Not Hobbit-Forming

The Other Half and I live together comfortably, enjoying some cultural activities together and having very different tastes on others. (Do I want to spend half an hour a day checking up on celeb gossip in his homeland? No, thank you very much.) So when we sat through the two-and-a-half-hours of The Hobbit in 3D in Islington Vue on Monday evening, I spent half the time thinking "this is a load of manure" and wondering how I could express my opinion of the film without denting his appreciation of the tale.

But when the lights went up and I turned to him, I could see the disappointment writ as deeply in his face as it probably was in mine. After the grandeur of all three episodes of The Lord of the Rings, what we had just seen was a run-of-the-mill Hollywood movie where the computer-generated images, the restless camera and the repetitive violence could not disguise the hollowness and the cynicism that lay at the heart of this prequel.

The OH's first comment was the pointlessness of the 3D. I agreed. Unlike Avatar, where 3D was obviously integral to the conception of the film from the start, the third dimension in The Hobbit appeared to have been grafted on at the last minute. It seldom gave the film depth, either literally or figuratively, in the end detracting more from the story than it gave.

The main problem, however, lies much deeper - or rather, does not lie deeper, because this film has no depth. It has taken a simple children's story (The Hobbit, unlike The Lord of the Rings, was written for children, not adults) and, in order to make as much money as possible, has added on all the superficial trappings that make a Hollywood blockbuster - weak, clichéd characterisation, lots and lots of computer graphics, camera techniques that never allow the attention to focus on one individual or action for more than a second, fighting and running and fighting again - and which destroy the integrity and fail to pierce the depth of what could and should be a moving and epic story.

Peter Jackson had a choice. He could, in one 150 - 180 minute film with thoughtful characterisation, no unnecessary introductions (such as Galadriel, not in the original book) and fight sequences reduced to their original length, with CGI kept to a minimum instead of dominating the film, have made a movie that recreated and rivaled the splendour of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Instead of which he has produced a turkey for Christmas. But what does he care? His bank balance is healthy and that's much more important than the integrity of the story he has butchered.