Finally got around to seeing this sucker and I was pleasantly surprised. We’ll break this one up simply, the bad news first then the good.

The bad news? There were moments where my secondary belief (for Tolkienites) or my suspended disbelief (for Coleridgers) completely quit and I was left in a dark theater saying, “Seriously?!” The biggest moment for this feeling came at the start of the whole goblin burrow chase/fight scene as the narrow escapes, collapsing bridges and environmental fighting became more and more absurd. There was a good thing about that, which I’ll deal with later. Another beef I had with the film was Gandalf’s little demythologized preaching sermon that Jackson wrote out of nowhere. I’m sure that’ll be a favorite part for people looking for snappy quotes in their sermons or motivational speeches, but it left me cold. Tolkien isn’t Lewis and would have been appalled to seen one point getting so much attention as if it was the DT of the movie, let alone for said point–the power of the weak and insignificant people–to be completely marred beyond recognition. They moralized that theme of the weak to sound more like a yes-we-can work ethic of ordinary people pulling the world up by its bootstraps rather than power in true weakness. The point of Bilbo isn’t that he’s a commoner. It’s that he’s uncommonly weak and unskilled and yet he shows up and offers his weakness. Bilbo’s story appeals not to domestic or rural industry but to common, human brokenness.

The good news? I liked the majority of this film. The chase scenes, once acknowledged as ridiculous, actually accomplished some of the childish comedy present in the original text. They kept all of the songs and did them well. They DIDN’T include the all-seeing eye and creepy voice-over when Bilbo puts on the ring–it’s just an invisibility ring. They achieved a fantastic realism while keeping the quirkiness of Radagast, the riddle-war with Gollum, all while adding in snippets from things we find out in the Silmarillion or appendices or even in moments left out of the first three Rings films like during the Council of Elrond. No one seems to have given up on the franchise, which made for a great self-aware moment when Gandalf is told “Elrond’s not here.” We always have that moment in a reboot of a series using old actors, but Elrond shows up anyway. That was well-done as was the beauty and the majesty of the world. ALSO Elrond was less grouchy, Sauramon more naive, Lady Galadrial more consistent. The dwarf culture fulfilled a deep longing I’ve had since Fellowship came out–I’ve wanted to see the mountain halls in action. I’ve longed to see legions of dwarves in battle, to see the nuance of dwarven culture. Jackson delivered with things as simple of three-second clips of giant house-sized hammers falling downward to crush a block of precious metal. Three seconds, and that’s done.

But more than anything, they took Smaug seriously and we still haven’t seen the dragon. Like Rothfuss said awhile ago, “You should never be bored fighting a dragon.” The dragon pwned everyone and everything in this film. The mere warm-air front snapped the cedars. That’s how it should be.

I’d keep going, but I’ll push back against the criticism of three movies. For many series this would be a money grab, but again with adaptation, we’re trying to capture the zeitgeist of a given work and transfer that into a foreign medium. Sometimes that means reduction, other times that means expansion. I believe it’s justified for one reason alone:

How else are you going to get snippets of the Silmarillion on film?

For me, it was an unexpected journo because I watched the birth of a journalist/mythmaker in Bilbo. They kept some of the humor, but not all. They set up a transition of character and tone for the trilogy they already finished. They even kept the music, all all through the journalistic voice of this hobbit who once lived in a hole.