Frank sees the Hobbit

[fbhjr]

I first read the Hobbit in the spring of 1973. It was at the end of 4th grade, the year I had made a concerted effort to make my teachers change their opinion that I was stupid.

One of the prime ways I did it was through reading. The kids the teachers thought were smart read a lot, so I would do that to show them I was smart as well.
My dyslexia made it very difficult for me to read the way I was taught. So, I had to come up with a different way of reading that worked for me. This also involved adjusting the way I thought of things and bringing it more in line with the way other people thought about the world.

That spring, my mother gave me a copy of The Hobbit.
“This is one of those books your sister likes,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Since you seem to be really into reading these days I thought I’d give you a copy and see if you like that same sort of crazy stuff.”

I idolized my sister and anything she liked I would be glad to try.
Plus it had the bonus of being something my mother didn’t like, and was proof that people noticed I had been reading more.
So, that book was a big thing for me.

And, I did love it. I read it twice that spring and summer. By the fall I was on to that sequel he wrote about another bunch of Hobbits. Liked that, but not as much. (For one thing, the names in LOTR were much harder for me to sort and track. I had to read it a couple of times just to make sure I had all the characters sorted out.)

I bring all this up so you will realize that there no way that any movie made by less than an act of God would measure up to my feelings about the story.

There are parts of the movie I did very much like. And, no surprise, they were the parts very much like the book. There are certain places that I could recite what was being said on the screen as it was said, and those parts I liked.
I spoke along with the start of Bilbo’s writing the story until where the word “comfort” should have been.
I sang along with the dwarves song until they skipped a bunch of the verses.

And, that sort of sums up my feeling on the movie. They have good things where they start out really well, then they go astray.

There is, in my opinion a fundamental problem with the movie.
The Hobbit is clearly a children’s tale. From the very first words of the story, is a story for children.
That is in no way putting it down.
It is a GREAT children’s story. And, I love children’s stories anyhow, so to me it wouldn’t be a put down in any case.

For all the talk people make about Tolkien, his academics, his linguistics, and all the research and detail he put into the stories, most people miss that these were stories he told his kids. Yes, he did invent languages, alphabets, history, and such. But, he was a professor and that shows.

They have also collected the letters he used to write to his kids at Christmas time as Father Christmas. Those are also great stories and much closer to The Hobbit than to LOTR.

And, I think that’s one of my big problems with the movie is that they lost that aspect of it. They are trying to make it a grown up story and that just isn’t a good fit.

Adding the White Council, the Necromancer (who is at least mentioned in the book), the Orc King with a grudge and Radagast does not for me make the story any better. I will admit I regretted the omission of Radagast from the LOTR movies. I thought he was an interesting character. But, my image of him was quite different from the one in this movie. Bird poop in the hair? Rabbit sled? What’s up with that? He is a wizard. Maybe not quite as powerful as Gandalf or Saruman, but still of their order that came from over the sea to fight evil.

And, that’s another thing where I have trouble with the movie. My image of the dwarves, Bilbo, the goblins and such are all very different from the movie.
I’m not saying mine are better. But, mine are much more in line with 75 years of artist versions of it that I’ve seen.
One of the things about Bilbo, he’s supposed to be “well fed”. He is not in the movie.
The dwarves have spent decades toiling in mines for other people because they are refugees.
That’s not how they look to me in the movie.

And, I can be very picky about things.
In The Fellowship of the Ring, they show Frodo riding to Rivendell. The area he passed through to get there does not look like the area the dwarves pass through to get there in this movie. It looks much more like the area they walked through getting to Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers or other areas of Rohan they run through chasing after the kidnapped hobbits.

I did not see it at the super high frame rate or in 3D. But in normal frame 2D some of the effects did not look all that convincing to me. Certainly not to the level of the LOTR movies.
There was one point near the start where I couldn’t tell if the camera captured some heat distortion rising past the actors, or there was a cloud of insects or just weird optical stuff going on. But, it looked weird to me.

And, the big chases around underground did not do it for me. Again, maybe in 3D it would have been different. But, it seemed very repetitive to me. Lots of “look at this cool special effect” and not very much “we’re moving the story along”. I was yawning and my eyelids drooping in parts of it.

As with the LOTR movies, my biggest grip is “I understand why you have to take things out. But, why do you have to add in stuff that was never in the story.”
I have yet to be impressed with any of these additions. And, it feels like they’re taking away the stuff I like to add this stuff I don’t like.

Given all of this, I didn’t like it all that much. I’d put it about with The Two Towers. Some good bits but mostly a disappointment.
I can’t get away from the feeling that it is a 10 year old dressed as an adult and trying to pass to get into a bar. That’s just how it feels to me.

But, I am biased.