Throwback Thursday: The Hobbit (1977)

 The Hobbit has long been a favorite book of mine and you won't get a more faithful adaptation( if not all of the plot points i.e. Beorn, it definitely captures the spirit of The Hobbit and does make great use of it's short run time) than The Hobbit produced by Rankin and Bass. I first saw this movie around age eight to ten and I still re-watch it to this day. The animation is well done, the voice acting is spot on, and the original music created for the film really captures the spirit of Tolkien.

 I enjoy the Hobbit both on it's own and as a part of the larger realm of Middle Earth. I won't go into great detail on the plot as some of you may not have read or seen it before. The main thrust is that Bilbo Baggins(The Hobbit in question) is uprooted from his quiet country life and thrust into the wide world of adventure thanks to a wandering wizard named Gandalf. With a company of thirteen dwarves he sets out to reclaim an ancestral treasure stolen long ago by a terrible dragon named Smaug. Along the way he encounters forces of good and evil and learns what it truly means to be brave and what it might take to ever see his comfortable home again.

 This movie is great fun to watch, can be enjoyed by adults as well as children, and really delivers a strong message that more people could stand to hear in the world today. The only thing that I dislike about this movie is the design of Smaug. I wouldn't call it bad exactly, just a little odd. I would have preferred they go with a more traditional western dragon but overall this is minor and the voice actor really sells the character even looking the way he does. I came to appreciate this movie and those who put so much time and effort in to make it great even more when the Peter Jackson Hobbit Trilogy ( The book is only around 300 pages and you need to make over 9 hours of movie, come on man). Don't get me wrong, P.J. did a great job on the LOTR movies and I give everyone that worked to make those epic movies the credit that they deserve but P.J. really dropped the ball on this one. I don't believe they needed more than one movie to be honest, but at the very most it should have been two, one to get to Laketown and one for what comes after. While it may not have been totally his fault I still hold him accountable for the poor quality of all three movies overall. Even if they did not carry the Hobbit label they would still not be good movies.
Enough about that, I love this movie, you should watch it, you should show it to your kids, and you should read the book because it is great. Thank you for reading.