vivdunstan

Good read for Tolkien and retro computer gaming fans: Jason Dyer's "All the Adventures" blog plays through The Hobbit 1982 text adventure / interactive fiction game from Melbourne House.

Note there are spoilers in this post. Scroll past if you don't want to know some quite specific details.

Earlier this year I mentioned here that I was intending to watch some of the animated Tolkien films from 1977-1980 soon. As I said then I'd never seen The Hobbit (1977) or The Return of the King (1980), though I have seen the doesn't-tell-the-whole-story The Lord of the Rings (1978), which I watched on Channel 4 one afternoon before Christmas in 1988 ...

It's taken us a while to get started. But first up last night was The Hobbit (1977), which I'd sourced a Spanish-released DVD copy of. After changing the settings to English language audio and no subtitles we were good to go with the 77 minutes long animated movie.

I knew going in that it was an extremely condensed retelling of the story. But I was honestly surprised by how much they packed into the running time. And the opening sections charmed me, with the pre titles sequence where Bilbo meets the dwarves and Gandalf, and the rather nice folk-inspired song "The Greatest Adventure". The other songs were more of a miss for me though. The dwarves are introduced phenomenally quickly, but that wasn't a problem for me. I find the original book overly long on this, never mind Peter Jackson's take on it.

The character design choices are a mix of good or curious to downright strange. Gandalf is as you would expect. Bilbo perhaps a bit Disney. The dwarves are a mix, some rather disturbing. Trolls ok. Elrond has a beard. Mmmm. Though I was pleased they managed to include that portion - I thought they'd skip it. Goblins suitably disturbing. Gollum very strange, but it sort of works. Wargs awesome. Ditto eagles. Mirkwood spiders suitably terrifying. Wood elves very very strange, and more scary looking than the goblins. Not sure about the Lake-town men. And Smaug looks more like a big cat (I've seen "bobcat" used to describe him) than a dragon, at least in facial features. Nice thrush though. The animation is generally good, with some particularly impressive visual moments. The animation work was done by a Japanese company linked to the future Studio Ghibli.

The voice acting is variable. Bilbo and Gandalf are fine. Gollum suitably disturbing. I liked Elrond's voice. But why does the elven king have an Austrian accent? And Smaug sounds strange. I wasn't familiar with the actor voices already, so didn't make connections with other roles. But just responded to how they sounded.

As I said I was impressed by how much they fitted in, including the trolls section, Rivendell and Elrond, the Misty Mountains and goblins and Gollum and riddles (good allowance of time for this key bit), then wargs (but no Beorn), Mirkwood spiders, the wood elves and barrel escape (to be fair that's phenomenally condensed into a couple of minutes), Lake-town, Lonely Mountain and Smaug, death of Smaug, Battle of the Five Armies, and Bilbo's return. The Battle bit was the only bit that dragged for me. I suppose after the hasty earlier sections its slightly more leisurely pace felt too slow. They also made a curious choice to depict some of the battle using dots viewed from overhead moving around. Which might be how someone at a distance - in this case Bilbo - might see things. But wasn't entirely successful.

They certainly missed other parts of the story, including some key moments, like Bilbo deciding not to kill Gollum. Nor did he steal the Arkenstone, and the emotional ending with Thorin was reduced as a result. Much was there though, just accelerated/edited hugely. And I'm still stunned by how much they did cover in the time.

The thing I liked least about the film is the ending, where Gandalf says some words to Bilbo, hinting that the ring he found is important, and in the future there will be more adventures involving other members of his family. Mmmmm. I can see why they did that. It's a quaint nod to them hopefully continuing the story (which the same team sort of did with The Return of the King animated movie in 1980). But to suggest that Gandalf has an awareness of or even hint of the importance of this ring at this time, never mind other foresight about its future, just feels so very wrong for this viewer/Tolkien fan at least.

However overall I enjoyed it. I think they got more things right than wrong. And I would far, far prefer to watch this 77 minutes version than the nearly 9 hours of Hobbit movies from Peter Jackson ...