The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Review

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

I was never really a Tolkien fan before The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. I've never disliked franchise and yet I've never loved it either. The Fellowship of the Ring is a fantastic movie, but I'm not a huge fan of Two Towers or Return of the King. Excessive, drawn out battle scenes and ass-numbing running times are primary reasons. However my biggest gripe has always been how serious the latter two movies were. They never ventured into dark territory - No primary characters die bar Sean Beanomir

The king of memes

This really bothers me, knocking off Pippin or Gimli could add more emotion to the journey. While also showing how much of a threat Sauron's forces are. I need consequences when a movie gets so serious.

Also, they cut out the scenes with my favourite character - The Mouth of Sauron, which is straight up bullshit.

He's fucking terrifying! 

I did however, like most children, read the Hobbit. Even though I never loved the book so to speak, I was a fan of it. It was challenging book compared to other kids books I was reading at the time (Goosebumps for example) I enjoyed it more than the LotR's books and still prefer it.

I was looking forward to the movie adaptation, hyped even. 2012 had been a relatively good year for myself at the movies. Yes Prometheus sucked ass but Skyfall made up for everything. Of my most anticipated releases, that's a fifty percent success rate. (Optimism!)

So after a failed attempt at marathoning the extended editions of Lord of the Rings with Darren of Entrosolet, we headed in to see .The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Peter Jackson got lazy.

No fucking about here. Straight up, I loved it. 

I don't really have much to say on it that hasn't been said 1043 times already. So I'll break down the key discussion points and add my opinion.

• The tone; Yes, I just finished bitching about the serious tone of the LotR trilogy. A common complaint I'm seeing crop up is how the tone changes from comedy to epic adventure too abruptly. Fuck you, Jackson balanced it as best as possible. From the moment it was decided the Hobbit series would act as a prequel and be connected to the original trilogy, he had to balance the childlike novel source with the Lord of the Rings. He did it well.
• It's too long; It is and I can't argue with that. It felt like watching the extended edition of the film and yes there was a lot that could of been cut. No disagreement from me.
• The cast: I have seen people say that the dwarves are too similar and merge into one, essentially just twelve Gimlis. Compared to the book, the dwarves have much, much more personality and individuality. The inclusion of non-Hobbit characters from LotR has bugged a lot of people.  Not me as personally I didn't mind the scenes with them. It was connection with the audience that had been established for years. It was nostalgic. It was kick-ass to see Christopher Lee again.

I adored Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins (The best hobbit in my opinion and a better character all round than Frodo. Martin nails the role perfectly) I loved the soundtrack, the casting was great and James Nesbitt nearly stole the show as Bofur. Also, the scene with Gollum was perfect. Full stop.

That is a mustache worthy of it's own trilogy.

I am not weary about this being a trilogy anymore and so if you are expecting a huge rant about how crazy is it is about adapting a relatively short book into three, three hour movies, tough luck. I jokingly said it was like adapting Casino Royale into a trilogy.

Anyway, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was a great movie and the best possible way to end my movie going experience of the year.

The hype has reached unbearable levels on Django Unchained for next year. Can Jamie Foxx out Django Frank Nero? Only time will tell.

Peace out!

KRS