The Hobbit and the Death of the Trilogy

In theaters Friday: The Ice Man, Iron Man 3

New on Blu-ray: Broken City, Not Fade Away, Silver Linings Playbook

Like one of those skinny fat guys with rails for arms and a potbelly, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit is thin and overstuffed all at the same time. That’s not to say it fails completely as entertainment, because for long stretches, that is exactly what it is. But I use the term “long” intentionally.

After a snoozer of an intro featuring original Lord of the Rings cast Ian Holm and Elijah Wood, we thankfully meet a much younger Bilbo Baggins, played by the mercilessly likable Martin Freeman, who, after a second needlessly long introduction, finally sets out on an adventure with Ian McKellen’s rough-hewn wizard Gandalf and a rowdy crew of dwarves. They are on a quest to slay a dragon and reoccupy their lost homeland. The effects are mesmerizing, the chases—yes, Orcs are back—are breathless, the characters are a fascinating twist of mysticism and whimsy, and hour after hour, flashback after flashback, how incredibly unnecessary it all felt.

What happened to the linear, air tight adventure that was two hours start to finish? Money is what happened, apparently. But while studios get rich and even fanboys bask in a “wealth” of material, story suffers when sequels reign supreme.

And the end is nowhere in sight. The fact that Tolkien’s comparably succinct, lighter-hearted companion to The Lord of the Rings is being diced into not two, but three films—all of which will push three hours—is cinematic gluttony at best and, at worst, masterfully patronizing hoodwinking of the same audience that laps up Jacksons broad stroke, George Lucas-like alterations to a text that was once sacrosanct.

Freeman and McKellen are excellent, but in its straining for enormity, The Hobbit looses its uniqueness, its innocence, if you will, and comes off as a little more than a beat-for-beat remake of the first film in Jackson’s series, 2001’s The Fellowship of the Ring.

But my problem with The Hobbit runs deeper than Jackson’s inability to edit his work. The trilogy as a powerful narrative format is dying. It’s a crutch, a paint-by-numbers trend that will feel quaint 10 years from now, and The Hobbit suffers as a slave to it. What should have been the climax of the film, the revenge slaying of vile dragon Smaug, isn’t even in the movie. No, there’s an entire sequel dedicated to that act—coming to theaters this December, hey hey!

Sure, Iron Man 3 opens today, but those films were never planned as a trilogy, and honestly, how bad was Iron Man 2?

What then if filmmakers want to fashion epics? Well, they could risk a dramatic triptych as Derek Cianfrance did recently with The Place Beyond the Pines or create three movies that also act perfectly well as stand-a-lone stories like Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films, or they could go where the best writing is occurring anyway—to cable television.

Because elaborate and extensively textured TV dramas like Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones and Mad Men aren’t just winning Emmys and legions of fans who have left strictly episodic television behind and gorge on entire seasons, some 10 to 15 hours of story, in a single weekend, they are also changing the way writers think about writing, and by doing so driving nails into the coffin of the trilogy as our most effective epic machine.

I don’t think I’ll rush out to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug later this year, but if Tolkien’s work is ever adapted for HBO or AMC as a series, I’ll be ready with my remote in hand. And week after week, I’ll feel like I am first in line.