The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey(2012)- User Reviews

I enjoyed this movie very much. I had heard "its long", "lots of walking", and I had tried to imagine how the plot of the Hobbit could be spread across 3 movies and started to feel less urgency to go see the film. After watching it, I am very glad it is split into 3 movies if they are all as good as the first one. The movie went fast, was paced fast, never spent too long in one place, portrayed back stories that really brought the movie to life and added characters and scenes that filled in the movie and improved it for the big screen. The original story does get manipulated slightly, which I didn't love and didn't always see a good purpose behind the changes, but they succeeded in making a great movie so I didn't mind.

I highly recommend. I'm not sure why, but I think I enjoyed it more than Lord of the Rings - but that is probably because it is fresh in my mind. Their are few things about Hobbit and LOTR both I wish they would have toned down, personally, such as how orcs are horror-movie monster scary, and how they occasionally go too big and grand with CGI scenes to where the overblown scope of some battles and scenes remind you they were done on a computer. I think that toning CGI scope down would actually tend to keep you in the story more and keep you believing what is going on. Star Wars Episode I-III were textbook examples of too much CGI and too big of CGI scenes - I didn't feel like I was immersed in the movie - I was annoyed. Avatar succeeded with its CGI and the CGI was prevalent throughout and occasionally big in scope - perhaps SW I-III were just annoying on so many other levels... A little self control goes a long way.