The Hobbit An Unexpected Journey 2 Download
Ania Cozzolino
Apple Editor Jacqui Cheng, Social Editor Cesar Torres, Lead Developer Lee Aylward, and I will all be discussing An Unexpected Journey, the first of Peter Jackson's long-awaited Hobbit film adaptations, on Friday's upcoming episode of the Ars Technicast. In the meantime, I wanted to really examine the film as it relates to The Hobbit and also to Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, then distill the many mixed reactions I had during and after the movie into something a bit more coherent. As a fan of both, I've been awaiting An Unexpected Journey with some excitement, but more apprehension: on the one hand, it's a chance to revisit Jackson's lovingly rendered film version of Middle Earth. On the other, a much-criticized decision to make The Hobbit into three movies has only exacerbated fears that it would be a cash grab lacking in the care and craft that went into either the books or the first film trilogy. I ultimately came away disappointed in the movie, but not in the way I thought I would be.
One of An Unexpected Journey's strengths, then, is that it better integrates The Hobbit with the rest of the canon. Locations like Rivendell, identical to its Lord of the Rings counterpart, and the presence of characters not even named in the book (Saruman and Galadriel, among others, with Orlando Bloom set to return as Legolas in at least one of the next two films) make the stories feel more like they're pieces of the same whole.
Any movie that says it's going to stretch The Hobbit out into three films is going to need to take some liberties with the source material, mostly in the form of additions. Some of the changes made to the narrative in Jackson's LOTR movies broke with Tolkien's versions of events in a way that weakened the story. An Unexpected Journey happily avoids these pitfalls, even when it's filling in the blanks by inserting its own material or fleshing out events which were merely implied in the books.
Most of the changes made to the book's narrative are driven by a need to transform that book (which relies on an omniscient narrator and, often, the unseen internal thought processes of its characters) into a film. Both the book and the film are about not just Bilbo's physical there-and-back-again journey between The Shire and the Lonely Mountain, but also Bilbo's mental journey from timid, too-comfortable hobbit to a minor hero in his own right.
In the book, a large part of Bilbo's transformation is shown through internal monologue and his first overtly heroic deed comes rather late in the game, when he saves the dwarves from giant spiders in Mirkwood and then later helps them escape imprisonment by the elves who live in the forest (material that, based on the pacing of this first movie, will probably crop up in the second of the three Hobbit films).
Because this film is split three ways (and because showing a character thinking to themselves is, at best, dull cinema), An Unexpected Journey needs to make this mental transformation happen both more quickly and more obviously. To make it more obvious that the Bilbo at the beginning of the story is entrenched in his own too-comfortable rut, there's a scene where Gandalf tells him so. To kickstart his transformation from timid to heroic, it is Bilbo (rather than Gandalf) who thinks to stall the trolls until they're turned to stone by the rising sun. And to really drive home his character's growth, by the end of the film Bilbo is standing up against wolves and orcs all by his lonesome to prove his worth to Thorin and company, and to himself. All of these are changes to the book's version of events, but none of them feel wildly inconsistent with Tolkien's narrative or with his characters.
Thorin's character has also been tweaked slightly for the film. His stubbornness and pride, qualities present in the book but only really emphasized near the end (and, coincidentally, in one of Tolkien's Unfinished Tales recalling the events of The Hobbit from Gandalf's perspective), is made explicit in several scenes. The film's Thorin also has a particular dislike for elves, where the book's Thorin has no particular distaste or love for them (save after being captured and held in Mirkwood by Thranduil and the wood-elves, but even then his beef is with them specifically and not the race as a whole). These character tweaks didn't make too much of a difference in this first movie but will pay dividends later when he's captured by Thranduil (probably in the second movie) and when he's negotiating with the men and elves for shares of Smaug's treasure after the dragon's defeat (probably in the third film).
This is another change that was necessitated to some degree by the source material, though I'm not sure how it will play out in the end. The vast majority of The Hobbit is presented in concise, cut-up chapters, and while Smaug is the de facto villain, he's not an immediate threat to the heroes until toward the end of the story (and he's dispatched after only a handful of chapters). The Necromancer is likewise a threat on a larger scale, but he has little impact on Bilbo and the dwarves. A more immediate antagonist is necessary to drive the action, and Azog fills that role well enough (though as villains go he's about as one-dimensional as they get).
