The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Visually stunning and held together by a charming script, the first chapter in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy is an entertaining fantasy adventure. While never consistently reaching the scope and tone of The Lord of the Rings, Jackson's passion to being Middle Earth to life remains strong.

DISCLAIMER: This is not a personal attack on your opinion This is just me expressing my own opinion on this film. I have no lens to hate or love this film more than it deserves.I really wanted to like this movie. I loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy and was so happy when they announced the new trilogy. Although this review is six years prior to its release, I still needed to express my utter disappointment with this film.Peter Jackson has given us works of art in the past. The Lord of The Rings trilogy has brought millions, myself especially, into Tolkien's whimsical and majestic world of Middle Earth, providing character development, cinematography, and acting that declared it as the Godfather of all fantasy movies. This makes what I am about to say even sadder.As you can tell by my title, The Hobbit was an unorganized and shelled out mess that had potential to be an excellent movie, yet fell short. I firmly believe that the root of the failure of this movie is the fact that there was barely anything to work with from the beginning. Tolkien had written The Hobbit as a short book that was capable of being read within a day if you spent most of your time throughout the day reading it. It was a children's book. It was fun and adventurous, while providing some aspects of stakes what with the dragon and orcs. Even then the dragon was charismatic yet scary with his questions and booming presence that made the reader fell like they were two feet tall standing before a monstrous volcano. The orcs were barely in the book, considering Bilbo was knocked out halfway through the battle and since the book is told from his perspective didn't continue the story. This is why The Lord of The Rings was so successful, because they adapted three books and twelve years of work into three movies. There was so much content and so much work put into this extensive universe that was perfectly adapted into film.Another reason this movie wasn't good was because it most definitely wasn't pursued by Peter Jackson and that he absolutely had to make the fabled children's book The Hobbit a movie. This movie wasn't made from passion like Lord of the Rings was. Lord of the Rings was a movie first and foremost. It was not made because Peter Jackson believed it could make money, though that always is a priority, it was made because Jackson believed he could make this beautiful universe into something that mirrored its beauty. And oh, how it did. This is where the Hobbit is flawed. This is where it failed. This movie was made as a product that would be blindly accepted and loved by fanboys who will immediately adore and praise anything with Jackson's or Tolkien's name on it.Now, let's talk about the film itself. The pacing of this film is just... bad. Its length isn't because the director absolutely needed three hours to portray the story perfectly, it's because every other Jackson movie with Tolkien's work is three hours long. However, the reason why the Lord of the Rings movies are so long is because it converts 400 pages of information into one singular film. The Hobbit, however is only one book consisting of 350 pages (roughly). So there has to be an unbearable amount of filler to make it three hours. I think this trilogy could have done well if it was two movies that were three hours and not three boring and pointless three-hour movies. The first act is an egged-on mess that take 45 MINUTES in the theatrical version for the company to go anywhere or do anything of importance. This whole act could have been cut in half and still deliver the same important plot points without boring the audience to death. Typically, you use the first act for character development of all the important characters. You can reveal a person's entire character with three lines of dialogue if you do it right. A perfect example of this is Gimli in the Fellowship of the Ring, who gives one... ONE line of dialogue and you know his character. This is of course when he says, "Well then why are we just standing around?" and then proceeds to try and destroy the ring of power with an axe. This action defines him as a brash warrior, who doesn't think before he charges into battle. He didn't consider the fact that it was a magic ring created by the single darkest force Middle Earth has ever seen because that is his character. Naturally you would expect in a 45-minute time slot you would be able to develop your characters quite well, since he developed the characters in The Fellowship of the Ring in 15. The thing is... the characters were not developed in this act. They weren't developed in the slightest, most minute way. All the dwarves were characterized by either their appearance or by the fact that they are indeed dwarves. For example, the fat one is characterized by being fat. The crazy one is characterized by being crazy because of the axe lodged in his head. All the others love drinking, being loud, singing, eating, and violence which are characteristics that every dwarf in this series has shown. They sort of develop Thorin to be this cynical and brooding dwarf who wishes to forget his past, but that's it. We already know Gandalf due to the three other movies he's been in. Bilbo is the last main character to develop and they didn't even do him well. He is a scared and skeptical pretty boy who has never had an adventure in his life who Gandalf chose for who knows why and denies their invitation to join and then goes to bed. But wait, after a change of heart unprovoked by anything Bilbo chases after the company and goes on his grand adventure. He changed his mind just like that. Don't even think about how you can die a horrible death. Be spontaneous! Throw caution to the wind!The second act was probably the least important, in fact I don't necessarily know when the second act ends and the third begins, because it blends together very badly. I will assume, since this is what normally happens in movies when the main character gets separated from the group that sparks the third act, I'll say it starts when Bilbo falls into Gollums hole. I actually quite like the riddles for the ring scene, but I can guarantee that is only because of Andy Serkis' performance. His movement and voice acting are unparalleled by any other actor. But of course, they must have the "action" scene in the goblin cave which is clearly there to keep the audience from falling asleep. This scene is quite anticlimactic due to the fact you can't make singing miniature orcs menacing, no matter how much CGI you use to make them look incredibly disgusting.The third act is just as anticlimactic as the first because Thorin finally faces his sworn enemy who we have only seen in a flashback and two additional scenes. Boy, they really developed this character to be the worst guy ever. Spoiler alert Thorin gets his beat down and is saved by the humble Hobbit. Oh yeah and by the way, did I forget to mention that Azog was only mentioned in one line of dialogue in the book never seen or spoken of ever again. Anyway, it ends with the Eagles swooping in and saving everybody, because they only show up if something important is happening and Azog does the typical character going "NOOOOOOOO" when something bad happens. Then the Eagles drop them on a high cliff and don't just take them to the mountain because we gotta get those fanboys watching another two movies, so we can get that GREEEEEN PAPER. Then Thorin does the typical "I was wrong about you the whole time because you were useful during the ending" line. But wait what's that the Lonely Mountain? Oh, cool we'll be there in no time even though we're walking. And then there's the ending scene of Smaug being alive which makes all the lines doubting if he is alive in the next movie irrelevant because cliffhanger.I got weirdly sarcastic in the last act summary because I really am just done with this film.In conclusion, this isn't a film, it's a scam to get Tolkien fanboys to get excited about their favorite director doing another trilogy. Whether or not it's good doesn't matter to them because they'll love it unconditionally so long as it has Jacksons name on it.Sorry if I offended you, but this is my opinion, so don't take it personally. You can still like the movie if you want I don't care one bit. I just made this to maybe open your eyes to how awful this film really is. I like bad films, for example Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith a bad movie, but a bad movie I like for personal reasons and nostalgia.

