I have never really been much of a “Lord of the Rings” fanatic, but I enjoy the movies. I think they are great pieces of filmmaking, but I am not about to go out and buy Gollum-themed bed sheets. While “An Unexpected Journey” doesn’t change my feelings toward the franchise, it does manage to be as good as the other films, albeit in a completely different way.
“The Hobbit,” for those of you with your pulse far from the field of literature, was written by J.R.R. Tolkien 70 years ago, and was intended to be a bedtime story for his kids. It follows the misadventures of a well-to-do hobbit named Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf the wizard and a company of dwarves on their way to reclaim a horde of treasure stolen by a dragon.
This basically sums up the movie’s plot as well. Jackson faithfully hits all the keynotes of the original book while adding in some other bits from the expanded universe of LOTR. Most notably of these is a plotline centered on a mysterious Necromancer briefly mentioned in the original work, but elaborated upon in other Tolkien works.
The inclusion of this undead enthusiast is meant to solidify the bonds between The Hobbit movies and LOTR films to make much more of a single entity. This is the set-up stage and hopefully in the next film they actually start doing something about this character.
As for the acting side of things, everybody does a good job. The dwarves, even if they are a bit homogenized, do endear themselves and manage to be a lot of fun. Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis and Martin Freeman are the standouts, with the former two stepping back into their iconic roles with ease and the latter absolutely nailing Bilbo Baggins. Freeman made me care more about Bilbo than I ever cared for Frodo and the other hobbits, and this is due to the tone of the film.
The LOTR films were all about an epic struggle between good and evil to decide the fate of the world and all the peoples in it. “The Hobbit” is about short people having silly adventures, beating up a dragon and finding treasure. There is not as much at stake, but that’s a good thing in this case. It allows the film to really explore Middle-earth and build-up the world a little. You get a good sense of what this world is like when there is not some great big, flaming eyeball scaring everybody half to death.
“An Unexpected Journey” is a fun, well-paced return to Jackson’s Middle-earth, and is a great starting point for “The Hobbit” trilogy as a whole. I can’t wait to see the story continue in December.