Here is the second part of my analysis of Howard Shore's score for the first part of the Hobbit trilogy. Unfortunately I could not present it in one piece as it was too long for a single post. I am just that verbose.
Firstly I attempt to analyze the music mainly as heard on the Special Edition of the soundtrack album, but I will be making some comments on the score as heard in the film and the changes made to the score compared to the music heard on the CDs.
Secondly it is worth noting that the soundtrack release for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey came out in two different releases, the Regular Edition, which to surprise of many contained two CDs and the Special Edition that was also comprised of 2 CDs but contains about 20 minutes more music, including several bonus and extended tracks. Curiously the Regular Edition had sections absent from the Special Edition as well so having both would be required for the most complete experience of this music outside the film. I will make note of the major differences between these two releases in the analysis since both albums contain some music that is missing from the other.
Thirdly I must impress upon the readers this is just a piece born out of my personal love of Shore's music for Middle-earth. Although I am an ardent fan of film music but I am no musicologist so much of the below analysis focuses on the relation of Shore's thematic architecture to the narrative of the film and not so much on the theoretical side of the music as I am not qualified to say anything extensive or authoritative on that account.
Opening logos and credits roll and the curtain raising figure of the score, a warm, flowing and graceful melody of The House of Durin Theme appears in optimistic glowing major mode and Shore weaves subtle hints of the History of the Ring harmonies into it in the accompanying figures and thus draws connections to things to come from the very first notes. The House of Durin Theme will reveal its true prominence in the sequel, The The Desolation of Smaug, but here it is a subtle suggestion which sets the dwarves and their heritage squarely at the centre of the story.
Here in the dark roots of the mountain the dwarves discover the heart of mountain, The Arkenstone, a magnificent multifaceted glowing jewel and Shore captures the luminous essence of the gem with a simple scintillating string line and a high choral cluster (3:03-3:11) that is awe inspiring and bewitching at the same time. And so many nations come to honour the power of the dwarven king, the glimpse of King of the Woodland Realm in Mirkwood, the Elven king Thranduil and his emissaries, earning ethereal swelling string layers above which a female choir sings a lyrical line (presumably in Sindarin), introducing the musical idea for the Woodland Realm (3:23-3:31), the music here a mirror of their slightly otherworldly graceful demeanour. But the might and prosperity of Erebor is not to last, darkness falling over the king, a deep male choir chanting in Khuzdl, the voices rising in the familiar perfect fifths, the tone reminiscent of Moria music from Lord of the Rings, the grim tone presaging sorrow as Thrr becomes obsessed with his wealth but also anticipating another calamity as the treasures of Erebor have aroused the greed of something else.
Leading survivors through the smoke and burning Thorin struggles out of the mountain with his father and grandfather and we hear the first appearance of Suffering of Durin's Folk motif rising and falling in the orchestra (6:39) as the choir mourns for the tragedy of the dwarves in elegiac tones, the male and female chorus exchanging phrases over the orchestra. The theme is repeated deep in the double basses and celli full of grim regret when we see the prince, desperate, begging for help for his people from the Elven king Thranduil, who has arrived with his folk to bring help but after seeing the sheer destruction the dragon has wrought, refuses his aid in fear of facing the beast's wrath and retreats with his army and thus earns the enmity of Thorin, the fateful and grim strains of Suffering of Durin's Folk slowly fading away on solo horn and moody strings when we see the dwarven prince and his companions becoming a wandering folk bereft of glory and riches, their race scattered into the wind.
Since Shore had to re-score a new longer cut of the film later the whole sequence has musical edits, omitting choir and changing the order of some sections and replacing sections with re-scored material. E.g the Suffering of Durin's Folk theme at the end contains an additional extended passage to cover the extra footage added to the scene. The Extended Cut of the film also repeats some parts of the composition(such as the repetition of the Woodland Realm material for the extended scene with Thranduil and the wood elves featuring the jewels of Lasgalen) to cover for the additional footage but no actual new music was composed for the longer version of the film.
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