Marval Movie

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is the first part of this now curiously unexpected trilogy (as I talked about in an earlier post) it has ambition that also comes with all new technology that intends to change the way 3D movies are seen. However I am reminded of the old saying that the bigger they are the harder they fall and while The Hobbit does not crash and die a horrible failure it does topple, just a bit.

Naturally the film stats with Bilbo Baggins as a young Hobbit played by Martin Freeman. When Gandalf (Ian Mckellen) comes by offering Bilbo an adventure, of coarse to a simple Hobbit an adventure is the last thing he wants but Gandalf invites himself for supper. Later Bilbo gets a visitor from an estranged Dwarf and then another and then another and another. Eventually we have thirteen Dwarfs and Gandalf and it seems that Gandalf has selected Bilbo as the groups burglar.

The group needs a burglar because an ancient Dwarf kingdom has been taken over by Smaug the Dragon who now coverts the great treasure that the Dwarfs have accumulated. Also there is word of a Necromancer, a wizard that can bring back the dead. Both Smaug and the Necromancer will be played by Benedict Cumberbatch, we never get to actually see or hear him in these parts, they merely act to wet our appetites for I suspect, the next movie and as a big Cumberbatch fan I wait with anticipation for the next movie.

Martin Freeman is a perfect Bilbo, he is clearly an every man, or every Hobbit that has spent his whole life in the Shire and lived a simple life and is clearly a fish out of water with these swashbuckling, adventurous Dwarfs. The Dwarfs themselves are fun enough, there are thirteen and only did I get a scenes of a few of them Bombur annoyed me the most because his character was literally "the fat one" that's it there's nothing else to his character he's fat, he likes food a lot. From what I got of the Dwarfs I liked the and they seem fun enough and maybe they could find room in the next two movies to develop the others but I feel worried that there charm may ware thin in the next four hours that I will have to endure of them.

One of the best things about watching The Hobbit is the feeling of being back, it is wonderful to again be back at the Shire, to see our favorite characters again. Phi Lamar said about being back on Futurama that "its like you  win the lottery and then eight years later they tell you there's more" and that is what this feels like, The Lord of the Rings had great characters and casting and you feel very lucky to be seeing them again. As I'm sure everyone already knows Andy Serkis is back as Gollum and it is easily one of the best moments of the film as well as the CGI never looking better, this is just scarily great CGI.

The main attraction for the Hobbit is that Peter Jackson shot the movie in forty eight frames a second, this was done so that the 3D would look more smooth and deliver a sharper picture. For the previews of the movie the critics who saw it came out saying that it looked like a TV movie and cheap. I decided that since it was in the planning stages from the beginning I would see The Hobbit in 3D (which I usually avoid) and with the higher frame rate. This new way of shooting a movie doesn't work, the images look flat and poorly lit as well as that the 3D is severely lackluster it looks like The Lion King in 3D where the character floats closer to the audience and the background is in the back. Perhaps they just need time to adapt to the new equipment or they needed to spent more time in post production but what we have is a multimillion dollar movie that looks pretty cheep.

Naturally because the three hundred page book has now been turned into a three part movie they have had to either stretch out or add things to the original material. What Jackson and his collaborators have mainly done is explain where Gandalf continually disappears off to during the coarse of the book, now we follow him and we learn what was so important that he had to leave poor out of place Bilbo by himself. This I am fine with because these parts are put in by Tolkien himself from his other works. Other things like adding an estranged Brown Wizard and a big bad white Orc I care for much less.

The first part of this trilogy is enjoyable enough, there are some lighthearted comedy relief that maybe the younger viewers would enjoy but there are some seriously dark scary moments that I would not recommend for younger viewers. What we have is a very mixed to uneven package, but gets much more right than it does wrong and maybe when all three movies are released we will appreciate the Hobbit as a whole more than the some of its parts. Either way if you do decide to see it do not go to see it in 3D with the extra frame rate.

Rating: 3 stars out of 4