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| Martin Freeman is Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey |
QUICK REVIEW:
Bilbo Baggins is writing of his great adventure 60 years in the past, in which Gandalf and a group of dwarfs took him to their Lonely Mountain and the dragon Smaug.
The group don't get that far here in the first of the Hobbit trilogy at all, and that is only a problem for the film, because the character gallery is far from as strong in individualities and the plot far from as dramatically exciting as was the case in the superior The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001: '02; '03), which The Hobbit saga is a prequel to. The Hobbit movies are based on J. R. R. Tolkien's (Farmer Giles of Ham (1949)) 1937 novel The Hobbit or There and Back Again, which is adapted by Fran Walsh (The Lovely Bones (2009)), Philippa Boyens (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)), great Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (Pacific Rim (2013)) and great co-writer/director Peter Jackson (Dead Alive/Braindead (1992)).
The dwarfs are amusing enough, but I found them hard to distinguish from each other, and Richard Armitage (Hannibal (2015), TV-series) as Thorin is far from the greatness that was Viggo Mortensen (Far from Men/Loin des Hommes (2014)) as Aragorn.
The group run into many beasts, who they each time have to fight, and it becomes an overlong, boring affair that Jackson's technical innovations of 3D use and filming in 48 frames per second (fps) don't alleviate.
In Unexpected Journey, we spend a long time with Gollum and meet other familiar faces from the LOTR films as well, but the thrilling scope of those films are missing.
The costumes, makeup and CGI effects (trolls and monsters in particular) of the film are truly impressively well-crafted, however. But it is far from enough to make a great movie.
Jackson is working on his follow-up to the Hobbit movies now: The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun (2016).
Related reviews:
Peter Jackson: The Frighteners (1996) - FX-driven ghost comedy madness
Braindead/Dead Alive (1992) - Jackson's best film ever is a gore classic! Bad Taste (1987) or, Peter Jackson's Hungry Aliens in New Zealand
Watch the trailer for the film here
Cost: The film's Wikipedia page estimates it betwen 200-315 mil.$
Box office: 1,021 mil. $
= Big hit
[The Hobbit movies were shot back-to-back in New Zealand, as the LOTR films had also been, in March 2011 - July 2012. The film rolled out in a huge way in Jackson's native New Zealand, where 100,000 people crowded Wellington's streets to celebrate the premiere. The Hobbit braved lukewarm reviews and broke box office records galore: Making 84.6 mil. $ in its first weekend in North America, the film held on to the #1 spot there for three weeks and grossed 303 mil. $ (29.7 5 of the total gross) in North America, breaking the December midnight record, the December opening day record and the December opening weekend record, (previously held by, respectively, Avatar (2009), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) and I Am Legend (2007).) Its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Germany (88.8 mil. $/8.7 %) and the UK (78.6 mil. $/7.7 %). Unexpected Journey was a global blockbuster that became the 4th highest-grossing film of 2012 and the 15th movie ever to break 1 Bil. $. It was Oscar-nominated for Best Visual Effects, Production Design and Makeup and Hairstyling but won none. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is fresh at 64 % with a 6.6 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
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