JourneyOnline
Director: Peter Jackson
Stars: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen and Richard Armitage
Rated: M
We were never going to be of one mind about Peter Jackson's long-awaited version of the JRR Tolkien 1937 classic The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the precursor to The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Even before the opening scenes of rustic Hobbiton unfolded on the screen, the knowledge that the original book had been turned into three films had already wrought angst among the true believers.
People like me, who can provide a potted lineage of all of the dwarves (and their swords) at the drop of a wizard's hat, and feel that they have already swallowed some significant fiddling with the original storyline of The Lord of the Rings.
If you are wondering why grown people care about any of this stuff, the answer lies in the extraordinary scope of the world created by Tolkien.
His saga of grand and noble quests is saturated in mythology and ancient languages, peopled with heroes and fallen angels and lovers, and happens to be a rollickingly good story.
JRR Tolkien was a professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in the Anglo-Saxon and English languages, and a devout Catholic.
His 40-year friendship and collaboration with CS Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia, A Grief Observed, Out of the Silent Planet and so on), also a professor in the English faculty, was the crucible for the creative infusion of theology, mythology, and philology into the classic fantasy novels for which the two are best known.
Like Lewis, Tolkien knew the value of a good myth.
The battle for Middle Earth which unfolds in The Lord of the Rings has its genesis in The Hobbit, and as with any decent epic, there is a lot of back story.
The actions of the unlikely burglar, Bilbo Baggins, lie at the heart of why young Frodo ended up trudging up Mt Doom with the ring in his pocket and the fate of the free world in his hobbit hands.
Like John Bunyan's Christian, (The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come) Frodo is tormented by his heavy burden and tempted at every turn to abandon his quest.
Jackson has delved deep into this complex back story in order to turn one book into three films, and to evoke the gathering malevolence which presages the treachery and violence of the much darker trilogy.
He has padded out the story with some rather dizzying action scenes (the shooting and projection frame rate of 48 frames per second takes some getting used to), throwing in an entirely new character or two for good measure.
The first film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, launches the tale of the mild-mannered hobbit Bilbo Baggins, who is contracted by dwarves (led by Thorin Oakenshield, played to smoulderingly good effect by Richard Armitage) to steal back their treasure from the dragon Smaug.
This creature, whose terrifying presence evoked not a few squeaks of surprise from the film audience, is comfortably ensconced in and on the hoarded gold in the former dwarf kingdom of Erebor.
The dwarves themselves are nothing short of wondrous, a costume designer's fantasy unleashed, with a stellar cast including the engaging James Nesbitt.
Martin Freeman, in the central role of the wry and rather stuffy Bilbo Baggins, brings a wonderful subtlety to the role.
The plucky, reluctant hero is at the heart of the marvellous world which Tolkien created 76 years ago, and happily, at the heart of the film.
Minor quibbles aside, The Hobbit is a journey there and back again, and I plan to be along for each step of the way.
PS. Don't leave before the credits, or you will miss the truly beautiful A Song for the Lonely Mountain by former Crowded House frontman Neil Finn.
Reviewed by Dianne Jensen.
Photo : John Callen, Martin Freeman, William Kircher, Graham McTavish and James Nesbitt in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Photo by James Fisher © Warner Bros Entertainment Inc & Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc.
