The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Doing The Book Proud

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is the move version of J.R.R Tolkein’s book, The Hobbit.  It was released late 2012.  The movie follows the adventures of Bilbo Baggins some 60 years before the events of The Lord of The Rings.  The wizard Gandalf the Grey comes to Bilbo’s door and starts all kinds of trouble for the poor hobbit.  Bilbo, the wizard, and 12 dwarves set off towards the lonely mountain of Erebor, to reclaim their homeland from the terrible dragon Smaug.

Having read the book, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the movie stuck very closely to the events within the book.  The fact that the movie is just under 3 hours and only covers half of the little more than 300 page book corroborates this.  Unlike so many bad fantasy book remakes, The Hobbit followed the book almost exactly, including all of the events.    I noticed that a few events were a bit shorter or simplified , such as the dialogue with the three trolls, and the fact that Bilbo caught up to the dwarves, rather than meeting them at a town.  The cuts were good choices however, and didn’t detract from the movie too much.

One of the things the movie did best was maintain the childish, fun, feel that the book had.  The Hobbit is a children’s story after all.  This movie is very funny, blending action, drama, and humor much like The Pirates of The Caribbean did. Despite this fact, the movie is definitely not for children, with plenty of gore and bloodshed to appease the most avid action fans.  I wish I could talk more about specific points, but I don’t want to spoil any of the plot.

Over all, there isn’t a single thing that I didn’t like about this movie.  The casting was well done, and the plot was well adapted from the book to the movie.  You got to see a bit of the character of each of the 12 dwarves, even though there are so many of them.  Ian McKellen’s Gandalf was as good, if not better than he was in The Lord of The Rings movies, and Bilbo’s character development is just as exciting as it seems natural.  The only problem I had is that I have to wait in order to see the second part.

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