An Unexpected Journey

Am I the only one who does not remember a Brown wizard in the Hobbit? As soon as I got back from finally seeing An Unexpected Journey last night I immediately started skimming my Authorized edition of The Hobbit or There and Back Again from 1966 to see what I had forgotten and what was new in the film adaption. Well, what I found so far is that the dialogue from the unexpected party is almost exactly as Tolkien had written, right down to where Gandalf reminds Bilbo of his Great Great Granduncle Bullroarer Took, who knocked off the head of the Goblin King and inventing the game of golf in the process when the decapitated head rolled down a rabbit hole. The only difference being that Gandalf actually spoke the words in the film while narration was sufficient for the book.

I have been a Tolkien fan for most of my life, having first read The Hobbit when I was 7 or 8 and The Lord of the Rings not long after that. Peter Jackson first came to my attention with The Frighteners in 1996 and even if the plot was straightforward that film had many of the features which Jackson used to such great effect in LOTR. Dramatic landscape shots, engaging dialogue by well-developed characters, impeccable casting, amazing special effects that embrace the cutting edge of technology, and stunning photography that more than most films makes you feel like you are there. Tolkien's style combines complex literary devices with light-hearted irreverence that creates a depth to his stories that are still enjoyable for young readers. I gain a new appreciation for him and learn something new about Middle Earth every time I read the stories. With this hagiography out of the way, hopefully my thoughts will not come off as harsh.

Somehow I was not trembling in anticipation for An Unexpected Journey's release. In a way, I worried there was nowhere to go but down. In another vein, Jackson's LOTR is now mainstream, old-hat, making hordes of "instant Tolkien experts" in the same way WWII is the length and breadth of history for so many Americans. That is another blog entirely, sorry folks but no amount of movie-going can make you an expert. But I may as well repeatedly hit myself in the head with a hammer for all the good that message will have. I freely and completely admit that Jackson's film is about as close to a masterpiece as I can competently judge, I am very happy to have gone to see it. However, I am glad the disclaimer ran at the end of the film "based on J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit or There and Back Again."