There's probably very little about The Hobbit (or Lord of the Rings mastermind Peter Jackson's involvement in it) that you don't know already. After all, the project's troubled journey to the screen could probably fill three separate films of its own. So I'll skip the exposition and jump right to my experience seeing the first installment of the new trilogy, An Unexpected Journey.
Going into the film, I was cautiously excited by the idea of seeing the story of Alpha Hobbit Bilbo Baggins brought to life by the same man whose drive and singular vision made Rings one of the most accomplished and satisfying cinematic accomplishments of all time. I hadn't thought about The Hobbit for decades, and only scraps of the story left over from the animated film (a purple coat; a glowing sword) and a community theater production I saw when I was about four (spiders; a sleeping dragon; an overzealous drama major from the local college hissing "My preciousssssss...") still fluttered around in my skull.
I was also excited to see how the film would look: Jackson's daring and controversial decision to shoot the film at 48 fps (as opposed to film's standard 24 or video's 29) was already generating buzz of the good and bad varieties, and I always welcome the chance that someone in my aisle will vomit from vertigo instead of bad concession stand chicken tenders.
In all honesty, as the film began I was shocked at how it looked... and not in a good way.
I went in expecting - perhaps unfairly - a sweeping visual epic on par with Rings. What I found myself watching looked like a low-budget, shot-on-video fantasy movie more suited to the SyFy network than thousands of theaters on Christmas weekend. The lighting was harsh and unflattering. The camera movements were exaggerated by the high frame rate, making the motion look clumsy. Honestly, if I had stumbled upon the movie on cable, I would think that the settings on my flatscreen were off. And I probably would have turned the channel.
But as Bilbo's quest played out, it slowly became clear why Jackson made the decision - because while the visual effect of the information-rich frame rate reads very much as "American soap opera" in the early domestic scenes, it is extremely powerful in action sequences and settings where there is a good amount of fine detail in the background.
As the action scenes began to pile up, the scales began to tip in 48's favor, and by the end the choice was probably a good one. Not only does the added visual information provide massive amounts of deep-focus detail in busy settings (like the vast, teeming underground goblin city) or in scenes involving perilous, vertigo-inducing heights (as in a dizzying sequence where the band of heroes find themselves standing on a mountain that is not only alive, but in the midst of a Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots-style fight with another mountain), but it allows for a much more seamless marriage of live action and CGI (which has always been held back by standard 24fps film's innate motion blur).
I ordinarily wouldn't devote so much time to discussing a movie's technical aspects, but I feel that I need to because the look of the film really is that jarring, and it might potentially be that distracting to viewers who don't spend hours each day playing video games or watching shot-on-HD shows and movies. Moving on...
As Baggins, ever-dependable Martin Freeman (Sherlock, The Office, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) brings his toolkit of wonderfully charming tics and double-takes and provides a warm and amusingly fussy contrast to his traveling companions, a dozen or so dwarves determined to reclaim their ancestral home. Most of the dwarves act from under pounds of latex, and some are adorably odd-looking (one grey-haired fellow looked exactly Iike my old landlady, only with a slightly longer beard). For some reason the dwarf played by Being Human's Aidan Turner appears to have no makeup on at all - either they decided his puss was just too handsome to hide or they're setting up some kid of cross-species paternity twist for the next movie.
It's also a blast to see Gandalf back before his rise to greatness as a wizard and when he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty - the sight of Ian McKellen swinging around a sword and a hell of a big stick is truly beautiful to behold. A batty new woodland wizard named Radagast (Sylvester McCoy) pretty much stole the movie for me by trying to save the life of an adorable hedgehog, and the wild wolf creatures that the orcs ride are pretty nasty - and thanks to the 3D, you can almost smell their carrion breath.
It's worth noting that while Hobbit bears many of the same features as Rings (orcs, goblins, treacherous mountain passes, elves), the films are actually quite different in tone, pace, and look. I wouldn't go as far as to say that Hobbit is the Muppet Babies version of Rings, but it's not far off - the story is much more of a fairy tale, and the film's vibe is more bedtime story than anguished epic. As a result, when Jackson takes liberties with the original text like following Gandalf to a meeting with the other guardian elders of Middle Earth (offering a welcome return to the screen for Cate Blanchett's Galadriel and Christopher Lee's Saruman), it feels a bit like he's hanging out at the adult's table for a few minutes before jumping back into a ball pit with his halfling buddies.
It took me a good half hour to adjust to the radical look of Hobbit, but considering most of that time was throwaway frame story and exposition it didn't really matter - once the story reached the pivotal (and long-awaited) scene between Bilbo and Gollem (Andy Serkis) I was fully on board. My advice would be to give it a chance and strap in like Radagast on his rabbit-drawn sled - chances are you'll enjoy the ride.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens everywhere on Friday, in both 2D and 3D.
