The Hobbit: My Perspective.

!SPOILER ALERT!
(Please heed warning if you have not yet seen the film and do not wish to know what happens in it).


As you might have guessed from my first blog post, I went into The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey with a few misgivings.  I came out thinking that my misgivings were justified.  I enjoyed the film as an action movie; it was fast-paced, fun, and witty in places.  If you go into it without certain expectations, you might really enjoy the film.  I had certain expectations.  Personally, I didn't think that the film stayed true to the spirit of The Hobbit.

My main complaint about the story overall was the addition of an unnecessary antagonist.  Azog the Defiler, the Pale Orc, did die in the battle at Moria.  He did not come back to revenge himself on Thorin Oakenshield.  Yes, Jackson did weave in this addition with the original story line, but that only makes me think that Jackson might be developing a bit of an ego and thinking himself a better storyteller than Tolkien, and...well... he just isn't.  In Tolkien's novel, evil does not have to be personified in order to be, and including Azog is a bit of a Hollywood "our audience needs a bad guy to root against" cop-out.

My second complaint: why, oh why, Peter Jackson, did you have to do what I truly hoped you wouldn't?  You turned most of your characters into caricatures.  Radagast is described as "simple" and "a fool," but he is described so by Saruman, who obviously believes that nature and little creatures are beneath the concerns of wizards.  Because Radagast does not appear in the novel, and the turning of Mirkwood happened well before the events of The Hobbit, the inclusion seems like a mere excuse to make fun of him.  And the Dwarves?  I understand that in the novel, they did basically take over Bilbo's house and deplete his larder-- perhaps even took advantage of his hospitality a bit--but they were not so rude, silly, filthy, and disgusting as you portrayed them.

Friend and fellow blogger Brittany Jencks mentioned something about the scene in Bilbo's home that I hadn't thought of; Bilbo's desire to keep a clean Hobbit-hole and his concern for his property are unfairly mocked. She pointed out that Bilbo is "sensitive, introverted, intelligent, gentle, kind"- in short has the markers of an INF personality- so of course he is going to care if a bunch of hooligans wreck his own home, get mud all over the carpet, and use his doilies as dishtowels.  It's a perfectly natural response and yet was treated like a disease.  I think that the novel gets across the point much better: even if you enjoy creating a neat and orderly existence for yourself, you can still have a desire for adventure. In the novel, the Dwarves did not march in and defile every single surface.  In the film, Jackson drew out the scene to an almost absurd length, showing the Dwarves wrecking everything in their path.  I think he attempted to excuse his Dwarves' behavior by including the cleaning of the plates scene and showing that they left his house clean the next morning, but he asks a lot more of Bilbo than even Tolkien did if he's asking him both to go on a quest and join a group whose behavior toward him the previous night was actually repulsive.

Please, Peter Jackson, and I do mean this sincerely, try to make more than one or two characters have some dimension!  Bombur might have been the butt of some jokes in the novel, but you unwittingly (I hope unwittingly) put all the Dwarves on the same intellectual level as your Trolls, and that makes it difficult for me to appreciate them as a stalwart band loyally following their King.  Don't even get me started on William, Tom and Bert.  Comic relief characters they were, but not that comic.  I felt like Jackson's humor was actually too childish throughout the film, which is saying something for an adaptation of a children's novel.  Perhaps I am unfairly blaming Jackson in this instance.  After all, humorous is the equivalent of gross throughout Hollywood.

As I mentioned above, this was an action film, as evidenced by all of the extended fighting/battle scenes (and the addition of the Company getting tossed around by Stone Giants (?)).  It was what I expected after seeing Jackson's Lord of the Rings.  The book was an adventure.  The two are not actually one and the same.

**To finish on a few positive notes (or try to, at least)**

The scenery in the film was, as usual, gorgeous.  I know that seems like a small concession, but I think the landscape does Middle Earth justice.  You can probably tell that I wouldn't say that lightly.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Riddles in the Dark scene, and I thought Jackson did a brilliant job portraying Bilbo's mercy in sparing Gollum's life.  He didn't even need the voice over of Gandalf saying, "True courage is not about knowing when to take a life but when to spare one" to evoke it.  This actually makes me somewhat sadder about the rest of the film.  I think Jackson has a gift for magnificent subtlety when he so chooses, and that he could put it to great effect when adapting Tolkien's work, but he chooses the big-budget special effects route instead.

