this is the true strength of the Hobbit story, we are introduced to the world
with a good side and a bad side but the more that we and Bilbo experience it
the less clear cut the lines become. The Dwarves don’t wish anyone harm but
they are selfish and unforgiving. The Wood Elves are judgmental and cruel to
their enemies but they are a force for good, fighting off the demonic spiders
and only wanting the gold to help their friends the lake men. Both sides are racist
and uncooperative and we see that to resolve a problem caused by good and bad
people bad things may have to be done for the greater good. It’s a pretty
mature message the likes of which aren’t really seen in the Narnia Chronicles
and whilst it’s a simple message I think it’s delivered brilliantly. This is
why I find the removal of this pivotal, climactic dilemma – where Bilbo betrays
his friends for their own good - from the Rankin-Bass film baffling. Rankin-Bass
do a good job of showing Middle Earth on screen but the writers don’t seem to
understand the point of the story they’re telling. This however is only one of
the things that I find baffling about the Rankin-Bass telling of the Hobbit.
Why the way Rankin Bass tell The Hobbit is
baffling to me number 1
The songs in the
Hobbit are fairly numerous so naturally is would seem logical to try to include
some of them in this film but the way that Rankin and Bass decided to go about
this is to find a potentially exciting action scene and play their soothing
renditions of the songs on top thereby removing any tension.
What’s more, the
introduction of the dwarves is terrible. They all do their little act, popping
up from behind trees and bushes and tell Bilbo they are at his
service.
So... is it odd for dwarves to be in the Shire? We don't know. Literally all a fresh
viewer would know is that Bilbo likes to smoke eccentrically long pipes and all
of a sudden, for some reason a bunch of dwarves are singing about… stuff in his
living room.
THAT SAID, I
really do like the way that they use the Dwarves’ song (Misty Mountains Cold), by mixing the words
with a V/O guy's lovely voice it really adds a sense of destiny, depth and
danger to the adventure, in fact if it was this sequence that had persuaded
Bilbo to join up I would have been really satisfied but for some reason they
chose to make him decide to join up before he even knew what the journey was for. At that
point we had no idea the kind of character Bilbo was so we are introduced to
him as an adventurer making his character development completely pointless
later in the film.
Why the way Rankin Bass tell The Hobbit is
baffling to me number 2
The character
designs… now whilst many of the designs in this movie are pretty good. The
wizard looks like a wizard, the dwarves look like dwarves right down to their
Disneyesque hats. Actually this is taken to quite a peculiar extreme, as shown below even the dwarves' helmets are designed to look like those of their Snow-White cousins...
But for the rest
of the characters and stuff I just can’t see where they were coming from. I
mean look at Bilbo he’s really quite cute but that’s not who Bilbo is, he’s got
a pretty dark side to him, what with stealing the Arkenstone and cheating at
the game of Riddles and surely this should be reflected in the way he looks!
I guess there’s nothing wrong with making Bilbo so goddamn
cute but I think it would have been wiser to try and show some of the toughness
of the character in the design rather than trying to make a cuddly toy, for
god’s sake during the adventures in Mirkwood he pretty much takes over
Gandalf’s role in the party. Guess it
would have been a better idea to use the original designs
oh… maybe not.
I
think Gollum
looks silly though I will concede that he is a pretty difficult character to
get right. He’s so weird and inhuman and in the original concept art you can
kind of see how he used to be a hobbit… a froggy hobbity thing but in the final
movie, he doesn’t work for me.
The wood elves
are weird too.
I don’t think the film-makers knew that Tolkien thought of elves as tall,
slender beautiful people as opposed to weird short mutants and he resented
Shakespeare for ‘what he did to them’ in making them short and like in
fairytales. In ancient British or Scandinavian folklore elves were like tall,
graceful humans and J. R. R. saw those as true elves… as opposed to this.
Finally I would
complain about the spiders but there are no spiders in this film, just eight
legged cartoon bats so I guess I won’t bother.
Why the way Rankin Bass tell The Hobbit is
baffling to me number 3
The story is
told wrong. From the stuff they left out to the stuff they dedicated no time
building up at all. From the very start of the film Gandalf turns up and is
like I brought some dwarves… they’re hiding behind this hill over here, it’s
all so random and weird and this sporadic nature of the storytelling leaves the
viewer a little bewildered and it makes it difficult for them to get invested
in the story being told.
Other problems
are scattered throughout most prominent of all is the problem of repeated use
of the dues-ex-machina to get Bilbo and the dwarves out of trouble numerous
times. Now whilst this is a problem in the book in cases like how the
characters escape the burning trees and the trolls at least in the book a
satisfying explanation is given afterwards in this film the only setup to these
escapes is ‘Gandalf’s a wizard who does shit, of course he’s got a way out’
which I find a little disappointing… just a little.
The worst case
of this, I find is how Bard of the Lakemen isn’t introduced into the film until
literally moments before he kills Smaug. Smaug is the primary antagonist, don’t
you think his defeat should be given a little more setup than… next to nothing.
Oh, I guess Bilbo told a thrush to tell the guy he’d never met that he needed
to shoot the dragon in its chest. I guess I’m wrong. Except I’m not.
HOWEVER, despite all of these shortcomings
I really did enjoy the film, through Mirkwood and up until the defeat of Smaug
the character of Bilbo becomes quite interesting and he really did hold the film
together. What’s more the songs aren’t bad just a little dated and silly and I
felt the whole production had quite a satisfying homespun charm and it’s just
the sort of thing I could imagine my younger self enjoying on a rainy afternoon
so I found it easy to forgive it most of its shortcomings. I’d recommend you
take a look, Internet. Its available on YouTube for free so what have you got
to lose? Well, an hour and a half of your life… Check it out if you want.