The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Year: 2012
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Richard Armitage, Cate Blanchett, Jed Brophy, Adam Brown, John Callen, Martin Freeman, Mark Hadlow, Peter Hambleton, Stephen Hunter, William Kircher, Christopher Lee, Ian McKellen, Graham McTavish, James Nesbitt, Dean O'Gorman, Andy Serkis, Ken Stott, Aidan Turner & Hugo Weaving
Runtime: 169 mins (Theatrical) 189 mins (Extended)
BBFC: 12
Published: 10/08/22
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Richard Armitage, Cate Blanchett, Jed Brophy, Adam Brown, John Callen, Martin Freeman, Mark Hadlow, Peter Hambleton, Stephen Hunter, William Kircher, Christopher Lee, Ian McKellen, Graham McTavish, James Nesbitt, Dean O'Gorman, Andy Serkis, Ken Stott, Aidan Turner & Hugo Weaving
Runtime: 169 mins (Theatrical) 189 mins (Extended)
BBFC: 12
Published: 10/08/22
I would feel comfortable in saying that The Lord of the Rings trilogy is among my favourite film franchises of all time, with each of the three films being among my most beloved films ever. I frequently return to them multiple times a year, and despite their gargantuan runtimes of anywhere between three and a half, and four and a half hours, it’s an adventure I am delighted to experience over and over again with the quality never having diminished since my first time watching them on VHS back in 2003. To me they are magic, and even now, twenty years since the films released, knowing how all the tricks were done and having dissected every aspect of the films as deeply as I possibly can I still find them entirely spellbinding. But in the early 2010’s a brown mark was left upon the Middle Earth film franchise that can unfortunately never be undone, and that is The Hobbit trilogy. As I am writing these reviews it’s been ten years since the first Hobbit film, and two years since I wrote my reviews for the Lord of the Rings trilogy for this website. The Hobbit trilogy has been among the most requested films people want me to cover, and I knew it was a bridge I was always going to have to cross eventually but I wanted to put it off as long as I felt I could. Now feels like the right time to revisit The Hobbit trilogy and work out what went wrong, and why they lack the same magic that The Lord of the Rings has despite having almost exactly the same creative team behind them. As such, here is my first of three Hobbit reviews, starting of course with An Unexpected Journey.
Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is a Hobbit. Hobbits live quiet lives filled with comforts of food, good company, and a warm home in the rolling green hills of The Shire. When Bilbo is approached by a wizard by the name of Gandalf (Ian McKellen) with the proposition of going on an adventure, Bilbo firmly declines as it’s incredibly out of character for a Hobbit to go meddling in the lives of other folk of Middle Earth.
That evening however, Bilbo finds his home the location of a meeting of thirteen dwarves, Balin (Ken Stott), Dwalin (Graham McTavish), Fili (Dean O’Gormun), Kili (Aidan Turner), Dori (Mark Hadlow), Nori (Jed Brophy), Ori (Adam Brown), Oin (John Callen), Gloin (Peter Hambleton), Bifur (William Kircher), Bofur (James Nesbitt), Bombur (Stephen Hunter), and Thorin (Richard Armitage). The band of dwarves, along with Gandalf, plan to journey across Middle Earth to reclaim the dwarven city of Erebor located within the Lonely Mountain from the fearsome dragon Smaug. Intrigued by his childish fantasies of adventure, Bilbo agrees to join the group, unaware of the full extent of the challenges and foes he will face on the road ahead.
Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is a Hobbit. Hobbits live quiet lives filled with comforts of food, good company, and a warm home in the rolling green hills of The Shire. When Bilbo is approached by a wizard by the name of Gandalf (Ian McKellen) with the proposition of going on an adventure, Bilbo firmly declines as it’s incredibly out of character for a Hobbit to go meddling in the lives of other folk of Middle Earth.