**Conclusions**

If you like high-energy non-stop action and don't really mind film adaptations of novels that might not be exactly what the original author intended, you might enjoy the movie.  If you aren't that sort of person and just like a bit of a romp, you might enjoy the movie.

But if you're looking for that essence of the "real thing" that isn't there, you might want to try the 1977 animated Rankin/Bass film.  It's more... fun... and who doesn't want to have fun when going on an adventure?



P.S. to Peter Jackson: So how many times can 13 dwarves and a hobbit fall over 50 feet and not even get scratched?  Just asking.

Enjoy!

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Star Wars (A New Fear) and The Hobbit (There and Even Farther Back Again)

Hello, internet.  Perhaps I should introduce myself.  I'm Cat, and as my blog title suggests, I am indeed an absurd curvy nerd.  The purpose of this blog is to share my love of all things nerdy, geeky, and often a little crazy, as well as my enthusiasm for promoting positive body image by using the tools I know best- literature, movies and music.  Some posts will focus on or even be wholly about one of those, but my hope is that both will get a lot of time.  I thought the best way to get the ball rolling would be to jump right in with a post about two of my favorite nerdy things: Star Wars and The Hobbit.  So enjoy!

I was tentatively excited about The Hobbit movie.  Words cannot describe how pleased I was when the trailer indicated that all thirteen Dwarves would be included in the film.  It also appears that Peter Jackson might not be solely using them as comic relief characters-- something I very much disliked about his portrayal of Gimli in Lord of the Rings.  However, upon finding out that The Hobbit will be divided into three entire films, I began to worry.  When it came out that Cate Blanchett and Orlando Bloom would be reprising their respective roles as Galadriel and Legolas, I started to worry even more.  When I saw that Benedict Cumberbatch was set to be "The Voice of the Necromancer," I said, "What the hell?!" and decided to boycott Hollywood forever.  Ok, so perhaps I didn't go that far.  I understand that movies can't always include everything in a book, and even sometimes have to make tweaks that will keep an audience hooked on the on-screen drama.  What I don't understand is when additions are made to screen adaptations of books that already have a great deal of action in the plot and don't actually need much more.  Yes, yes, I've heard that Jackson is "pulling from the indexes," but unless he's going back to LOTR or The Silmarillion, there just isn't that much in the index of The Hobbit.  There's certainly no Galadriel or Legolas, and the Necromancer is only briefly mentioned throughout the novel as someone to be avoided at all costs, and, well, they avoid him.  Yet... I still find myself still tentatively excited.  Perhaps it's because I love the novel so much.  Perhaps it's because I'm subconsciously masochistic.  Please, Peter Jackson, just don't disappoint me too much.

My first reaction hearing about Disney's purchase of Lucasfilm and the other new nerd films coming out- the new Star Wars trilogy set to begin in 2015- was less positive and probably that of thousands of people world-(internet-)wide: I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.  Why Disney?  Why do you want to trample our childhood memories?  Why? Whhhhyyyy?  Upon waking from my blackout holding a light saber, with tiny fragments of a mouse-eared cap strewn around me, I sat down to think calmly about the issue and see what others were saying about it.  What I found was... surprisingly optimistic.  As my mind was busy rebelling at the thought of "Mesa Bing-Bing" cartoons and a kitschy happily-married Han and Leia, it turns out that others were seeing possibilities: unique perspectives on the aftermath of the Rebellion, new characters from other planets in the Star Wars universe, and actors who can (gasp!) actually act.  I've never been all that interested in detailed fan fiction for... well, anything... but it turns out that among the gazillions (I think it is literally gazillions) of Star Wars novels, there are actually some that people who know about this kind of thing think are pretty good and might be adapted into decent films.  Also, as many pointed out, Disney has made some, um, fairly good movies recently (e.g. The Avengers).  While I dread the inevitable Star Wars: Space Adventures! animated series, I'm no longer all that terrified by the prospect of a new trilogy (as long as they don't mess with the originals and possibly forget Episodes I, II and III).  Just remember, if Disney's new Star Wars is any good, that *&#*'s going in "The Vault" at some point and NEVER coming out of copyright.  Ever.