[1/1/2013]
I apologize for the delay on
this review. There were a lot of circumstances for me and my mother, who
wanted to see this movie with me, during its release. Both my
mother and I were not in the mood to watch this film right after the
Connecticut tragedy, plus all of the holiday stuff going on. That and
other factors. I am still recovering from a cold that has been lingering
for two plus weeks. Also, I was and still am on the James Bond
buzz. I’m starting to collect the original Ian Fleming novels (Casino
Royale, Dr. No, Goldfinger, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) and just
finished reading Dr. No. James Bond has replaced Star Wars as my fad so
far.
My mother and I finally had
an opportunity to watch “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” in theaters
last Sunday. After going through a half an hour of trailers and through
2:45 minutes of this film, we both came out with the same feeling – Eh?!
We were talking about our
views of this at dinner and came to a similar conclusion. That it was an
alright movie. She was disappointed due to the great expectations of the
film for herself. This seems quite similar to what I went through with
the Star Wars Prequels (which took many years of denial to face up) and
recently Prometheus – the prequel / not prequel, question filled adventure that
makes 2001: A Space Odyssey a walk in the park.
The performances were great,
especially from Martin Freeman as Bilbo. He is perfect in this role and
he is born to play the “what situation did not get me in now” character
role. He did that in my first exposure to him in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide
to the Galaxy”, the original British TV show version of “The Office”, and in
the highly received new twist of Sherlock as Dr. Watson. Even Ian
McKellen as Gandalf the Grey was superb as before. And at last Andy
Serkis reprising his role as Gollum was the best of the lot, showing more
intensity and emotions than I saw in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The
dwarfs were fine, especially the leader Thorin, played by Richard
Armitage. Even the environmental Wizard with the bird dung on his face
was not that bad, as many movie reviewers has mentioned. He’s not the Jar
Jar Binks of Middle-Earth.
The Hobbit suffered the same
issues that occurred with the Star Wars Prequels – expectations (both from
fanboys as well as the director). Actually, I don’t think The Hobbit was
as bad as The Phantom Menace. George Lucas messed that up pretty good in
his own right.
The issue was twofold.
The Hobbit, as I read most of the novel, is not as intense and well of depth as
the Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you recall your J.R.R. Tolkien
biographical history, Tolkien wrote The Hobbit as a child story. It
was not with the assistance of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien’s passion of ancient
languages and cultures that Tolkien decided to write an fully ambitious Middle
Earth universe tale that took most of his live to write. Each character
in The Lord of the Rings was full of depth of character, even the lesser known
characters of Pippin.
So it is not really a good
thing to compare The Hobbit that to Lord of the Rings, because The Hobbit was
an appetizer and the Lord of the Rings was the main course (in terms of story
and character development). If you compare The Hobbit that to the Lord of
the Rings, you are going to be disappointed at the lack of character
development, because there was not that much there to begin with.
That is why I was so
surprised by the reason of Peter Jackson expanding The Hobbit to three
movies. I had a bad feeling that this was going to happen. He
expanded the simple story of King Kong to a very boring length with unnecessary
scenes in that film, whereby I will stick with the original King Kong as the
authoritative version. According to internet information, Peter
Jackson was incorporating a lot of story line from Tolkien’s unfinished work
The Silmarillion, which was suppose to expand and “fill in” the story line
within The Hobbit as well as events before, during and after the Lord of the
Rings. This “filler” threw both me and my mother off. Having
her reference to The Hobbit from the 1970s cartoon version, she got disturbed
when the story “got off subject” unto something else. It did not affect
me as much, but it still did. What did affected me was all of the cameos
that were occurring: Elijah Wood as Frodo, Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, and
Christopher Lee as Saruman are not needed. The other two were in
there to either fill in The Silmarillion stuff, or do a George Lucas-ish style
tie in to the Lord of the Rings.
Bottom line, The Hobbit
should be one long 3 hour movie or just breaking up to 2 2 hour film. The
whole means of having three films shows me either Peter Jackson wanted to pad
as much Silmarillion stuff into The Hobbit or (here is my cynical side kicking
up) the movie studio suits wanted to make another Trilogy to rake in the money.
The crew of Mystery Science Theater were ripping on a bad film “Fire Maidens of
Outer Space” where the director intentionally filled the movie of a lot of
“padding” (unnecessary scenes) that took away from the so-called story, where a
much of astronauts find a bunch of hot Greek women on the thirteenth moon of
Jupiter – one of my favorite MST3K episodes. Joel would say to the actors
on the screen, “hey – more padding! Stretch it out! Stretch it
out!”. The Hobbit reminded me of that. If they were have
gotten to the point of the film, and taken the rest of the filler out, this
would have been a much better film.
