You know those times when your little brother finishes a book and wants to watch the movie and you don't want to but feel like you should spend quality time with your family and it ends up being horrible just like you expected? Just a few weeks ago, my family and I embarked on an adventure that I definitely did not return the same from. Out of guilt and peer pressure from my family, I watched the nine-hour long film trilogy of The Hobbit and boy do I have some opinions I feel the need to share.
However, before I begin on this extensive rant, I would like to disclaim that I am in NO WAY trying to offend you Hobbit fans out there! This is just my opinion that I thought would be funny and relatable to some, and I also firmly believe the book of The Hobbit is 1,000 times better than the films. Even though I have never read the book myself, my understanding is that it is supposed to be this large classic adventure novel, revolving around the character development of protagonist Bilbo Baggins as he goes from a shy, quiet, home-loving Hobbit, to a brave, strong hero. And even though the films had the faint shadow of this aspect, the majority of the films were gore, fighting, and disgusting Orcs (which I will get more into later). Thank you for your understanding, and I hope that you find this blog post amusing because I sure as hell will!
The first mental note I made while watching The Hobbit was how much I relate to the sweet charming character of Bilbo Baggins. He loves his quiet home in the town of The Shire, his armchair, and his books! What more do you need (other than cats and tea)? Also, speaking of sweet characters, I have to mention my adoration for the character of Radagast! For those of you who don't know who Radagast is, he is a wizard who lives in the forest and protects the animals (wow, I honestly can't believe I just wrote that as if it were a casual, normal thing). He has a little bit of an overlip, has creatures living in his hat, is truly an adorable character, and was one of the only reasons I continued watching the films after the first 30 minutes!
Ok, now that I have gotten the only two good things about these films out of the way, I can officially get down to my biggest pet peeves about these films, starting with the amount of fighting and violence throughout them.
I have watched The Umbrella Academy, I have watched It, and I have watched Silence of the Lambs so I am no stranger to violence, or horror, or gore, however The Hobbit was something that I have never experienced in my whole life. I can't quite put my finger on why, because it was not necessarily scarier or bloodier than anything I've ever seen, but my best guess is that myself and my family found these films so violent because of the continuous and constant slaughtering and fighting. I kid you not when I say that there were times when it was just straight battling montages for an hour plus. I understand a short battling montage for emphasis, but this went on FOREVER!
One great example of this was the Battle of Five Armies (God, I can't believe I remember the name) when it lasted basically an ENTIRE film and the whole time my family had no clue what was going on! "Is that the Orc King?" "Which ones are the Elves?" "Are those the Dwarves or the Goblins?" It was complete madness! There was so much fighting and CGI creatures that it was exactly, EXACTLY like a video game! And believe it or not, there was one point where the son of the Elf King was battling an Orc (I remember so exactly because the following memory will be forever ingrained in my mind) and the son LITERALLY jabbed a sword through the head of the Orc and blood spurted everywhere and we saw the eyes of the Orc ROLL BACKWARDS INTO HIS HEAD AND I SWEAR MY ENTIRE FAMILY SHRIEKED! It was completely traumatizing and I will never EVER forget it.
My next big issue with the Hobbit films was the blatant fact that there were literally TWO GIRL CHARACTERS IN THE ENTIRE NINE HOURS. And when I say only two girl characters, I don't mean like main characters, I mean just all characters in general. There were only two girl characters with lines, and one of them only appeared for maybe 3% of the total nine hours and had maybe AT MOST 10 lines, while the other was in the films maybe 15% of the time with a total of maybe 35 lines. It is complete and utter bogus, and even though the book was written in the 1930s, the films were made in the 21st century, and I feel the creators of the films honestly should have added in a little more female representation. In my opinion, it just adds to the stigma that adventures are only for boys because boys are stronger when that is obviously not the case and I was truly disappointed and agitated by this fact while watching.
As well, one of the two female characters whose name I wouldn't be able to tell you even with a gun to my head, was only known in these films for her relationship with one of the Dwarves (which I will come back to). If you read my blog post on A Room Of One's Own by Virginia Woolf, you will remember how at one point she talks about how in fiction women are only ever known for their relation to men, when in truth that is only a minuscule part of their lives. As I was watching the films I was reminded of that quote when I thought about how literally one out of the two female characters was only in the movies because of their boyfriend! Like honestly, we can do a little better than that.
Another one of my pet peeves from this trilogy also has to do with that one female character and her Dwarf beau. However this pet peeve is much lighter and has nothing to do with social structures surrounding women! An ongoing plot throughout the second and third films was the love triangle between the Elf Prince, some sort of female Elf, and one of the Dwarves, which if I'm being honest was totally laughable. It was as if the creators wanted to have the film appeal to more demographics by adding in just a touch of romance, but truthfully you could see that the romance just didn't belong in these films. It wasn't necessarily the acting, but I just couldn't feel any chemistry or emotion, therefore I just couldn't take it seriously.
(SPOILER) There was also this dramatic death scene of the Dwarf in the love triangle and when the Elf girl finds him she is so distraught and upset and then she gives this short monologue about love that was honestly the cheesiest crap I've ever heard! It was hard to keep from laughing! I felt like screaming "THIS ISN'T THE NOTEBOOK!" Like come on! There are romance films, and then there are adventure fantasy films and I firmly believe that they should be kept separate.
Overall, these are my main observations and pet peeves from The Hobbit film trilogy. Again, I respect all you Hobbit fans out there and I hope that you readers had a laugh at this post. If you have the time and the patience, go watch the trilogy! I know that I've just spent ten minutes of your time telling you how much I hated the films but who knows! Maybe you'll like them, or at least find them amusing! And you haven't lived until you've seen Gandalf the wizard's iconic hat! As always, thank you for reading!
Your authoress,
Anneke C. Goodwin
(We love Bilbo Baggins)