A return to Middle Earth

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey review.

Seeing my favorite book in all of Middle Earth come to life on screen was an amazing experience. I may be biased since I enjoyed the book better than the rest of the novels but I feel that we have seen the better film (and once it's done the better trilogy)

This review will be spoiler laden:

Spending extra time in the Shire was a treat for me. I can never get enough of Hobbiton. And since we didn't get to see the scouring of the Shire in the previous films, it was nice to visit again. Tying this film to the beginning of Fellowship was a lovely touch. Then we jumped right back to the main story and Martin Freeman appeared. Genius casting as the younger Bilbo. 

For all the extra bits added in to the film I must say so far I am impressed. The Hobbit was primarily told from Bilbo's perspective so getting a bit more back story on the Dwarves and their fall from Erebor was handled perfectly. Bringing back Radagast to help tie in the Necromancer was seamless and Sylvester McCoy played the role with the perfect amount of weirdness.

So some are looking at the Hobbit book and thinking 'how can they make three films out of this?' and at face value they would be right. To me though it looks like Jackson is going for as true of an adaptation as possible and that just fills me with glee. We ended the first film with escaping the Goblin King and being saved by the Eagles. I predict the next film will see everything up to the death of Smaug and then the final film will be the battle of the Five Armies. Where will we see Gandalf and his dealings with the Necromancer will be interesting.

I saw it in 3D Imax (the imax was nice, but the 3D is still not worth it for me) and the film did look amazing. I did not get to see it in the new 48fps so I still can't say anything about it. At this point I will wait until another film comes out with it to form an opinion. If I go see this film again, its going to be a standard projection.