That evening however, Bilbo finds his home the location of a meeting of thirteen dwarves, Balin (Ken Stott), Dwalin (Graham McTavish), Fili (Dean O’Gormun), Kili (Aidan Turner), Dori (Mark Hadlow), Nori (Jed Brophy), Ori (Adam Brown), Oin (John Callen), Gloin (Peter Hambleton), Bifur (William Kircher), Bofur (James Nesbitt), Bombur (Stephen Hunter), and Thorin (Richard Armitage). The band of dwarves, along with Gandalf, plan to journey across Middle Earth to reclaim the dwarven city of Erebor located within the Lonely Mountain from the fearsome dragon Smaug. Intrigued by his childish fantasies of adventure, Bilbo agrees to join the group, unaware of the full extent of the challenges and foes he will face on the road ahead.
In trying to understand why The Hobbit films are as universally disappointing as they are, it’s important to go back to the beginning and understand how they even came to be. In 1937 J.R.R. Tolkien released The Hobbit, a three-hundred-page children’s book that was whimsical and rather silly, intended to be read chapter by chapter at bedtimes. It was a huge success and has sold approximately one hundred million copies (as of writing), never being out of print since its initial run. Desperate for a sequel, Tolkien’s publisher, George Allen & Unwin, pleaded with Tolkien to write one. It took until 1954 for that sequel to arrive, The Lord of the Rings, though it was not a true sequel. Tolkien had written The Hobbit for his children and of course they had grown up as the years went on, but he wanted The Hobbit’s sequel to grow up with them, and so a sequel to The Hobbit seemed impossible. The Hobbit was partly re-written to accommodate for Tolkien’s vision, and as such The Lord of the Rings took minor plot elements from this new version of The Hobbit and gave them time in the shadows to become sinister world ending events. The Lord of the Rings was an even bigger success than The Hobbit and legitimised the fantasy genre for adults, with many attempts over the years to adapt Tolkien’s ever expanding Middle Earth mythology to film and television.
Jump forward to the 1990’s and indie horror filmmaker Peter Jackson managed to film and release The Lord of the Rings trilogy through a series of what can only be described as miracles in 2001, 2002, and 2003, all distributed by New Line Cinema. The films were critical and commercial darlings that captured the cultural zeitgeist of the time and have lived in legend ever since.
In the mid 00’s following the release of Return of the King, New Line Cinema approached Jackson about adapting The Hobbit as a prequel to Lord of the Rings. Jackson was on board with the idea but didn’t want to direct as The Lord of the Rings had taken the best part of a decade to make and he didn’t want to go through that again, so would agree to join the project as a producer and wanted Guillermo Del Toro to direct.
Del Toro signed on to direct two Hobbit films that would remain faithful to the source material but primarily act as prequels to Jackson’s Lord of the Rings (something the book never was even after Tolkein made alterations). However, New Line Cinema were at the time being bought up by Warner Bros. and neither studio had the rights to make a Hobbit film, those belonged to MGM (who had been sitting on the idea of adapting it for years but wanted to wait until public interest in The Hobbit was there…which The Lord of the Rings provided but they no longer had the money to fully finance). MGM were in dire straits financially and so agreed to co-finance two Hobbit films with Del Toro as director, which along with various legal obligations written up during Lord of the Rings brought the total number of film studios involved with The Hobbit up to five (New Line Cinema, Warner Bros., MGM, The Weinstein Company, and The Saul Zaentz Company).
After an exhaustive sixteen months of pre-production Del Toro left the project because he felt it was taking too long and this is where reports start to conflict on what happened next. Most sources close to the production indicate that Jackson was pushed into the director’s chair by studio executives who presented the ultimatum of either he would make the films or be off the project entirely (and the production subsequently be moved from New Zealand to cheaper locations in Europe). Unwilling to sacrifice the jobs of thousands of hard working Kiwi’s, and see Tolkien’s material be butchered by someone who didn’t know what they were doing, Jackson reluctantly agreed and so we end up with two Peter Jackson directed Hobbit films…at least by the time the cameras were rolling. Obviously we got three Hobbit films, but I’ll cover what happened next another time as it’s not overly relevant to An Unexpected Journey, as whilst production was going on this film everything was still locked in for a two film deal.
As I’m sure you’ve gathered by this monolith of text, The Hobbit films were never going to be an easy project and even from the get-go has the writing on the wall with too many chefs in a single kitchen. To add insult to injury, Jackson hated Del Toro’s script and scrapped basically everything he did, and then Warner Bros. informed him that they didn’t want to spend any more money on pre-production, so the film was effectively being written as it was being shot.
