The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Before I start today’s review, I would like to give a little history on The Hobbit novel. Years after J.R.R. Tolkien finished The Lord of the Rings trilogy, his fans were asking him about what happened before with Bilbo. Since the fans really wanted to know, Tolkien had sat down and wrote The Hobbit, which is surprisingly an easier read. After how much successful Peter Jackson made The Lord of the Rings trilogy on screen, I guess an adaptation on The Hobbit was inevitable. However, unlike a lot of adaptations where the last movie is split up into two parts, The Hobbit was given three movies. Today, we will look at the first of the trilogy, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” released in 2012.

Bob Mondello from NPR started his review out by saying, “The Hobbit's path to the screen may have started out as tortuous as a trek through the deadly Helcaraxe, filled with detours (Guillermo del Toro was initially going to direct), marked by conflict (New Zealand labor disputes) and strewn with seemingly insurmountable obstacles (so many that the filmmakers threatened to move the shoot to Australia).”

Since Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy grossing in about $3 billion at the box office, there was never any real doubt that the final Tolkien book on Middle-Earth fantasy would definitely become a film – or, as I stated before, a trilogy.

With that said, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” isn’t “unexpected” in any way, though between its lighter tone and a decade’s wait for improvements in digital film techniques, there should be enough of a originality case to make most fans happy.

After a part that flashbacks the expulsion of the dwarves from their Lonely Mountain kingdom by the treasure-wanting dragon Smaug, Jackson turns to the Shire, 60 years before the events in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Frodo’s Uncle Bilbo, reprised by Ian Holm in a framing part and by an intelligently cast Martin Freeman in the flashbacks, is a qualified youngster, while Gandalf, reprised by Ian McKellen, is described by Mondello as “looks as old as the New Zealand hills.”

Gandalf says to Bilbo, “I’m looking for someone to share in an adventure.”

Bilbo denies, but that night, dwarves appear on his doorstep. The first eats his dinner, another searches his pantry, then there’s more. They are an energetic group – not seven dwarfs, but 13 (Richard Armitage, Ken Stott, William Kircher, James Nesbitt, Stephen Hunger, Mark Hadlow, Graham McTavish, Dean O’Gorman, Peter Hambleton, Aidan Turner, Jed Brophy, John Callen and Adam Brown), all with shocking facial hair and with the mission to take back their home land – right after they:

1. Get familiar
2. Have Dinner
3. Fill out some paperwork, and
4. Sing a couple of songs (Misty Mountains and Blunt the Knives)

You’ll get the feeling that there’s a bit of filling going on here. Although Tolkien’s book The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, is shorter than the other trilogy that make up The Lord of the Rings, it was turned all by itself into a brand new trilogy. Mondello mentions, “So where the challenge in LOTR was to condense and reduce and condense again, the challenge here is to include every syllable, plus an appendix or two to boot.”

Mondello went on to say, “In this first film — which covers just six book chapters in close to three hours — the filmmakers are reduced to detailing troll recipes and staging a hedgehog rescue.” Also, they happily make a real good encounter with the one creature who makes any work to Middle-Earth worth it: Gollum.

Actor Andy Serkis and motion-capture still brings out the most memorable character in the 21^st Century movies. Here, though the main story goes toward energetic high spirits becoming the material’s origins in a child-friendly book, Gollum is sinister – even dangerous. Mondello is right when he says, “The high-stakes game of questions he plays with Bilbo is the one moment when this movie can't be dismissed as Lord of the Rings-lite.”

Still, even if it’s mostly CGI this time rather than story that’s giving the depth, there is a new feel to estimate with. Mondello said, “Director Jackson takes to 3-D like an orc to battle, turning an escape from a cave full of goblins into a plunge inside a Rube Goldberg contraption — the camera soaring one way as our heroes careen another, across spindly wooden bridges that sway and collapse in a choreographed frenzy.” Gangs of goblins flying in on ropes get turned into pinwheels, giant logs become pinball flippers hitting them right and left, all in a new method that increases the number of frames per second, making even the fastest action clear, smooth and hesitate-free.

Does that high frame rate also make slower scenes look too real – not orcs and dwarfs, but actors in makeup? Well, if you’re worried about that, you have to the choice to see the movie in six different ways: the usual standard format and 3D format, plus IMAX and 3D IMAX, the new high-frame-rate 3D, and high-frame-rate 3D IMAX. You have the option for how “realistic” you want your fantasy world.

Just remember that all that’s really needed for giving suspension of disbelief is an army of wanting. An army that is already, a day before this was released, lined up at your local theaters.

If you liked The Lord of the Rings trilogy and want to know about The Hobbit, not only would you have to read the book, but see this movie as well. It leaves on a nice cliffhanger so that you can eagerly await the next film. Trust me when I say that this movie is actually worth checking out, even though I don’t think it’s as good as the other three, but still good, nonetheless.

How is the next film you ask? Stay tuned tomorrow in my “Hobbit-a-thon” to find out.