The Hobbit: To childhood and back again

Just a bit over ten years ago, I sat unhappily in my seat awaiting the start of The Fellowship of the Ring, severely annoyed that the movie I really wanted to see (the first harry potter), was sold out. Instead, I had forced to go with my dad to watch what I was sure to be a complete borefest. I had started reading the book earlier that day after receiving it as a Christmas present, and had been disappointed to find a slow, boring beginning. I distinctly remember voicing my disapproval to my dad during the previews, claiming that this was not worth seeing because "it was nothing like The Hobbit". Naturally, after a few hours of movie history in the making,  I was singing a very different tune. The Lord of the Rings definitely wasn't The Hobbit, and that eight year-old was glad of it.  On Thursday night however, I could not have been more excited to see the first installment of Peter Jackson's latest addition to his Middle-Earth collection.  So after basically waiting all day, I grabbed some friends and scurried to the cinema.

As the film began I realised that at nineteen years of age, I had made the very same mistake as I had all those years ago. Most people might have realised that all of the shots in previews for the film look completely different to those in most films and certainly in the LOTR trilogy with Jackson choosing to shoot the film at 48 frames per second (fps).Why is this significant? Well, most films are done at a traditional 24 fps, which essentially means that when you watch The Hobbit, your eye is processing frames captured at double the traditional speed, getting rid of things like motion blurs. The faster frame rate also means that the picture is extremely lifelike, giving movies a sort of weird familiarity with which we are not normally accustomed to seeing.

Director Peter Jackson doing work

Before I saw The Hobbit, I was very concerned with how such a change would affect the general tone and feel of the movie, and I was picturing a project with all the grandeur and occasion of a Once Upon a Time episode.  But I was pre-evaluating the film as if it were the same animal as LOTR, with all the dark and solemn depiction that I had loved.  I continued this thinking right into the first few minutes of the movie, with a cameo by Elijah Wood in the opening scenes almost inviting me to explore the differences, in fact, it's almost as though Jackson wanted us to know the difference right away. Still, even as I settled into the film's natural groove, a shot here or there would jerk me out of my enjoyment just because it seemed too sharp.

Aside from a rough introduction, what is most defining about this film is its ability to be a totally different animal while still giving a LOTR lover everything they could have wanted.  A far cry in mood from the LOTR series, The Hobbit is about the adventures of Frodo's uncle Bilbo Baggins as he travels with dwarves hoping to reclaim a stolen fortune from a notorious dragon. The cast for such an excursion was everything I could have  hoped for, with Martin Freeman (Bilbo) and Ian McKellen (if you don't know who he plays...) thriving on a sharp and witty script that uses only just as much of the book's actual dialogue as is needed. In fact, Jackson's ability to recreate scenes from The Hobbit at times far surpasses his feat with the LOTR trilogy, turning potentially cringe-worthy singing situations into moving moments. Most interestingly of all, is the way Jackson deals with Smaug the Dragon, which for the sake of those who haven't seen the film, I will not expound upon. Jackson also assuaged my fears about making a short book into three parts by introducing side story-lines, material and characters from extended middle-earth folklore to flesh out the story and tie everything together with the LOTR series.

In almost every aspect the movie just seems so warm, giving it the feel of something pictured in a child's imagination ; not without fear, violence , and danger, but ultimately innocent. Watching Bilbo and the Dwarves jump "out of the frying pan and into the fire" time and time again made me smile in a way I do not often do, conjuring up memories of reading the book, then suggested to me by my third grade teacher, aloud to my mum as she cooked supper. That is the beauty of this creation; it made me laugh, wince, and gasp as a child again- an experience that events continue to tell us cannot be taken for granted.


Guncotton would like to dedicate this review to the recent victims in Connecticut and those children dying in violence around the world everyday.