Jump forward to the 1990’s and indie horror filmmaker Peter Jackson managed to film and release The Lord of the Rings trilogy through a series of what can only be described as miracles in 2001, 2002, and 2003, all distributed by New Line Cinema. The films were critical and commercial darlings that captured the cultural zeitgeist of the time and have lived in legend ever since.
In the mid 00’s following the release of Return of the King, New Line Cinema approached Jackson about adapting The Hobbit as a prequel to Lord of the Rings. Jackson was on board with the idea but didn’t want to direct as The Lord of the Rings had taken the best part of a decade to make and he didn’t want to go through that again, so would agree to join the project as a producer and wanted Guillermo Del Toro to direct.
Del Toro signed on to direct two Hobbit films that would remain faithful to the source material but primarily act as prequels to Jackson’s Lord of the Rings (something the book never was even after Tolkein made alterations). However, New Line Cinema were at the time being bought up by Warner Bros. and neither studio had the rights to make a Hobbit film, those belonged to MGM (who had been sitting on the idea of adapting it for years but wanted to wait until public interest in The Hobbit was there…which The Lord of the Rings provided but they no longer had the money to fully finance). MGM were in dire straits financially and so agreed to co-finance two Hobbit films with Del Toro as director, which along with various legal obligations written up during Lord of the Rings brought the total number of film studios involved with The Hobbit up to five (New Line Cinema, Warner Bros., MGM, The Weinstein Company, and The Saul Zaentz Company).
After an exhaustive sixteen months of pre-production Del Toro left the project because he felt it was taking too long and this is where reports start to conflict on what happened next. Most sources close to the production indicate that Jackson was pushed into the director’s chair by studio executives who presented the ultimatum of either he would make the films or be off the project entirely (and the production subsequently be moved from New Zealand to cheaper locations in Europe). Unwilling to sacrifice the jobs of thousands of hard working Kiwi’s, and see Tolkien’s material be butchered by someone who didn’t know what they were doing, Jackson reluctantly agreed and so we end up with two Peter Jackson directed Hobbit films…at least by the time the cameras were rolling. Obviously we got three Hobbit films, but I’ll cover what happened next another time as it’s not overly relevant to An Unexpected Journey, as whilst production was going on this film everything was still locked in for a two film deal.
As I’m sure you’ve gathered by this monolith of text, The Hobbit films were never going to be an easy project and even from the get-go has the writing on the wall with too many chefs in a single kitchen. To add insult to injury, Jackson hated Del Toro’s script and scrapped basically everything he did, and then Warner Bros. informed him that they didn’t want to spend any more money on pre-production, so the film was effectively being written as it was being shot.
So now the background info is out of the way, what’s wrong with An Unexpected Journey? To say the film is the best in the trilogy is like saying losing a finger is better than losing a whole hand; it’s not an incorrect statement but it’s kind of missing the point. A defence often levelled against An Unexpected Journey is that it is the best Hobbit film and whilst that’s absolutely true, it’s still a pretty bad film when you get down to it. What kills this film in particular is its inability to decide whether it wants to be an adaptation of The Hobbit, or a prequel to The Lord of the Rings. As I stated previously, The Lord of the Rings was never really a sequel to The Hobbit, at least not by the typical conventions of a sequel. So, trying to make The Hobbit films a prequel to The Lord of the Rings films was never going to work very well anyway, not without restructuring and rewriting the entire story. You could either have a film that was a faithful adaptation of the book with subtle nods to Lord of the Rings added (which is what Del Toro appeared be to doing), or you could have a Lord of the Rings prequel that uses story beats from The Hobbit to form the basis of a narrative (which is closer to what we have in reality). The problem is that Jackson & co. couldn’t decide how much of the book was going to make it into the films. An Unexpected Journey, therefore, is a reasonably accurate adaptation of the book framed as a prequel to Lord of the Rings.
