Arriving precisely when he means to: Peter Jackson's triumphant return to Middle Earth

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

‘I think I’m quite ready for another adventure.’ This is how Bilbo Baggins ends his journey in Lord of the Rings, having yielded to the ravages of age and thus being accorded a place on the last ship to the Undying Lands. But the question abounding in critics’ reviews is: are we ready for another adventure? And do we really need one?

The film Jackson has made is a rollicking, hilarious and tender frolic through Middle Earth. Admittedly, by its very nature, it is not as epic as its predecessor. Its evil characters (comically cockney trolls, a hostile but amusingly jowl-wobbling Goblin King, even the scarred albino menace Azog the Defiler) fail to inspire the terror of Sauron and his Nazgul. And there are some odd moments that could perhaps have been culled, such as the episode with the mushroom-eating, bird-poo covered wizard Radagast, which feels disconcertingly like a bizarre flight into a hallucinogenic video game.

But Ian McKellen’s wizard Gandalf, by turns twinkle-eyed and splendidly wrathful, gives the film a powerful sense of both warmth and gravitas. And the story is carried expertly by Martin Freeman’s ingenuous, endearing embodiment of Bilbo Baggins. As an actor he elevates himself from Elijah Wood’s somewhat cloying, wooden Frodo – you cannot help but relate to Bilbo as someone uprooted from his home and muddling through the unknown. He disarmingly tackles challenges big and small, from protecting his mother’s antique glory box against the boot-scrapings of impolite dwarves to protecting the exiled dwarf-king from a beheading by a vengeful, merciless Azog.  

It is the film-stealing riddle scene between Bilbo and Gollum that makes another trip to Middle Earth feel truly worth it – brilliantly-timed, wretched, ominous and hilarious all at once. Andy Serkis’s superlative facial expressions are transmuted to create a CGI character that perfectly sustains the schizophrenic Smeagol-Gollum dialectic conceived with such inspiration in Lord of the Rings. Serkis fully makes you feel the spectrum of Gollum’s emotions: his gambolling joy at playing games with Bilbo; his primative urge to kill this intruder into his world; his innocent, excruciating pain at losing the ring. And the teetering repartee between Bilbo and Gollum, which veers from playful to menacing in an instant, gives you a real sense of their terrors, prejudices and weaknesses, to the point where you wish you could go down to the goblin cave in which they spar and save them both.

So for me at least, the answer to whether we need The Hobbit is a resounding yes. Not simply because I am an ardent fan (who, I admit, is to Lord of the Rings what the devoted Samwise Gamgee is to his Mister Frodo.) But also because I think Peter Jackson has given us a film which not only pays homage to the meticulously realised world Tolkein created but which emphatically enhances our appreciation of that world. He has indeed vastly augmented a small book in order to realise it on the same colossal scale of his first film trilogy, for which he has faced not insignificant derision. But it doesn’t feel that this is arbitrary or excessive, because Jackson has faithfully incorporated elements of The Silmarilion and Tolkein’s own appendices, and made with them a film that still speaks to our own times of the uncertainty of life, the unlikely friendships that can be forged and the courage that can be found in every day actions.

If you have given up 30 hours of your life watching the ‘Making of Lord of the Rings’ DVD appendices (yes, I have. Twice.) you will know how much love and painstaking devotion went into every detail, down to the last curlicue of elvish written on the thousandth extra’s sword and sheath. And I believe the same, justifiable commitment has been made to The Hobbit – so do not take Peter Jackson for a conjurer of cheap tricks. Oh no. He is a maestro of his craft, and I would wholly recommend you go on his unexpected journey. For when you step onto the road, there's no telling where you might be swept off to…

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