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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

the-hobbit

Millions of fans worldwide finally got what they were waiting for on December 14th, 2012 when The Hobbit movie finally came out. This long awaited prequel to the famed Lord of the Rings series exceeded expectations.

A lot of fans were disgruntled when they heard that The Hobbit was going to be three parts, considering the size of the book and the weight of its story as compared to The Lord of the Rings. This classic book series is the genius creation of WWII era British author J. R. R. Tolkien.  The books are more popular than ever with the new release of The Hobbit, due also to the hugely successful Lord of the Rings movies, directed by Peter Jackson and starring Elijah Wood. The Hobbit was also directed by Peter Jackson, and his unique camera angles and vision kept fans such as myself happy.

Most readers would agree that the Hobbit has a lighter, much less epic—though no less enjoyable—plot than the three Lord of the Rings books.It is about the adventures of one Hobbit and a troupe of Dwarves as the Dwarves seek to reclaim their lost land from a dangerous Dragon called Smaug. They must face Goblins, Wargs (evil, giant wolves), Trolls and much more just to arrive at the land of the Dragon.

This first part of The Hobbit, “An Unexpected Journey” only covered the beginning of the book, where a stuffy, respectable Hobbit named Bilbo who never did anything unexpected, and certainly never went on any preposterous adventures, has a bunch of strange Dwarves and one Wizard show up at his home and demand that he go on an adventure…which he does! And the adventure gets well underway in this movie. Thanks to the cinematic genius of Peter Jackson and everyone else involved, the film did appear to have a good conclusion and not just randomly end. There were even complaints (few) from non-fans (Fools. They must be Tooks.) who protested that the movie was too long, though, at 2 hours and 49 minutes it is a similar length to each of the three Lord of the Rings movies.

Even though there may have been less to cover, every scene was covered in astonishing detail, and little lines from the book that were important to the larger story were played up, but not overly. There was little deviation from the book, and as a mega-fan, I can say that none of it was bad.

Complaints from other reviewers have been that the film was too “herky jerky” and the zooming, turning, excellent camera angles made some people in New Zealand, where the film was filmed and premiered, sick, but I didn’t get that feeling at all. I did not see it in 3-D, though I heard it was excellent and very realistic. The motion-sickness complaints may have been from the 3-D version, because the regular film was excellent; take my word and millions of others for it.