Due to The Hobbit being a bedtime story designed to be read aloud a chapter at a time, it lacks the same kind of cohesion most novels do with each chapter being a self-contained adventure along the journey to defeating Smaug and reclaiming Erebor. Adapting that into a coherent three act structure for one film was going to be tough enough as it is, but doing that process twice (and eventually three times) is significantly more difficult as you need to create traditional film act structures within creating act structures for a book that doesn’t really have any. The result is a story that doesn’t feel as though it’s actually going anywhere, which considering the film is literally a journey is quite ironic.
That is An Unexpected Journey’s greatest problem. It looks the part of a Middle Earth film (mostly, I’ll get to that later), the dialogue makes sense for a Middle Earth film, but the way the story progresses doesn’t feel like any film…let alone The Lord of the Rings. With the film coming in at two hours and fifty minutes for the theatrical version or three hours and ten minutes for the extended edition, that’s a long time for the story to not actually gain any proper momentum.
The Fellowship of the Ring is fundamentally a similar film to An Unexpected Journey and you can see that Jackson was trying to replicate that feeling here, but I would wager that you don’t remember the moments in between the more action heavy moments of An Unexpected Journey as well as you do those same moments in Fellowship. The reason being is like most modern blockbuster cinema, The Hobbit trilogy is built around set pieces, and An Unexpected Journey just funnels you from one set piece to the next without any focus placed on the downtime in between. First up you have the dwarves at Bilbo’s house, then you have the encounter with the trolls, then it’s Rivendell, then it’s the storm giants, then the goblins & Gollum (Andy Serkis), and finally the climax of the film against the orcs. I can’t remember anything about the moments in between them and I’ve only just finished watching the film, but in reality, there isn’t anything of note in those moments anyway, unlike those same moments in Fellowship (e.g. Frodo & Sam travelling across The Shire, the calm before the travel to Weathertop, climbing the snowy mountains, and travelling down the river after Moria).
Due to The Hobbit being a bedtime story designed to be read aloud a chapter at a time, it lacks the same kind of cohesion most novels do with each chapter being a self-contained adventure along the journey to defeating Smaug and reclaiming Erebor. Adapting that into a coherent three act structure for one film was going to be tough enough as it is, but doing that process twice (and eventually three times) is significantly more difficult as you need to create traditional film act structures within creating act structures for a book that doesn’t really have any. The result is a story that doesn’t feel as though it’s actually going anywhere, which considering the film is literally a journey is quite ironic.
That is An Unexpected Journey’s greatest problem. It looks the part of a Middle Earth film (mostly, I’ll get to that later), the dialogue makes sense for a Middle Earth film, but the way the story progresses doesn’t feel like any film…let alone The Lord of the Rings. With the film coming in at two hours and fifty minutes for the theatrical version or three hours and ten minutes for the extended edition, that’s a long time for the story to not actually gain any proper momentum.
The Fellowship of the Ring is fundamentally a similar film to An Unexpected Journey and you can see that Jackson was trying to replicate that feeling here, but I would wager that you don’t remember the moments in between the more action heavy moments of An Unexpected Journey as well as you do those same moments in Fellowship. The reason being is like most modern blockbuster cinema, The Hobbit trilogy is built around set pieces, and An Unexpected Journey just funnels you from one set piece to the next without any focus placed on the downtime in between. First up you have the dwarves at Bilbo’s house, then you have the encounter with the trolls, then it’s Rivendell, then it’s the storm giants, then the goblins & Gollum (Andy Serkis), and finally the climax of the film against the orcs. I can’t remember anything about the moments in between them and I’ve only just finished watching the film, but in reality, there isn’t anything of note in those moments anyway, unlike those same moments in Fellowship (e.g. Frodo & Sam travelling across The Shire, the calm before the travel to Weathertop, climbing the snowy mountains, and travelling down the river after Moria).
It even comes down to the characters as none of them are given the same level of depth as those of Fellowship. I can’t even remember most of the names of the dwarves as theyre said once at the dining table at Bilbo’s and that’s basically it. The only dwarf to have any development in this film is Thorin (and in the future films you can only add Fili & Kili to that list). That’s ten dwarves then that have no reason to be in this story because they have little to no dialogue, and almost no screentime across the whole trilogy (including Unexpected Journey).
