Top Five Redeeming Features: The Hobbit Trilogy

Unfortunately, The Hobbit trilogy was disappointing to me, and rewatching The Lord of the Rings only makes that more evident.  It’s especially disappointing because they had such potential to be great, and I really feel that, had the production stuck to either one long film or (possibly) two short ones, they could’ve been excellent.  Because they really do have a lot going for them and could’ve been a fine companion to the original trilogy.  In amongst the excess and tonal missteps, these are the aspects of the films that do work for me.

Topnotch Casting

As in the original trilogy, the casting is totally on-point on every level.  Returning cast members like Sir Ian McKellen’s Gandalf and Andy Serkis’s Gollum jump easily back into their old roles.  The new characters are all excellently cast, from Richard Armitage as Thorin to Luke Evans as Bard to Lee Pace as Thranduil, and although most of the dwarves don’t get a lot of individual distinction, they work well together as a unit.  And of course, there’s Martin Freeman – I really don’t think there could have been a more perfect Bilbo, and it’s precisely because he’s so excellent that I wish the films could have been better for him.

“Golden” Book Scenes

These are films that veer heavily from their source material, and where they are faithful, are sometimes fastidious to the detriment of the movies.  But every now and then, there’s a scene from the book so perfectly rendered that it fully pulls you in, in these sequences being every inch the films they could’ve been under better circumstances.  I’m thinking particularly the two significant Bilbo scenes:  the “Riddles in the Dark” sequence with Gollum and his conversation with Smaug, both of which are just wonderfully done.

The Dwarves’ Journey

I like the emphasis placed, not just on the dwarves wanting to reclaim the treasure Smaug took from him, but also on the home he displaced them from.  The idea that they’ve been wanderers since being forced out of the Lonely Mountain, never truly belonging anywhere, is a sympathetic one, and I love the connection Bilbo feels to this idea, thinking of how greatly he values his own home and wanting the dwarves to again have that for themselves.

Beautiful Production Design

As with The Lord of the Rings, this trilogy looks gorgeous.  The costumes, sets, and location shooting all provide a visual feast and a nice attention to detail.  I particularly appreciate that all the dwarves look distinct from one another – even if only a handful of them have a fair amount of characterization, they don’t all blend together, which is important when we’re dealing with so many.

Badass Dwarves

Don’t get me wrong – in the original trilogy, Gimli can kick butt and take names, but he’s also the butt of numerous jokes about his size.  Because The Hobbit has so many dwarves, however, they all spend a lot of time onscreen surrounded by people who are their size.  For them, it’s rarely about being “the short one,” and so they’re able to just get on with it and tear it up in fight scenes without also being cut down to size, so to speak.  I appreciate that.