介绍:
Watching The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is like watching someone playing a video-enhanced game of Dungeons and Dragons. On the one hand, you can sit back and enjoy the beautiful visual effect and fantasy adventure story without having to bleed your fingers on the joystick. But from time to time you do wish to take control and hurry things up to face the big dragon. Ultimately you get somewhat disappointed when you don't get to see the big dragon because obviously you are just on level one.
In the first of the serial prequels to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, director Peter Jackson follows precisely the prescription in J. R. R. Tolkien's original novel and sends the players exploring the vastness of the Middle Earth. Before the adventure begins, viewers are given quite a lengthy introduction of the characters, chiefly among them is Bilbo Baggins, played by Martin Freeman, who is also Dr. Watson in BBC's contemporary adaptation of “Sherlock Holmes”. Besides that, the dwarves put on a great show of joy and merry-making, but it makes a painfully extended intro and character selection part with no skip button.
To make the game last longer, our director includes a know-your-character tutorial scene, also without a skip button. This is the scene where Bilbo exhibits his outstanding quick wit which makes him a very precious member of the group of reckless dwarves. But apparently Jackson believes the little Hobbit hasn't done enough to prove his worth, so the rest of the installment is dedicated to that task, culminating with Bilbo's confrontation with Gollum in a riddle game.
In the meantime, the group roamed the Middle Earth, gathering important items and necessary information to guide them through the quest. When this is done, congratulations! You've completed level one. For more adventures, please insert more coin, and wait until next year.
So as you see, the storyline is problematic. And because the director spends the bulk of the time developing the lead character, by the way, great job by Martin Freeman, other characters or more precisely the 13 dwarves and Gandolf the Grey, don't fare as well as the little Hobbit. All that you can recall is dwarves and more dwarves and Gandolf from The Lord of the Rings.
Other factors, like brilliant pictures and scores, don’t help distinguish the movie from a well-made video game. And adding to the disappointment is the likelihood that the high-frame-rated version might not be available in Chinese cinemas. So the film's innovative significance could go missing among the Chinese audience.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a movie spoiled by ambition, either the ambition for another trilogy, or the ambition for more sizeable grossing. A shortened editor’s cut might save the series, but I guess it wouldn't be possible in the near future.
On a scale from one to ten, I give The Hobbit a 6.
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