Then there is the forced inclusion of the setup to Lord of the Rings. This doesn’t take up too much time of Unexpected Journey, but it involves Gandalf, Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), and Saruman (Christopher Lee) discussing a rising darkness in the east. We do however get the best scene in the entire film as a result of this prequelisation though with Gollum and the riddles. This moment where Bilbo acquires The One Ring from Gollum through a game of riddles is incredibly tense and feels like it strikes an almost perfect balance between faithfully adapting The Hobbit and serving as a prequel to Lord of the Rings. But it’s over with too quickly, and it’s intercut with the underwhelming dwarves and their shenanigans with the goblins. Of course this sequence is in the books, but it plays out entirely differently because of the changes made to accommodate The Lord of the Rings.
It’s a shame that the characters weren't given more to do as the performances are all fantastic. McKellen manages to strike the right balance between the warmer, friendlier Gandalf of The Hobbit book, but also maintain that wearier and more somewhat cold Lord of the Rings Gandalf. Armitage is also a great Thorin and I like what he brings to the character, the decision to make him this franchise's Aragorn is contentious but it does allow him greater depth and draws a nice parallel between the stories. But the star of the show is Freeman’s portrayal of Bilbo. I can’t really think of a better actor than Freeman for the role because he does play that kind of put-upon everyman character so well. It’s also very easy to see his version of Bilbo grow up to become Ian Holm’s Bilbo, the two actors have that same kind of energy and it’s truly a magical casting choice.
I’m going to wrap things up here for now as I’ve said all I really want to say about An Unexpected Journey. It’s fine, and I think if you don’t have attachments to Middle Earth going into the film then you’ll enjoy it a lot more. But that doesn’t mean you can’t escape the inconsistent tone, the overwhelming majority of the supporting cast being relegated to glorified extras, the bad pacing, and the weird special effects (something I’ll touch on next time, check out my Desolation of Smaug review to see what I mean).
As it stands, An Unexpected Journey is a bad start to a series that was only going to get much worse from here on out…the finger before the whole hand if you will.
Then there is the forced inclusion of the setup to Lord of the Rings. This doesn’t take up too much time of Unexpected Journey, but it involves Gandalf, Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), and Saruman (Christopher Lee) discussing a rising darkness in the east. We do however get the best scene in the entire film as a result of this prequelisation though with Gollum and the riddles. This moment where Bilbo acquires The One Ring from Gollum through a game of riddles is incredibly tense and feels like it strikes an almost perfect balance between faithfully adapting The Hobbit and serving as a prequel to Lord of the Rings. But it’s over with too quickly, and it’s intercut with the underwhelming dwarves and their shenanigans with the goblins. Of course this sequence is in the books, but it plays out entirely differently because of the changes made to accommodate The Lord of the Rings.
It’s a shame that the characters weren't given more to do as the performances are all fantastic. McKellen manages to strike the right balance between the warmer, friendlier Gandalf of The Hobbit book, but also maintain that wearier and more somewhat cold Lord of the Rings Gandalf. Armitage is also a great Thorin and I like what he brings to the character, the decision to make him this franchise's Aragorn is contentious but it does allow him greater depth and draws a nice parallel between the stories. But the star of the show is Freeman’s portrayal of Bilbo. I can’t really think of a better actor than Freeman for the role because he does play that kind of put-upon everyman character so well. It’s also very easy to see his version of Bilbo grow up to become Ian Holm’s Bilbo, the two actors have that same kind of energy and it’s truly a magical casting choice.
I’m going to wrap things up here for now as I’ve said all I really want to say about An Unexpected Journey. It’s fine, and I think if you don’t have attachments to Middle Earth going into the film then you’ll enjoy it a lot more. But that doesn’t mean you can’t escape the inconsistent tone, the overwhelming majority of the supporting cast being relegated to glorified extras, the bad pacing, and the weird special effects (something I’ll touch on next time, check out my Desolation of Smaug review to see what I mean).
As it stands, An Unexpected Journey is a bad start to a series that was only going to get much worse from here on out…the finger before the whole hand if you will.