Whisked from his comfortable hobbit/hole by Gandalf the wizard and a band of dwarves, Bilbo Baggins finds himself caught up in a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon...
This is smack talk.
I did not like The Hobbit. I thought it was too simplistic, too easily laid out that I didn't need to pay too much attention or think for myself because the story is literally told to me. Having a story simply told to you, is boring. I didn't particularly connect with any characters. It seemed like Tolkien spent more time trying to make his characters symbolize something rather than be someone we actually care about. And honestly it felt like Bilbo was only doing things because Tolkien wanted him to not because the character actually wanted to do it. I was definitely not impressed.
Now it wasn't all bad, it was a submersive and incredibly high fantasy world which was beautifully constructed and really pulled me in. It was well thought out and Tolkien knew it so well that I can't help but admire the imagination an creativity. But the characters just weren't there for me.
I am aware that unlike LOTR, The Hobbit is a children's story, which could explain the tell don't show tone Tolkien has gone for. I am an adult woman who does not read children's books so maybe that's the problem, but I just didn't are about anyone, that's why it was so easy to kill them all off at the end, because no one cared. I did love the Gollum riddle scene though.
MOVIE COMPARISON TIME
Does this need to be 3 books? No way in hell. The dragging out of this story is exhausting and once you've read the book you can see how much Peter Jackson has changed. He has made a much bigger deal about very short sequences in the book and even just made up characters and stole some from LOTR to make it more exciting. You know why? Because we need characters we care about, if the movie was exactly like the book there would be minimal character/audience relationship. So maybe Jackson did the right thing. Yeah, that's right, I said it. I prefer the film.
For all the Tolkien fans out there, what am I missing?
I will be reading LOTR soonish.
Happy Reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment