The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Getting to Be a Hobbit With Me
or
There and Back Again...and Again...And A-GAIN.

Peter Jackson returns to Tolkien's Middle-Earth, the scene of his greatest triumphs as a film-maker.  And it hasn't been easy for him.  "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy took the film industry by storm, changing all sorts of accepted things, like "sittable" film length, production timetables (filming three films simultaneously), elaboration of production design, and whether a "fantasy" film can ever be taken seriously by the Oscar Academy for anything other than technical awards.  In fact, when The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won Best Picture a few years back, more than one gossip-monger (or as they're known, "industry press") suggested it was for the entire series of films, rather than for the merits of the final one.  I believe that.  So, pressure immediately started to bring Tolkien's "The Hobbit" to the screen in as much the same way as possible, with Jackson producing and Guillermo del Toro directing, a good choice, actually (and the film benefits from his bizarre creature designs).  

But, "The Hobbit"'s past caught up with it, and the several (animated) versions of it came into play over who owned the film rights, and so The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has a complicated production titles sequence with Warner Brothers the (North American) distributor and New Line Cinema and M-G-M as the production facilities.  M-G-M's financial troubles (now long forgotten in the wake of Skyfall's nearly billion dollar take) caused del Toro to drop out, leaving Jackson and his orc-army of New Zealanders to once again handle the short-duties for the assembled hobbitage.

And how is it?  Much as you'd expect.  It's as if they'd never stopped production on the first series, and so sure of the continuity are they, that the moments immediately preceding the start of The Fellowship of the Ring are presented, as if it was the easiest thing in the world to do.  The film's been getting lukewarm reviews, and I can't can't quite fathom why. Nothing's really different.  The supporting cast is uniformly the same (there's no Viggo, but Frodo is briefly there, and Martin Freeman takes over the role of the younger Bilbo Baggins in a way that seems to suggest a more spry Ian Holm with much faster and more comedic reaction-sense), but the main criticism seems to be a more leisurely pace.  This, I don't mind.  Jackson has always regretted not showing more of Hobbiton, which might have given "The Lord of the Rings" more of a sense of "home," and as something worth fighting for—a theme played in spades in TH:AUJ.*

Seeing as so much of it is set in the Hobbit's land, and that the cast is dominated by a baker's dozen of knock-about dwarves (see below for a guide) that have a propensity for one-liners and malapropisms, the tone is considerably lighter and larkier (and dare I say "precious") than the Doom-laden "Rings" trilogy, and it is only once the band of adventurers get going that things change to the previous series' denatured color schemes, brooding skies, ugly thuggery and general bad-assery ensues.**  The pace may be slower, but the film is considerably richer for all of that, and with so many characters in this arc, it's rather a luxury to get to know them before they are threatened in all sorts of ghastly ways.

The other issue with this Tolkien adaptation is technological.  Films, since the frame-rate has been standardized, have traditionally been projected at twenty four frames per second, the estimated time that an image is retained by the eye.  Now that film is mostly passé, the video standard is 30 frames per second, but it's largely an arbitrary rate to match the traditional film experience.  During the late 70's, special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull offered up something he called "Showscan" which was 70mm film projected at 60 frames per second, which produced a larger, sharper image with less "streaking" of movement, due to the higher frame rate.  I saw one of these "Showscans" at the Vancouver World's Fair and the effect was like watching a richer, more beautiful version of videotape.  It was still film, with its photo-chemical reaction to light, but far more relatable to a "life-image" than film.

TH:AUJ is photographed digitally, but at a frame rate of 48 frames per second (what is being called HFR, or "Higher Frame Rate"), twice that of standard film, and in 3-D (to make what Jackson calls a more "immersive" film experience).  The effect, once one has adjusted to it, is quite magical.  Jackson doesn't try to do the 3-D tricks that Ang Lee does in Life of Pi, but the faster frame rate does improve the effect of things moving close by in 3-D; there is no longer the "stutter" effect, if something is moving by in the "near-field" at any rate of speed, which is something of a relief.  And given that Jackson employs even more helicopter shots over New Zealand terrain here than in the "Rings" trilogy (as well as parallel swooping "crane" shots during the many sequences underground), that's a big help.  Where it has its drawbacks are in some scenes that make the CGI characters look like toys figures, some of the impressive building constructs look like play-sets, and a slight mismatch of CGI (particularly during flying scenes) melded with terrain.

Still, it is hard to quibble when the image is so sharp, Jackson's color sense is eye-popping, and he still manages to keep a shimmering image through murky 3-D glasses.  It doesn't look like videotape (as so many reviewers seem to think), as the lighting is more graded and subtle, but the movement recalls a better videotape image, and even something moving fast still has a better chance of being registered by the naked, or glasses-hampered, eye.  It also allows the telling detail in even the CGI-est of images, like the moistness in Gollum's eyes, or the deep crags under Gandalf's.  It is oddly transporting, and given the care that everyone has put into it, it's a very rewarding experience.



The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a Full-Price Ticket (worth it in 3-D and HFR).

Wilhelm Scream Alert: at 02:05 and 02:35

Ya can't tell a dwarf from a halfling without a program.

* Thauj...sounds like a character name.

** Speaking of which, things have now approached and gone past the "Indiana Jones" threshold for physical believability here.  There's one particularly Rube Goldbergian sequence fighting trolls in an underground mine that strains credulity—but then, we're talking about a movie with dwarves, trolls, elves, ancient wizards, fire-breathing dragons, giant spiders, animated cliff-sides, and orcs riding big dogs.  That's enough to throw any griping fan-boys off their dyspepsia.  "Dude, this movie troll-kinged the bridge..."

Captain America: The First Avenger

"When Captain America Throws His Mighty Shiiiield..."  (KLANG!)
or
"Yeah, I've Knocked Adolf Hitler Out Over 200 Times."

This is the one that needed to work.

It all hinges on this one and it would be a tough fight.  Captain America is the one Marvel A-lister who has seemed to defy the switch to other media.  There were the '60's cartoons—basically limited-animation panels from the comics—a bad '90's film, a serial film, a couple of lousy TV movies.  Next year's The Avengers extravaganza depends on the character, so this is the one to be nervous about.

"Cap" is Marvel's version of Superman, a Big Blue Boy Scout, but like DC's Big Guy, it's tough to write for him—the fight always has to come to him and a lot of the time he plays defense, he has no motivation other than an altruistic manner, and he's seemingly unstoppable, meaning the villains have to be more elaborate and more interesting than he is.  Like Superman, the character is often changed—costume, identity, or even, when all else fails...killed.  Up until this time, the few live-action CA interpretations have seemed like shielded "Six Million Dollar Man" episodes, cheap and stunted.  It's tough to replicate the dramatic moves the character pulls in the comics (he's usually shown in mid-move, suspended, too) as opposed to Spider-man.  Captain America: The First Avenger has to work.

It does.  Like gangbusters.

Director Joe Johnston has been down this road before—he directed The Rocketeer, another WWII-era superhero flick, after all—but he's never made a film as good as this one (he made The Wolfman last year).  CA:TFA takes the story back to its comic-book origin roots when it was created by street-wise kids Joe Simon* and Jack Kirby—fighting Nazi's and flying colors.  At the same time, it pays affectionate tribute to past Cap incarnations, while delivering the action goods in a neat retro-futuristic environment, a bit like what Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow should have been.** 

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is a 98 pound Brooklynite weakling (such things do exist, I've heard), who wants to join the Army and is constantly turned down for any number of good reasons and envious of his pal James "Bucky" Barnes (Sebastian Stan) who's off to fight in the European Theater with the 107th.  In a note that ties in with locations from the Iron Man movies, Rogers goes to the New York World's Fair on a double-date with Bucky, and his G.I. jones is noticed by Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who gets the kid a hitch, and a washout in training, signs him up for a "super-soldier" program that Hitler was very interested in before Erskine fled Germany.  Meanwhile, half a world away, one of Erskine's test-subjects Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) is blitz-krieging around the world looking for ancient artifacts, ostensibly to help with Germany's war-effort, but secretly to gain ultimate power to form his own Reich, with his science group, Hydra.   Erskine's experiments on Schmidt have drastically disfigured him, but for Rogers, the attempts are a stunning success.  Rogers wants to fight, but the government instead presses him into service as a war-bonds spokesman, as "Captain America," which goes over well at home, but is a joke to the soldiers on the line.  Under the auspices of Colonel Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones, who laconically nearly walks away with the movie) and Major Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell, plucky—she doesn't blink when she fires a gun), Rogers goes against orders and inserts himself into the fight, rescuing a squad of Hydra prisoners, including his pal Bucky and a motley crew of dog-faces familiar to anyone who's read the comics.

The sight of The Howling Commandos brought a big smile to my face, but even without them, Johnston makes a fun, goofy film, with some nice war action mixed in with well-done super-hero antics, and shot along the lines of a film Johnston storyboarded early in his career, Raiders of the Lost Ark (with the occasional nod to Leni Riefenstahl).  Johnston does some nice movie cross-referencing by making the character of Howard Stark, very Howard Hughes-like after his own The Rocketeer, and casting Dominic Cooper in the part, often resembling Leonardo DiCaprio from The Aviator.  Chris Evans, who plays Steve Rogers, is a good funny actor, but he's tamped down here, playing everything completely straight and without irony, very much the Boy Scout.  This is one of the better Marvel movies, and one of the better superhero movies to come out, as well.

As with the other Marvel films, stick around until after the credits for a big surprise, that will whet your appetite for next year.  "Some assembly required."  Heh.

Captain America: The First Avenger is the perfect Saturday Matinee.

Wilhelm Alert @ 01:33

* Simon is still alive (bless him) at age 97, and still active—he has a new comic coming out this year.  As Stan Lee has his customary cameo in this film (he's good, too) it would have been nice—really nice—if Cap's REAL creator was included in the film.  The legendary Jack Kirby died in 1994.

** It's a combination of Kirby-esque pod-forms, more suited for the 1960's, and lo-tech '40's dials and toggles (which spit sparks in duress), and my favorite joke in the film is the non-LED (not invented yet) countdown indicators used in the Red Skull's lab—as any timed pyrotechnician will tell you, the only reason to have such a device is to build suspense in movie audiences.