Return to Formula: Why The Hobbit is Both Exhilarating & Dissapointing

At one point in Peter Jackson's new film "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" two villains square off in an epic showdown. How epic are we talking here? We are talking everything around them burning creating an arena of fire. We're talking blaring choral music on the soundtrack reminding that this brawl is gonna be serious. And finally we get characters that we care about/despise battling in slow motion. It's satisfying, thrilling, and well, nothing you haven't seen before. And this scene pretty much sums up the entire film.

You see the film follows the blue-print of it's predecessor "The Lord of the Rings" so completely it almost feels like you're not watching a new film, but just the ridiculously long deleted scenes of the ones that came before. Of course if the ones that came before were incredibly Oscar winning borderline masterpieces, that's not a bad thing, but it's also kind of a reminder that's it not anything new. That's not to say the story isn't different. Instead of destroying a ring, now we have a fellow of money hungry dwarves going on adventure to reclaim their piles of gold the terrible dragon Smaug took from them. Yes, even in Middle Earth, CASH RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME. Joining them on this journey is hobbit handkerchief aficionado Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf the wise wizard.

Here are just a couple of the stylistic elements from the LOTR trilogy that make into this "new film."

• Epic sweeping vistas accompanied by swelling orchestrations. 
• A wide variety of evil creatures including trolls, goblins, evil ghosts, and maybe orcs but I may be getting those confused with the goblins. 
• Heads getting lopped off.
• Heroes jumping from different platforms inside collapsing caves.
• Jokes are made about zany wizards doing too many drugs.
• A groovy visit to the waterfall mega chill resort / Elf hangout spot Rivendell

And yet despite all these similarities, some of which are rooted in the text, the film still works. I mean the ingredients may be generally the same, but the end result is a different meal. Around the halfway point (1.5 hours in mind you!) I found myself really invested in the adventure of it all. The whole thing just really clicks and even though now and then you're like, damn, I saw this scene in the previous movie, it's still awesome. 

So if you were wondering, "The Hobbit" is a lot of fun. But, it also seems completely in director Peter Jackson's comfort zone, so much to the point that's it feels like he's not really trying to show us anything new. It should be noted that Jackson got his dwarf on and didn't agree to make the film until his haul from the Rings movies was adjusted so there is kind of a sour element to it. Also visionary director Guillermo Del Toro was linked to the project for a long time before leaving due to delays. On the screen I was marveling most the of the time, but also felt myself longing for a movie that like Bilbo Baggins, wasn't afraid to go on a random adventure.

As for my theory on it that I wouldn't dig the movie because of Game of Thrones, the film is so different from Thrones it doesn't really matter. But what does matter....Winter is Coming!

What's Your Fantasy: How Game of Thrones Has Made Me Not That Excited For The Hobbit

I'm about a level 5 Tolkien nerd. Let's go over my credentials here for a second.

• Before I could read myself, my Dad read me The Hobbit and the entire Lord of the Rings (LOTR) series to me before bedtime. This took about a year. We warmed up to this endeavor by reading The Chronicles of Narnia.
• I saw every LOTR movie in the theater on opening night and loved every single second of them. I even stood in the cold New England rain for The Return Of The King on opening night, totally worth it.
• I've played The Return of The King for PS2 to completion. Game is totally on point btw.
• I know what The Simarillion is, but haven't read it.
• I've dabbled in the special editions (aka the long ass versions) of the movies but have never watched.
• I can tell you that it was bogus that Tom Bombadil wasn't in the movies.
• I can tell you it was even more bogus that they didn't include "The Sacking of the Shire" even after they show a glimpse of it in Fellowship.

So yeah, I'm semi-deep into it, not nearly as deep as others, but I like to think I have some nerd/street cred in that area. Yet when I see the trailers, posters, and other relentless press the machine is cooking up for the feature adaptation of "The Hobbit," I'm just not that excited. I mean, I'm still a nerd, I almost exploded in nerd joy at "The Avengers," got way too deep into the semi-bullshit mythology of "Prometheus," and really enjoyed "The Dark Knight Rises." For weeks now I've been trying to figure out what about "The Hobbit" wasn't getting me on the hype train, and then I started seeing billboards around town for something else and it all clicked.

It comes back to HBO's epic fantasy series "Game of Thrones," which if you haven't seen it, is pretty much the iron price / gold standard for fantasy these days. If you've been following along with my recaps of the show, you know I'm a fiend for it, and I'm not alone in my addiction. Pretty much everyone who watches it is positively stark raving madly obsessed with it. And they should be, with its complex web of characters, fantastic production values, racy sex, awesome violence, stacks of political intrigue, and of course healthy doses of fantasy/magic, the show is incredible. 

Which brings me to "The Hobbit," the trailers for it have made the whole thing to look like some type of sleek cartoon, full of zany dwarves and fantastical creatures that don't look that real or dangerous. I don't know if they are just bad special effects, but I get a bizarre Star Wars Episode 1 Phantom Menace vibe from the whole thing. It looks to cartoony and after watching the gritty battles of Thrones with limbs getting hacked off, mud and dirt flying, and just the intensity of the whole thing , "The Hobbit" is looking like it was created on a green screen, kind of a "King Kong" vibe to reference Peter Jackson. 

If you want to get deeper into it, you can point out that "The Return of the King" came out in 2003, in a time where they wasn't any serious fantasy TV shows. Prior to "Thrones" almost all fantasy shows were syndicated programs like "Xena" or "Hercules," which were mediocre at best. The movies was where you went for epic fantasy. However, now, the three new Hobbit films seems like a limited way to tell epic stories, regardless of their lengths. The Game of Thrones series of books will max out at seven, and if you figure that each season will be one book, that's seven seasons of 10 episodes each an hour long. That's about 70 hours of fantasy goodness as opposed to the nine hours of "The Hobbit" (and I'm being generous assuming each movie is 3 hours long!) And when it comes to Fantasy, longer is always better.

Honestly, I hope I'm wrong, I really want to like "The Hobbit," and I'm definitely seeing it opening weekend, but there is no doubt then when I step out of that theater into the cold night air, I may be thinking how awesome it was, but I most certainly in some corner of my mind will be thinking "winter is coming!"

New Trailer For The Hobbit. Cool I Guess

Why does this trailer not excite me? As a kid my Dad used to read this book a loud to me and I remember loving every second of it. Now, I'm just like, dayumm, that looks exactly like LORD OF THE RINGS. That is exactly what they're going for, but the problem is The Return Of The King was almost 10 years ago and y'know, things have changed. What has changed? GAME OF THRONES.

Nobody is doing medieval fantasy better than Thrones right now and with the next series promising more "R" rated insanity, this just comes across as kind of a cartoon, and this is coming from someone who watches Aragorn kill the evil dreadlocked Rasta Orc at least once a month. What do you guys think?