On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with midnight movies from any moment in film history.
First, the BAIT: a weird genre pick, and why we’re exploring its specific niche right now. Then, the BITE: a spoiler-filled answer to the all-important question, “Is this old cult film actually worth recommending?”
The Bait: The Greatest Adventure Is What Lies Ahead
We all have “The Odyssey” fever this week, and rightly so. In fact, I’ve had it bad enough to go reread Emily Wilson’s translation of the poem; rewatch both “O Brother Where Art Thou?” and the 1997 TV miniseries adaption; and, for my sins, do some digging into real research on the crytpic Sea Peoples.
One of the more important things to come out of all of that, for me, was rereading what Wilson includes at the beginning of her translator’s note on the poem. Wilson’s interest in Greek Mythology, she writes, started at eight years old, when her class put on a (heavily condensed) version of the tale of Odysseus.
She was cast as Athena, the class ‘troublemaker’ was Odysseus, and the school’s headmaster bumbled around, one-eyed, as the Cyclops. (She explains that the students delighted in the chance to “blind” him, among other charming details.)
The Homeric epic has much to interest adults about longing, loyalty, belonging, self-definition, the interplay of responsibility and luck and fate. Not to mention, how we treat strangers among us and other philosophical themes weighty enough to draw Christopher Nolan’s eye, in IMAX 70mm.
But it’s worth remembering that this poem’s power also comes from how vivid and imaginative its fantasy is; it comes from how immediately accessible and alluring those dazzling episodes are to the eight year old in all of us who, to butcher a GK Chesterton quote, do not need to be told that dragons are real — just that it’s possible to slay them and come back home again.
Nolan’s “The Odyssey” does a lot of things but not that thing. The fantasy thing.
When events are unexplainable, they are bursts of supernatural and/or psychological horror. The universe of the film, as all of Nolan’s worlds are, is one drawn from the muted colors of reluctant determination and it’s structured by a gravity of inexpressible guilt.
If that’s what you want to see this weekend, then I wish you well on your voyage. But there is another story. It’s a winding tale of a clever thief and inventive trickster, who is drawn from his home to participate in a great adventure in lands beyond the wildest imagination.
I am speaking, of course, of “The Hobbit.”
Tolkien’s legendarium is a funny thing in the Year of Our Lord 2026, and perhaps even a bit fraught. Peter Jackson’s live-action adaptations of “The Lord of the Rings” in the early 2000s were landmark cinematic feats, technologically, and they objectively changed the film industry.
And yet, in a lot of ways, Jackson and his conception of Middle Earth has lived on long enough to become the villain in larger battle — with a “Hobbit” trilogy that felt stretched on the rack and every new piece of information about “The Hunt for Gollum” bringing me, personally, closer to clasping my copy of “The Silmarillion” to my chest and hurling myself into the sea.
Middle Earth is an imagined world as vast and fascinating as the ocean it takes Odysseus 10 years to sail across. It is full of monsters and hidden caves, vain kings and gold-hungry treasure seekers, wizards and elves and dwarves and great eagles, sailing through the sky. The hero of the story is not the strongest nor the bravest warrior, but someone who continually gets his friends out of danger through his quick thinking and his irrepressible wit. He is a hobbit of twists and turns, to appropriate another phrase.
Now, I’m gonna be so real with you, reader. Ali and I were chatting about other things, I made a joke purely for my own amusement about how the 111th After Dark should feature Bilbo Baggins (who turns 111 at the beginning of “The Fellowship of the Ring”), and Ali was like, “Great! Sold!”
Strictly speaking, that’s how we got here. But this is also a genuinely wonderful week to be looking at the 1977 animated “The Hobbit,” produced as a TV special back in the day by Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass. This version of “The Hobbit” is pure fantasy in all the ways Nolan’s new movie isn’t. Whatever that thing is that joyfully confirms for the kid in you that life is as wide as our hearts wish it to be? This movie has it.
It also boasts pacing that is so simultaneously abrupt, funny, and kinda hippie-vibey that I can’t quite put it into words. The film’s very ‘70s voice cast — John Huston as Gandalf?! Friend of After Dark Otto Preminger as the Elf King??!! — is wild. And the folksy score and silly musical interludes help the audience speed through the story at a delightful, oh-so-welcome 78 minutes.
The art style is truly striking, too. On this watch, it almost felt like a relic of a different imaginative age. Strong linework and expressive watercolor landscapes craft a place that looks as much like stained glass as it does a storybook, and the blend of western and eastern iconography (Smaug especially benefits from this) makes the tale seem like half-baked memory and a wholly original revelation, all at once.
It’s worth noting that the Japanese studio that did the animation for 1977’s “The Hobbit,” TopCraft, also produced a movie called “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.” Its heroine is named for a princess from “The Odyssey” and its director is a man who would go on to create many, many more worlds where the lesson of “The Hobbit,” to value food and cheer above hoarded wealth, applies.
I could write a lot more about “The Hobbit,” its relationship to “The Odyssey,” and the importance of telling fairy stories that take us out in the fantastical and back again. But the greatest adventure for you isn’t going to be found in books or even on entertainment websites. It’s… out there. —Sarah Shachat
The Bite: May the Hairs on Your Toes Never Fall Out, Sweet Reader
Sarah’s words, and the shining finale of 1977’s “The Hobbit,” turned me into a fountain of tears so ferocious I’m actually surprised the Argonauts aren’t floating through my living room right now. This week’s rapturous After Dark selection also reminded me of something hopeful a dear friend said recently.
