“All good stories deserve embellishment,’’ proclaims Gandalf the Grey early on in Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’’ — in what’s amounts to a mission statement for this rewarding, if long-winded, $270 million epic.
The initial installment of an anticipated nine-hour trilogy derived from J.R.R. Tolkien’s 300-page predecessor to “The Lord of the Rings’’ certainly piles on enough eye candy and action sequences to please fans, plus more humor than the three “Rings” films — even if it only occasionally achieves the trio’s grandeur.
It’s the sort of epic that will be most fully appreciated by those who think the most important thing about an adaptation is religious fidelity to the text — not a sentiment that I especially share.
Jackson’s smartest move was to cast the delightful character actor Martin Freeman (fans of Brit TV know him from “The Office’’ and “Sherlock’’) in the central role of the younger Bilbo Baggins for this saga, which is set 60 years before “Rings.’’
Freeman is an improvement over “Rings’’ lead Elijah Wood, who turns up briefly as Frodo in the framing story, where the older version of Bilbo (again Ian Holm) relates his youthful adventures. That’s when Bilbo was recruited by Gandalf (the wonderful Ian McKellen, who appears throughout) for a quest not unlike that undertaken by his nephew Frodo decades later.
The wizard turns up at Bilbo’s door in the Shire with 13 dwarves — largely indistinguishable except for their brooding leader, Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage, who is fine but no Viggo Mortensen).
The dwarves need Bilbo’s skills as a “burglar’’ for their campaign to take back control of the lost kingdom of Erebor, which years earlier fell under an apocalyptic attack by the fearsome dragon Smaug.
After nearly an hour dominated by comedy and songs, the battles begin in earnest, with enough orc skewerings and goblin beheadings to push the outer limits of the PG-13 rating.
Working from a book one-fifth the length of Tolkien’s “Rings’’ trilogy, Jackson and his co-writers — wife Fran Walsh and Philipa Boyens, his screenwriting partners on “Rings,’’ along with Guillermo del Toro, who was originally going to direct “The Hobbit’’ — have padded the volume out with footnotes from the later books. (Which is where the film’s chief bad guy, the fearsome orc Azog, comes from).
Even a visit to Rivendell (that does come from “The Hobbit’’) seems little more than an excuse for cameos by Elrond (Hugo Weaving), Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) and Saruman (Christopher Lee). Well, at least we’re spared Orlando Bloom’s simpering Legolas.
More satisfying is the return of Gollum (Andy Serkis in another motion-capture tour de force), who crosses paths with Bilbo and crucially introduces the magical ring to the saga.
Basically, the film’s last two hours are a series of cliffhangers — in one case quite literally, as a mountain comes to life in a remarkable special effects sequence.
Jackson introduces a controversial new technology with “The Hobbit’’ — in about 400 US theaters, it will be projected at the rate of 48 frames per second, twice the rate that’s been the standard since talkies were introduced in the late 1920s (listings refer to it as HFR, for “high frame rate’’).
In theory, this is supposed to enhance the film’s “reality,’’ sharpen 3-D effects and lessen the blurring that occurs when the camera, people or objects move too rapidly in stereoscopic cinematography.
To my eyes, the rapid motion in the 48-frame version (I didn’t seen the 24-frame version) sometimes seemed jerky, especially when seen in long shots. The bigger problem, though, is an overall look that’s far more like very high-resolution video than film.
I’d stick with the more traditional version of “The Hobbit’’ unless you want to watch a “film’’ where you’re constantly yanked out of the story by sets and props that look like sets and props — plus flattened lighting effects like those you’d find in a TV miniseries.
Hopefully, this will be worked out for the second installment. But the first one, for all its indulgences, is far superior to another much-hyped prequel — George Lucas’ “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.’’