Now don't get me wrong from the summary, I did enjoy The Hobbit. I enjoyed it in fact more than I expected to especially since I delayed watching them because of certain fears and frustrations I had regarding it.The Hobbit was the very first book I read back in the mid 80's and I adored it. I simply couldn't figure out how it could be turned into a trilogy! I feared it was being done so to milk the franchise and let's be honest that's exactly why it was done.The Hobbit has most of the charm of LOTR and all of its beauty. Top that off with a stellar cast and it was destined to do well at the box office (Which it did) However something was different, something was.....off.Though the film contains the same level of violence as LOTR its overflowing with comedy and goofiness. I expected some, but not to this extent. At one point it felt like I was watching Labyrinth (1986) again, not like that's a bad thing but I didn't expect it here.It looks great, its scored near perfectly and as mentioned the cast do a great performance and it was nice to see the likes of James Nesbitt and Sylvester McCoy up on the big screen.Inevitably there was going to be comparison with LOTR, that was inescapable and the comparison just doesn't help it at all. It pales in comparison and with all the silliness I found myself underwhelmed.The Hobbit is a passable effort but is more like the Mythica series than Lord Of The Rings.The Good: Beautiful Excellent score Brilliant cast The Bad: Some parts go beyond comedic into the realms of silly Martin Freeman just isn't leading man material Goblin town song, really? Stock scream was totally unnecessary Things I Learnt From This Movie: Someone should never use the term "Mothers glory box" again The distance Bilbo's sword needs to detect orcs/goblins changes between scenes, any particular reason?

What I liked 1. The song at the shire house 2. Gandalf and Bilbo's performance 3. The scene at Rivendell What I didn't like 1. Set up for future movies 2. The goblin king 3. Most of the dwarfs weren't that interesting This is not a bad movie. It is a lot better than any of the sequels, but it is still far short of the main trilogy