The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I enjoyed the spectacle of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, though I don't think The Two Towers or Return of the King impressed me quite to the degree that The Fellowship of the Ring managed.  My main memory of leaving the cinema after Fellowship was thinking how great the Balrog had been, but Towers and King really just felt like More Of The Same; having read the books, the story was no surprise, and so all there really was left was the grand visuals (and Andy Serkis' phenomenal Gollum).

Enter the Hobbit.

(That would be a different movie, wouldn't it?)

In almost every way, I think An Unexpected Journey was exactly what I expected from an adaptation of that book by that director; gloriously detailed sets, costumes, locations; those huge, sweeping vistas that New Zealand appears to have in abundance.  If you liked LotR, then odds are obviously extremely high that you'll enjoy the (first third of the) prequel.

But it's that "first third of the" that's really the bother, I think.  Even splitting the book in two for the movies was unexpected; three seems excessive, especially because An Unexpected Journey runs for over three hours.  A lot of the padding comes from the LotR Appendix scenes, but even so, three hours is a lot of time to dedicate to about a hundred pages of text.

The result of this, then, is a film that covers every paragraph in about the same detail; events glimpsed at a distance in a single paragraph in the book become five-minute action sequences that look like the opening level of God of War III.  Ultimately, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a film that feels more like the Extended Edition than the theatrical cut; a slightly bloated, occasionally saggy mess that loses momentum seemingly at random, and deflates its own sense of adventure.  The characters find themselves in peril, rescued, and back in peril again at least three times.

Rather than take the significant beats and keep the pace up, as with Lord of the Rings, Jackson has thrown everything at the audience, with no apparent concern about what does or doesn't work.  There's no reason for this to run so long and include as much as it does, except perhaps to throw a defiant "happy now!?" at the fans who complained about a lack of Tom Bombadil in Fellowship.

This has taken a bit of a negative turn, but my opinion generally isn't negative - it's a glorious-looking movie with some great performances.  It's just that the things that work throw into sharper contrast the things that don't.

I can't even come down with a Yes/No on this one, but to be honest, it doesn't matter.  You'll already know whether you want to see this or not.  

What I want to see is someone get all three films when they come out as Extended Editions on BluRay, and edit the thing down to a single movie - one with the same sense of whirlwind adventure the book has.