In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth fantasies, proportion is everything. A creature as small as a Hobbit, provided he has a big heart and vast reserves of courage, can prevail against enormous odds — and that’s the inspiration of it all.
But in director Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings prequel, The Hobbit, the proportions feel wrong.
Jackson’s original Rings trilogy is perhaps the greatest fantasy work ever created for the big screen. And its proportions were this: Each lengthy Tolkien novel in the trilogy got one epic-length film.
Tolkien’s The Hobbit is a far shorter book than any of them, yet it’s getting three epic-length films. So the proportions are off. As beautiful as the first film is to behold, it’s stretched out for too long. (more…)
