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

I saw The Hobbit last night at an advanced showing. First off I'll say that it was a great movie, very entertaining, and had the look and feel of the LOTR films. Second I am by no means an expert but I did read The Hobbit as a kid and loved it, I never read LOTR or any of the supplementary writings so my review is based on the simple original telling of The Hobbit, the original work that started all the rest of the Middle Earth stories and adventures.

First off the movie goes into great detail, and covers numerous back stories and side stories plus character development. This first episode pretty much covers chapters 1-6 of the book with some additional stuff that is not part of the original story. So you can see why they ended up with 3 movies, which to me no one should complain about because, as we saw in the LOTR trilogy, unlike many movies being released these days these ones are well worth our money and time.

Second, Peter Jackson takes a lot, and I mean a lot, of artistic freedom in the movie, so if you go in, like me, thinking its going to mostly mirror The book, your going to be disappointed and find yourself saying" that never happened" or "that's not how that happened" a great deal. Most of the changes do not make significant changes to the story and some make perfect sense for translating from the book to film. Such as how Bilbo finds the ring and his encounter with, and eventual escape from, Gollum. While it's not word for word, scene for scene accurate to the book it gets the same result and feel and is probably the best and funniest part of the movie.

There are some changes, however, that seem completely unnecessary and actually distract from the original story significantly. I believe he made these to try and tie into the LOTR films, and he is also including some supplimental stuff Tolkein wrote about after LOTR that added some additional stories that occured during the Hobbit time frame (mostly what Gandolf was off doing when he left them). All of this contributes to the reason he ended up making 3 films.

Finally, if you've never read the book or seen the 1980's cartoon, for that matter, you'll love it and will never know the difference. My 10 year old and his friend both loved it and can't wait for the next one.

Regardless it's going to make at least 400 million at the box office!