The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) Review

 

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

An Unexpected Journey follows Bilbo Baggins, who is recruited by Gandalf to accompany a group of dwarves across Middle Earth in search of their home, the legendary Erebor.

It’s been a grueling wait for me to return to Middle Earth, but I figured it was long enough. So much of this first prequel to The Lord of the Rings is exposition, filling us in on what’s come before and more setting the stage for what’s to come. It doesn’t accomplish much in it’s nearly 3 hour runtime (which is saying something), but it does give us a neat refresher on how Bilbo acquired Sting, stole the ring from Gollum, and started out on his journey away from the Shire. In many respects, this feels like a rehashing of Fellowship of the Ring, sometimes even ripping certain scenes from that shot for shot, in what was either clever parallelism, or just lazy storytelling.

There isn’t much in the form of story or conflict, like I said, more setting up the next two movies I’m assuming, something that is likely due to the Hobbit being one, really short book. There’s a lot added as filler and that shows, but the few scenes of action we get are really well done and bring a nice energy into a movie that drags a lot at times.

Peter Jackson returns to direct and frankly, I am really happy with that. He understands this world and it’s characters and his style from LOTR was carried over seamlessly, making it feel how a prequel to that should.

Weta Digital returns to do the VFX and while it looks great, it’s oddly on par with their VFX from nearly a decade before, which I can't tell if that's a good thing or bad.  Howard Shore also comes back to score the film, which is probably the aspect that's lacking the most, not really having any pieces that stand out and bring the energy we're accustomed to from him.

We get a pretty decent cast, but one that’s far too large, never sacrificing any of the dwarves (which I feel needed to happen), featuring Ian McKellen, Aiden Turner, Richard Armitage, and Martin Freeman. I quite like Freeman as Bilbo, as he brings a world weary innocence to the part that differs greatly from his nephew Frodo.

An Unexpected Journey, directed by Peter Jackson, is a pleasant return to Middle Earth that gives us some much needed backstory but falls into the trap of setting up a trilogy, unable to stand on its own with a begrudging runtime for a slow movie.

7.3/10