And so we're back in Middle Earth again and it's a joy to be back!
'An Unexpected Journey' begins just before Bilbo Baggins' party at the start of 'The Fellowship Of The Ring' as we see Ian Holm and Elijah Wood reprise their roles again, I like the way it all dovetailed nicely into The Lord Of The Rings films, and when Martin Freeman's Bilbo Baggins appears, it's 60 years before the events of The Lord Of The Rings and the beginning of Bilbo's adventure to help the dwarves take back The Lonely Mountain from Smaug.
As with other recent films that were adapted from books (John Carter from Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess Of Mars and Total Recall from Philip K Dick's We Can Remember It For You Wholesale for example), I had to read the book first. Yes, I never expect to see a movie that fully adapts a book to film too faithfully, as some scenes work better on the page and in your imagination than up on the silver screen, but the main parts of The Hobbit's first six chapters are there; the introduction of the dwarves, the three trolls, the stone giants, the goblins, finding the ring, the riddles in the dark with Bilbo and Gollum, the attack of the Wargs and the appearance of the eagles.
Director Peter Jackson has also mined the appendices at the back of The Return Of The King book and we see expanded sequences like the early history of Erebor, a glimpse of Smaug, Radagast The Brown's discovery of the Necromancer, the Battle Of Azanulbizar between the dwarves and orcs and the White Council in Rivendell. These scenes certainly pad the movie out to fill out the 169 minutes, but they also serve to fill in some of the back story and further links The Hobbit to the events that will happen in The Lord Of The Rings. Some might question the reason for stretching out a story that comprises of just 19 chapters into three films, but with adding what's in the appendices, you will get a better, overall feel of the history and goings on in Middle Earth, enriching the whole experience of watching these movies and to me that's no bad thing. I envision a massive Hobbit / Lord Of The Rings movie marathon once the boxset come out!
Visually, Weta have hit the mark again, creating a believable world inhabited by hobbits, dwarves, elves, goblins, orcs and more. My only criticism is of the wolf like Wargs, they did seem a bit cartoonish looking compared to everything else, but they don't detract from the action sequences.
Howard Shore is back on scoring duties too, with some familiar musical themes that hark back to The Lord Of The Rings as well. All good!
Overall, 'The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey' is very much worth your while, especially if you are a fan of The Lord Of The Rings films and original book. Yes, it does take a while to get going (as first films in a trilogy tend to do), but once it does, you'll be swept along for a rather enjoyable ride. The downside, we've got to wait a whole year for the second installment; 'The Desolation Of Smaug'. I can't wait!
**** out of 5
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