The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Movie Review

I meant to post the review much earlier, back when it was still in theaters, but I never got to completing it until now. So... to celebrate the DVD release(?), here are my thoughts on the first part of Peter Jackson's next epic trilogy.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a stunning return to Peter Jackson's cinematic interpretation of Middle-Earth. After Peter Jackson's last Tolkien adaptation Return of the King won 11 Oscars in 2003, people have had high expectations for The Hobbit. And honestly, I may have liked this new one more.

Now I'm probably not the best person to ask about The Lord of the Rings, simply because it's been a year or so since I've seen the extended versions and I didn't have a critical eye back then. But I can say that The Hobbit is much better than Fellowship of the Ring, which took so long to end after the best character dies.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey tells the story of Bilbo Baggins, Frodo's favorite relative from the last three films, and how he's involved in setting major plot points of The Lord of the Rings into motion, while half-willingly helping brave dwarves take back their homeland. And that's important to realize before seeing this film. Many people will walk in to this thinking they will see an entire story play out before them, when in reality, it's a third of it. When I saw this in the theater, several people around me complained that the movie didn't end with much of a resolution. When I explained to them that it was only the beginning of a trilogy, they were dumb-founded, unconvinced that Jackson can pull it off-- and that may be the weakest point of the film.

There are many great scenes in this film, the prologue, especially. We get the backstory of the dwarves and the Big Bad, Smaug the Dragon, narrated by Bilbo Baggins. But it's not the Bilbo Baggins that you see in the picture above, but the Bilbo from The Lord of the Rings, played by Ian Holm, pictured below. Those who have seen the originals will feel SO nostalgic and happy, like me (regarding the latter), and an unexpected cameo can't not make you smile. The beginning of this film is undeniably Mr. Jackson's way of saying, "This is a prequel. This is where I am having the story told." After the prologue, we go back sixty years to the beginning of the adventure.

"You haven't aged a day!" Perhaps he knows Ripley....

Martin Freeman (Sherlock, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) plays the youthful Bilbo Baggins wonderfully, which is good since I much prefer Bilbo over Frodo, who can't help being killed by the Nazgûl every half-hour. And in this film, it's absolutely shocking how similar Freeman looks to Holm. Ian McKellen is back as Gandalf and better than ever, and the dwarves, though many, each make their characters unique, even though the screenplay doesn't make their identities completely explicit. Regardless, you still are attached to them; for example, the brother dwarves Fili and Kili are seen together in their introduction, but when they are separated at one scene, you are worried about the characters, similar to the misadventures of Merry and Pippin in the original LOTR films. Either way, none of the characters are particularly boring.

Everyone's major criticism of the film is the overlong first hour, which I must agree with since I did start getting a little restless towards the end of the beginning. However, in retrospect, I can't imagine what I would take out of the first hour. Maybe it's because I liked that scene in the book, and Peter Jackson just did a great job presenting it. Others have criticized Radagast the Brown, a character only mentioned once in The Hobbit and hardly seen in the Lord of the Rings book.

Radagast the Brown, the nature wizard. Don't expect a new Gandalf.

It is absolutely safe to say that Peter Jackson is taking creative liberties by making the nature-man Radagast an absolutely quirky hermit. Is he still the nature-loving Istari from Tolkien lore? Yes, but his character is 100% comic relief. Contrary to what some critics are saying, Radagast does serve some purpose, but not one integral to the main plot with the dwarves, but rather serves the purpose of connecting the Hobbit trilogy to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. While some will absolutely love this character, like my viewing party, but others have compared him to Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace negatively. I guess he's just a matter of taste, but I personally laughed when he was on screen, as was the purpose. Here's this: If you liked Professor Slughorn the tiniest bit in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, you will most likely like Radagast.

In bridging the films, Peter Jackson made several embellishments in adapting the material, some of which are based off the appendices of Return of the King, but one of the major subplots involving Thorin, the main dwarf, and a heavily-CGI orc is completely unique to the film adaptation. While it may very well tick off many a fan, I think everyone in my theater was thoroughly involved in this plot, and some may say it is "epic," especially come the film's climax. As a major fan of the original novel (it's towards the top of my top 10 list of books), I didn't mind the liberties; in fact, I think it made the film somewhat better. And when I say heavily-CGI, I MEAN heavily-CGI. It's very odd, though, that the Big Bad Orc is CGI when all the orcs from the original films were mostly real actors in extensive makeup and costume.

Lastly, the best sequence in the movie involves the best character in Middle-Earth. The "Riddles in the Dark" sequence with Gollum (who I listed as the best literary character of all time) is tense and entertaining. It shows Gollum slightly more human yet slightly more feral; you can tell he's had the One Ring for a long time, so long it's become a part of him (wink wink) and his daily life, and that's a huge credit to Andy Serkis, who reprises his role once again as the cursed creature. Unlike in The Lord of the Rings, he's not hunting his "precious," but rather living as a scavenger below Goblintown. It's a shame that Gollum won't likely make a reappearance in the next two films (since he doesn't appear again in the novel), so part of me hopes that we'll see Gollum's journey to Moria to set up his cameo in the tomb during Fellowship of the Ring. Regardless, though, Gollum was a welcome addition to the picture, and his role was played enough for the films.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey does suffer from being a tad long and from an overabundance of very apparent CGI, but the rest of the film works so well that I'm going to give this film 4 out of 5 stars. I'm sure that I'll revisit this film after the whole trilogy has been released, but for now, I thought the film deserves that score, and I also thought that it was a much better opener than Fellowship of the Ring.

So what about you? Did you like it, and did you prefer The Lord of the Rings over this book/film? Or how about the age-long question: Bilbo vs. Frodo, who do you prefer? Comment below, I'd love to hear your thoughts!