The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey

I'm a great fan of Tolkien - reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time was a fantastic experience and it shaped my life in so many ways. The three films were also a major experience and were thoroughly enjoyed. Each film came out just before Christmas and looking forward to them and finally going to see them became something of a ritual. I have the extended box set and am looking forward to some time settling down to watch them - although I think that at this rate it will be when I retire. After such success it was always on the cards that The Hobbit would be given the same treatment - but was it all worth it?

One of my big gripes with The Lord of the Rings films was that despite the great length and overall magnificence, there was too much missed out, that to me was essential to the story. I think of the initial setting out from the Shire when they encountered the Barrow Wights and then Tom Bombadil, and returning to the Shire when they found that Saruman had turned it into an industrial wasteland. What relevance does all this have to The Hobbit, you may ask? Well, to put it simply, the problem with The Lord of the Rings was that it could easily and very satisfactorily been expanded to four or more long films: whereas by contrast, The Hobbit seems to me to be vastly padded out at three films, which means that plenty of stuff has been included that wasn't in the book, and indeed there is much stuff that I do not believe was even in Tolkien. The biggest culprit here is the "Pale Ork" - he is a major character here, but research shows that he only merited a short paragraph in "The Silmarillion". This is the problem in a nutshell - I find it very hard to see how they can possibly justify spinning a short book into three long films. Obviously, gratuitous money making is the problem, taking people for granted and exploiting them. It's quite sad really.

The question remains after having had my moan - was it worth it? Was it worth spending a day of my Christmas holiday on? Well, with no hesitation, it's a definite YES!! Yes, there was lots of unnecessary padding and much dubious extraneous story telling - but it fairly rattled along, was marvellous fantasy and was magnifently filmed. It "seemed" like genuine Tolkien, even though you knew perfectly well that it's relationship to the original Hobbit story is somewhat strained.