The Hobbit, an Unexpected Journey Review.

Like a shiney eyed fanboy I paid my 9.90 euro's to see the midnight screening of The Hobbit, an Unexpected Journey.

Now that I have had some sleep and let The Hobbit sink in... I can give a bit of a review.

First I would just like to say that I am a fan of Tolkien, having read pretty much all of his work at least once, some twice other three times. I am also a fan of what Jackson did with the Lord of the Rings films. So I'm not bashing this because I dont understand the source material or understand how films are made, and yes I will be basing the Hobbit.

So lets start by asking if you know which film im talking about.

"The story about a group of adventurers that first visit the elven city of Rivendell, then take a journey over a big snowy mountain, they enter a deep dark mountain stronghold where they are attacked by goblins and end in a big showdown on a bridge stretching across a chasm and its up to Gandalf to defeat the evil on the bridge so they can escape. This leads to a final showdown where a big bad Orc that has been chasing them finally catches up to them and its up to an unlikely hero to save the day."

If you think I'm talking about Lord of the Rings you wrong.


I really thought there could be nothing worse than 3D movies. Now there is... 3D Movies at 48 frames a second.

It removes the darkness and magic from the movie and makes it look like a cheap australian soap opera shot on hand held HD camera's.

With Lord of the Rings you could believe in the world, you could feel the gritty darkness. You had trouble knowing what was real and what was computer generated.

With the Hobbit you could see EVERY SINGLE CGI effect, everything felt plastic and fake. I had trouble believing in what I saw, and not for a lack of wanting to... I truly wanted to believe... The scenes at Bagend is truly HORRIFIC! and I kept expecting a live audience to clap or laugh at the funny moments.

I honestly think that 48 frames a sec is the true evil that has invaded middle earth and should be taken to mount doom and cast back into the fires it was created in.

Next there is their absolute mind boggling choice in voices. Pretty much every single orc, goblin and Troll sounds like a northerner (North England, UK) hooked on acid and helium.

The most stupid and ridiculous scene was the 3 Trolls scene, one I was actually most looking forward to.

Then there is also the fact that The Hobbit will now be stretched into 3 movies... THREE movies!!! I already had trouble sitting through the first 170 minutes. So much fluff has been added that it totally dilutes the storyline and the various tangents seem to have no bearing on the main storyline.

I actually shudder to think that I will have to spend 510 minutes or 8.5 hours (guesstimation if next two films are also 170min) to see the full Hobbit trilogy.

The ONLY REDEEMING part of the film for me was the meeting and interaction between Bilbo and Smeagol / Golum for a few heartbeats I could once again believe and feel emotion about what I am seeing.

Sadly these were the only times I felt empathy or even ay kind of fear. The rest was just fluffy fluff stuff that fluffed the fluff.

There was a few LOL moments for me where I truly LOL'd, and yes I'm going to call it LOL as those moments are as fake as the use of the acronym LOL.

My only hope is to see it on DVD , not blueray but DVD so that the curse of 48 frames cannot invade my livingroom, or at 24 frames per second. I suspect that might change my perceptions slightly.

In closing, like the abomination that Star Wars episode 1-3 was and the Matrix 2 and 3, I will go see the other Hobbit movies and I will probably see the Hobbit, an Unexpected Journey again just to try to believe in it.