“Maybe you don’t have to look for your next chapter. Maybe it will find you,” he encouraged, after listening to a feature-length woe-is-me diatribe that, even in the moment, wasn’t actually helping much.
This summer, I’ve adopted… or maybe re-adopted… the annoying habit of connecting every last one of my personal gripes to a broader thesis that everyone and everything around me is totally doomed. (It goes away if I eat, drink water, and/or sleep… at all? IDK!)
It’s tough. But between Hollywood churn, political anxiety, and the general weight of trying to envision what comes next (y’know, on the days when it feels like we actually have a “next”), my mood isn’t bad so much as stuck. As a result, it feels like I’ve been retreating inward instead of venturing out for months.
Even buying tickets to see Nolan’s “The Odyssey” on opening weekend veered a smidge existential for me. I remember rolling my eyes a few years ago when audiences appeared willing to risk getting COVID just to see “Tenet.” But reporting live from the pits of Hell in 2026, I too felt desperate to watch Nolan’s new movie at release — if only, on the off-off-off chance there somehow isn’t another opportunity.
That atmosphere of vague dread is why, much like my new close personal friend Bilbo Baggins at the start of his hero’s journey, I’ve been mostly content to hide in my dusty little hobbit hole. And yet, even more than the siren song of Jackson and Elijah Wood, this adorable, psychedelic take on “The Hobbit” offered me a maiden voyage to Middle-earth that quietly changed my outlook for the better.
Going back 49 summers for the Rankin and Bass version, I gradually realized that the unending stress of life today has made it too easy for me to believe there will always be time to take on the next great adventure later. The landscape of being alive and decent has changed radically over the past few years, and somewhere along that road, I think I started treating some experiences as a kind of reward for a future version of myself: someone who was more present, less anxious, and, frankly, not so needy.
As a media obsessive, nowhere has that impulse been truer for me than Tolkien, Jackson, and Bilbo. Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve secretly suspected I would become a freakish “Lord of the Rings” fan. Stephen Colbert, one of my heroes, has spent decades evangelizing Tolkien’s compassion and courage. When I worked at “The Late Show,” I actually think I lied to an assistant who had a “Lord of the Rings” tattoo about having seen the films — precisely because admitting I hadn’t yet felt not just embarrassing, but like a missed opportunity to use shorthand that I would absolutely understand… eventually.
Middle-earth wasn’t a place I was avoiding all my life so much as an epic pursuit I hadn’t gotten around to quite yet. Then, thanks to Sarah and the 111th After Dark (sure, let’s count!), Bilbo found me. (Note: I may have also watched “Fellowship of the Ring” in 2025, but I think fell asleep? Investigation pending.)
His sparkly eyes, welling up at the mere mention of “cakes.” His swirly hair, built with the wavy spirit of character actress Margo Martindale. 1977’s Bilbo is at once fully relatable and undeniably cute, and when a mystery arrived on his doorstep, he knew, “ACTION WAS CALLED FOR!”
But answering what’s effectively the animated fantasy equivalent of a disastrous Craigslist ad, the pint-sized protagonist in Rankin and Bass’ made-for-television adaptation understands that the most important quality a hero can possess isn’t strength but a spirit that truly wants to protect, and a soul inside that champion that itself is worth protecting.
It wasn’t Bilbo’s confrontation with Smaug that won me over. Instead, exactly as the script suggests, it was him grappling with his own fear in the scene right before it. Pushed onward by his slippery companions, Bilbo is asked to enter a tunnel alone. As he inches through the darkness, a voice tells him: “You can still go back… Here is where you fight your real battle, Bilbo Baggins. Do you go back?”
It’s a deceptively simple fork in the road for our boy, and we’ve seen Bilbo prove himself worthy several times before. But he and his fellow travelers haven’t actually burgled anyone yet, and before Bilbo can outwit Smaug, the victory comes from choosing not to retreat and rather embrace the unknown with spunk. Suffice to say, sometimes the quests that define us aren’t the ones we set out to find. They’re the ones that show up unexpectedly asking who we are willing to become to survive them.
Realistically speaking, 1977’s “The Hobbit” could have easily have disappeared into the cracks of entertainment history. Instead, a half century later, it got to me because so many good people — filmmakers, writers, and viewers — have spread the wisdom of Bilbo since he was born on the page.
Writing about film and TV preservation, and the importance of keeping older fringe works accessible to the public, I sometimes feel like I have to defend great art just so other people can enjoy it. This time, I was moved to find a timeless story I knew I would love still waiting for me, earnest as ever.
This weekend, I’ve got an awards show to cover before flying to Fantasia Festival in Canada. I’ll make time for “The Odyssey,” too. But the adventure I’m happiest I finally made room for was “The Hobbit.” And now that I’m in Middle-earth, I don’t plan on going back. Ralph Bakshi, anyone? —Alison Foreman
“The Hobbit” (1977) is streaming on HBO Max and VOD.
Read more installments of After Dark, IndieWire’s midnight movie club:
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