Overall this is not a bad
film. Like what I had to do with the Ewok scenes in Return of the Jedi, I
am going to have to fast forward many scenes of The Hobbit to get to the “meat”
of the film. So this is an OK film, and not excited to see the next one
as I was with “The Two Towers”. Mom even said at the end of the film,
“What, that’s all of the film?”. “Yes”, I said, “We will have to wait for
Part 2 next December and Part 3 the winter after that”. She says, “Forget
it! I’m not going to wait for the next film. Not worth it.
Just get me the DVD of “Skyfall” and I will be satisfied.” I have a
funny feeling that she is not alone in that feeling.
THE HOBBIT IN 3-D
I did not watch the film in
3-D or dealt with the whole 42 frames per second controversy that many movie
reviewers had watching The Hobbit in 3-D. So it would be hard for me to
honestly criticize the film in that context without dealing with it, but I’m
not going to fork up $14.00 to see the same movie in 3-D. I’m a
devoted 2-D man and will stick to it. “HD not 3D” is my motto.
For us who are against 3-D movie viewing should set up a Tea Party like
organization and go against this whole progressive filmmakers, thinking that
3-D is the future. Boloney to that! Microsoft, politicians, and
technology driven filmmakers should learn that progressing does not really mean
improving.
I have a link of Red Letter
Media below, who are more technical about the 42 frames per second controversy
and experienced it.
Half in The Bag: The
Hobbit review
{CAUTION: ADULT
LANGUAGE}
MOVIE YEAR IN REVIEW
(2012)
I looked through my log of
what movies I saw in theater and on Netflix. This was obviously the
lowest amount of movies that I watched in theater in 2012. Many of that
is financial ($10.00 a ticket, $14.00 for 3-D). Mom was going to treat me
to The Hobbit, so she paid also for the bottled water for us. $4.00 each
per bottle. She got angry in her own loveable means. “Four bucks
for water. That’s outrageous”. For me, going to the theater
is like going to a baseball game. I’m only going to go there for
the big film releases. I get a month’s worth of Instant streaming movies
and to check out 2 Blu-Rays or DVDs at a time for $12.00 a month on
NetFlix. Yes, the latest TV shows and movie releases have a longer lead
time than other rental places, but it’s worth waiting to watch the film when it
is finally released. If it is a great film that many people think it is,
it is worth the wait. Plus, if a movie reviewer that I trust says that
the film stinks to high heaven, then I will not even try and watch it on
theater.
That is why my listing of my
best films will be short to many others out there. And there are many
other films that I did not watch but plan to watch when released on
Netflix.
Let me know what’s
yours. I know that it will be totally different from mine.
This is just an exercise of showing my personal listing. Everyone’s
different.
BEST FILMS OF 2012 THAT I
WATCHED IN THEATER
1.
Skyfall
2.
The Dark Knight
Rises
3.
The Avengers
4.
Seven Psychopaths
MOST DISAPPOINTING FILMS
OF 2012 THAT I WATCHED IN THEATER
1.
Prometheus
2.
The Hobbit:
An Unexpected Journey
3.
Dark Shadows
4.
Total Recall
TOP 2012 FILMS THAT I AM
WAITING TO SEE ON NETFLIX
1.
Looper
2.
Atlas
Shrugged: Part 2
3.
Argo
4.
Ted
5.
Moonrise Kingdom
6.
Django Unchained
7.
Lincoln
TOP TV SHOWS OF 2012
1.
The Walking Dead
2.
Sherlock
3.
Breaking Bad
4.
No Reservations
5.
Restaurant:
Impossible
BEST NETFLIX MOVIES OF
2012
1.
The Girl of the
Dragon Tatoo (Original Swedish and UK Version)
2.
The People vs.
George Lucas [Documentary]
3.
The Man Who Would
Be King
4.
The Changeling
TOP TV SHOWS OF 2012 FROM
NETFLIX VIEWING
1.
Law and Order:
SVU
2.
The Office
3.
Archer
4.
Firefly
5.
Mystery Science
Theater 3000
TOP BLU-RAY BUYS
1.
Bond 50:
[James Bond Box Set]
2.
Sherlock:
Seasons 1 & 2
3.
The Dark Knight
Rises
4.
Loony Tunes
Collection: Volume 2
5.
The Avengers
6.
Outland
7.
Indiana
Jones: The Complete Adventures
8.
The Walking
Dead: Second Season
9.
The French
Connection: Remastered
10.
Ed Wood
ANTICIPATED FILMS IN
(2013)
1.
The Man of Steel
2.
Star Trek Into
Darkness
3.
The Wolverine
4.
A Good Day to Die
Hard
5.
Iron Man 3
6.
Kick-Ass 2
7.
The Hobbit:
The Desolation of Smaug
8.
Oblivion
9.
G.I. Joe:
Retaliation
No comments:
Post a Comment