So, reviews are finally coming in for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It's a film fantasy fans have been waiting years to see, and a lot of people are hoping/expecting it to carry on the legacy of Lord Of The Rings.
Unfortunately, reviews so far seem to be very mixed. IGN gave the film a 7.9, and called it "good, not great." Variety says that "The Hobbit alternately rewards and abuses auds' appetite for all things Middle-earth", while Hollywood Reporter says "In pure movie terms, however, it's also a bit of a slog, with an inordinate amount of exposition and lack of strong forward movement...There are elements in this new film that are as spectacular as much of the Rings trilogy was, but there is much that is flat-footed and tedious as well, especially in the early going." While it's still early days yet, and more reviews will no doubt come, the film currently sits at 62 on Metacritic, and 73 on Rotten Tomatoes. Neither of those are the sort of trailblazing receptions that Warner Bros were probably hoping for.
What's interesting is that the same criticisms seem to appear across the board. While opinions will always differ on films among both critics and fans, there seem to be some points that are getting brought up across the board:
-An overabundance of CGI. Watching the trailers, this was something I worried about myself. Apparently, Jackson has largely abandoned the mix of CGI and practical effects that was used for LOTR, and instead elected to use CGI for everything. The orcs are no longer guys in make-up, but CG creations. The film sets, such as the Goblin mines, are largely done with CG. And apparently, it shows. To quote from IGN:
Unfortunately, Azog, like all the orcs and goblins seen in The Hobbit, is a CGI character. Remember how formidable and scary the Uruk-hai were in the LOTR movies? It's because they were played by real actors in makeup and wielding actual weaponry, monsters who had a presence that CGI just can't recreate. The phoniness of these CG-heavy creatures makes The Hobbit feel as inorganic to LOTR as the prequels were to the original Star Wars films.
There's actually a lot of less than jaw-dropping visual effects work here, whether it's Azog -- who looks like he walked out of a video game -- or the horde that chases Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy) or the wargs. The Goblin King (Barry Humphries) and his minions are all CGI. At a certain point during battle scenes with these CGI characters it becomes evident that the main actors are swinging at nothing; you never get the sense anything's actually connecting and thus you're never fully invested in these battles or what happens to anyone in them. It's makes you think that if you went 20 minutes in any direction outside of The Shire you'd end up in Toon Town. Add in the brighter landscapes and The Hobbit often looks more like a Narnia film than an LOTR one.
The comparison to the Star Wars prequels is actually brought up in a few reviews. While no-one outright states that the Hobbit is as bad, a lot of reviewers seem to think that Jackson has fallen into the same trap as Lucas in relying too much on CGI.
- It's too long, and the pacing is a bit shoddy.
This one is somewhat surprising. When Warners announced that they were going to be releasing three films rather than two, I assumed that each film would have a shorter running time to accommodate the fact that there is less material to work with. Apparently not. An Unexpected Journey still somehow manages to achieve a run time of 160 minutes, and apparently a lot of that is a whole lot of not much at all. It takes nearly an hour for Bilbo to actually get started on the quest for the Lonely Mountain (in the book, it only took him a couple of breezy chapters), and apparently the pacing doesn't get much better throughout the rest. According to the Badass Digest "it's a real peaks and valleys experience." Scenes of genuine Middle-Earthy brilliance, followed by clunky scenes of not much at all.
At a guess, I'd hazard that this stems from the film being stretched into three films rather than two. When PJ got the notice from Warner (c'mon, you honestly think it was his idea?), I imagine he had to take a lot of stuff that was previously in the Deleted Scene/DVD Extras pile and slot them in to get his nine hours worth. I'm a little worried about what this means for the later films, considering that the first part of the book is actually the busiest, and once the Dwarves get out of Mirkwood things take a decidedly less hurried pace.
- The 48fps version doesn't look all that good. According to kindly reviewers, it makes the film look like an incredibly high-budget BBC news report. According to less kindly reviewers, it makes everything look fake, artificial and kinda trippy. Considering how hard PJs been trying to push this as the future of filming, its interesting to see how poorly it seems to have been initially recieved.
So yeah... in general, while there are still a lot of positives around the film, there also seems to be some major issues. Namely, a lot of bloat and pacing issues, and too much crappy looking CGI.
What's interesting is that, as a fan of the original Tolkien novels, my perception of the LOTR films has gotten somewhat less favourable as time has worn on, namely for the same reasons critics seem to be criticising this movie: terrible plot pacing, and too much focus on special effects and spectacle. It will be interesting to see, therefore, if the film really is markedly lesser in quality than the Rings films, or whether critics are criticising the film for flaws that marred its predecessors too.
Your thoughts?