I went into this movie with low expectations, knowing there was going to be a lot of bloated and extended scenes that didn’t have to be bloated or extended out as long as Jackson was going to extend them out. But boy the first hour and half of this movie tested my nerves to a limit that those expectations actually went below what I was expecting.
My first inclination this was going to be the case was when I heard Jackson was going to take a very slim book (The Hobbit) and turn it into a trilogy. That kind of thing just reeks of money grabbing, considering there’s just enough story line in that book to make two movies if the director can maintain the pacing and length of the movie. But then Jackson is the director, so I knew this wouldn’t be the case. And well it wasn’t the case. The first half of this movie was so bad: pacing-wise, character development-wise, plot-wise, and well just about everything-wise that I was bored stiff. Because Jackson hasn’t yet seen a walking or running scene where the camera is pulled so far back just shooting people walking or running that he didn’t like. This is definitely the case of the first half of this movie as he seemed to prefer those kinds of shots to anything else involving character or actual plot.
And was it me or did everything just look too fake and crystal clear? Gone was the lived in dirty, real look of the other Lord of the Rings films only to be replaced by the computer world generator. I had the same kind of feeling when watching The Phantom Menace that I had watching the first hour and half of the Hobbit.
I don’t even know where to begin on how bad the first half was. First of all everything in this round 2 of Middle Earth had me getting The Phantom Menace vibe where computer generated everything seemed to overpower all logical story telling devices. Tolkien started simple: with a hobbit. That simple beginning helped to set the reader right into the character of Bilbo Baggins, you know the actual main character of the story. Where does Peter Jackson start? Right at the Lonely Mountain detailing a long history of dwarves, treasure, dragons, mountains, and names, names, names. Ending with the dwarves leaving said mountain to the dragon. At least Tolkien knew how to get the reader to care about something all of what Jackson did could have been told much later in the movie to a Bilbo Baggins to give some context as to where the dwarves were going and why they were going there, which would have made his reasons for staying with them all the more clear.
Where the first half of the movie had the pacing and awkwardness of a George Lucas written love scene, the second half of the movie was paced and written extremely well. I was really glad Jackson actually gave his actors something to do besides run, walk, or fight. I really liked the Gollum and Bilbo scene. It was done with a lot of passion and Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis nailed every aspect of it. It was really nice to actually see Freeman act, versus what Jackson had him doing in the first half of the movie. Then Jackson let Freeman follow the Gollum scene with a good scene of him with the dwarves that would have been better if he had let Bilbo hear the history of the mountain, because then the home references would have had more meaning with the audience and with Bilbo when he started telling them why he was staying.
It’s funny also because all of the fluff of the first half would have been better spent delving into the dwarves character(s), thus actually making the audience care about them because as it stands I can only remember one of the thirteen dwarf names. Even James Cameron did an amazing job with the many Marines in Aliens making them all distinct and individual in the short time frame he had. But instead Jackson prefers shots of endless walking and running because you know nothing sells character development better than a little walking and running.
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