Starring Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Ken Stott, Graham McTavish, William Kircher, James Nesbitt, Stephen Hunter, Dean O’Gorman, Aidan Turner, John Callen, Peter Hambleton, Jed Brophy, Mark Hadlow, Adam Brown, Hugo Weaving, Andy Serkis, Sylvester McCoy, Barry Humphries
Directed by Peter Jackson
Expectations: High, but guarded because of so many people’s negative or mediocre responses to it so far.
When The Hobbit was first announced as a two-film series, I balked. I said to myself, “There’s not enough there for two movies; they’re just milking it because Lord of the Rings was popular. What a shame.” Then when they announced it was going to be three movies, I thought something similar, but Jackson’s video diary about it led me to believe that despite my fears, he had something up his sleeve. And boy, did he ever! The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is everything I could have ever hoped for and much, much more. My memories that there wasn’t enough story in the novel for two movies were insane, as Jackson gives us a thrilling journey to remember based on only the first third of the book. Things that are just a few pages in the book become incredibly unforgettable sequences, perfectly adapted from the page to the cinematic medium. Where others might call this lengthening a misstep, it allows Peter Jackson the room necessary to deliver a rich, fulfilling journey that explores the material in depth, and fantasy is all about the journey. The Hobbit is definitely not for fair-weather fantasy fans, it is made by and for people looking to get lost in another world.
You probably read the book at some point during your high school career, but for those without a history, The Hobbit is the tale of Bilbo Baggins and his great adventure with a company of dwarves and the wizard Gandalf. It takes place 60 years before the events of Lord of the Rings, and the book has a much lighter tone than that later work. The film also features this difference in tone — perfectly captured, I might add — but where the novel is fairly light throughout, the film does its best to weave in lines that connect with the Lord of the Rings films, pumping up the grand action whenever it can. And by “does its best,” I mean “it’s fucking awesome.”