The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

I am not one of the many people in the world that have been waiting for The Hobbit film since God only knows when. Nor was I even particularly interested in it during most of the build-up. That is, until I saw the trailer for the first time and realised quite what the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey meant – more Lord of the Rings! It includes the same actors as the LOTR, reprising their roles from the trilogy, and the music’s the same. It was the music that got me – it contains the same themes and is in the same style and suddenly I was eagerly anticipating the release of this film. Because I love Lord of the Rings. Completely, stupidly love it. I’ve seen all three God knows how many times, I’ve done the thing of watching all the extended versions back to back, know most of the actors’ names, and memorised a decent quantity of the script.

So obviously I read the books, or rather book. Once will do – I can hold my head up high and say I’ve read it but never need to worry about it again. I didn’t go on to read The Hobbit though. That is something I’ve rectified, I’m currently reading it and I made sure I’d read at least enough to cover the first film before I went. But possibly that’s what ruined the film for me.

It looks phenomenal – there’s no two ways about that. I felt compelled (unlike with most films) to splash out and watch it in 3D, and in the high frame rate that everyone keeps banging on about. The end result is gob-smacking. The hills and the mountains look ridiculously good and the depth given by the 3D made me completely forget I was watching a film. In a good way.

The problem with 3D is when there’s action; or close-ups. My eyes can’t keep up and it goes a bit too blurry for me to remain in my disbelief-suspended film-watching mode. Which is mostly why I don’t normally watch non-animated films in 3D. I don’t know if there’s technology that needs improving there, or just that my eyes are crap, but it spoils it. If it wasn’t for that then I would call the visuals pretty near perfect. 

Incidentally the HFR didn’t bother me at all. Maybe it needed a little getting used to but probably no more than normal 3D would have done.

I had a slight worry about Martin Freeman being Bilbo. He didn’t seem right for it at first but I will hold my hand up and confess I was completely wrong – he did a very good job and it worked really well. It is, of course, always nice to see Ian McKellen and again, Andy Serkis produced a crazy-good Gollum. What I wasn’t expecting was to recognise so many other faces. LOTR didn’t contain that many well-known actors and although it was natural that a few more would jump on the Tolkien band-wagon faces such as those belonging to James Nesbitt (Cold Feet, Bloody Sunday), and Aiden Turner (Being Human, Desperate Romantics) were a surprise.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but my number one pet hate with adapted screenplays is when they change the book. Obviously you have to change the book a little – miss bits out, possibly re-order some stuff so it makes sense for the screen, but don’t just make things up. Especially for absolutely no reason. The slightly altered ending of the American version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo springs to mind as a pointless, completely unnecessary change. I won’t mention anything specific about The Hobbit because someone geekier than me will point me straight to the part of the Silmarillion, or the precise LOTR appendix from which it was taken but suffice it to say, enough was different to the book to make me really quite annoyed by the end. And not in a slightly rolling the eyes kind of way. Properly annoyed.

But I’m ignoring that. It’s more Lord of the Rings and I’m determined to love it in the end. I’ll watch it differently next time, and not just because I won’t have the fancy-pants technology.