The Starter is finally served...but we're all waiting for the Main Course & Dessert!

Rating: 6/10 (17 December 2012)

The obvious has already been stated by almost everyone – The book is simply too slim to support a 9 hour movie trilogy and what's more it isn't serious or even "epic" enough to sustain such a treatment. Then there is the fact that unlike the original LOTR series where each movie corresponded to a particular book, here they have arbitrarily chopped one book up into 3 segments , so each episode is an artificial creation, not the realisation of a particular volume from literature. Plus of course, many more people have read "The Hobbit" and are thus familiar with it, and since most know it from childhood, they become particularly attached to it, and consequently become less forgiving of messing around with the story and characters.
"An Unexpected Journey" arrives with the same hype that "The Fellowship of the Ring" did 11 years ago, and like "FOTR" (and even "The Phantom Menace" 3 years earlier) it has to carry the massive weight of expectations plus a year+ long media and marketing blitz preceding it despite being probably the least consequential of the trilogy and the least interesting or spectacular. Of course how we feel about "AUJ" will change after 2014 when the cycle is complete and we see it for what it is, Episode 1 of 3, but for now there is the inevitable sensation upon leaving it that "nothing really happened in that one", with all the good bits yet to come. Also LOTR was the first movie that introduced the idea of the yearly episode, a new phenomenon then in event movies that has been mutated, like 3D, into what is perceived by most filmgoers as a cynical cash-grab used by greedy studios who inflate novels into vast drawn out soufflés to get more ticket revenues and DVD sales, so audiences are less starry-eyed this time around. It's rather like looking forward to a really grand dinner, and getting a decent starter only to be told you will get the main course next year, and the desert a year after that, then another year for the coffee( if you want the "full version" DVD/Blu-Ray)
What of the film itself? Well the actors are all good, and anyone from England will recognise a lot of familiar character actors under the heavy make-up (not least Martin Freeman who no-one ever thought they would see headlining a major blockbuster). Certain parts of the film tie in fairly well with the book, especially the opening party/gathering, the scene with the 3 hungry trolls and of course Bilbo's game of riddles with Gollum (all well known and loved scenes from the book) Faring less well are the Goblins, who are largely brushed aside, though the Goblin King was well done, both in animation and in character, with the great Barry Humphries no less giving him a droll and witty edge. The scene in Rivendell is beefed up as much as similar scenes were in the LOTR adaptations, with a tie in to that trilogy in the form of Galadriel and Sauruman and foreshadowing of the growing Sauron menace. Actually it was interesting to see so many actors from the original series returning here (including older Bilbo and Frodo in a pre-FOTR moment) most of them digitally face-lifted to hide the fact they are all much older now, not alas with very convincing results.
The lack of a "big-bad", with Smaug not even seen yet and "the Dark One" just a rumour, leads to one major mistake, the creation of an angry Orc king with a personal vendetta against Thorin (He killed Thorin's father and Thorin chopped his arm off), who of course is not in the novel and whose inclusion feels clumsy and cheap, especially since the whole thing is such a cliché and can't avoid coming across as one. He and the Orcs push aside the Goblins and reduce the scene where they hide up trees from the wolves into an overblown symphony of stupidity (even more so when Bilbo suddenly turns into Rambo!) He's still around for the next 2 so that bodes ill.
The CGI has come leaps and bounds from the ground-breaking work of the originals, with an even more realistic Gollum, and Orcs that are no longer actors in masks but CGI creations which look suitably other worldly and alien (they even have their own language at last!) The trolls are great, as is the Goblin King, and the massive "Rock Men". The "HFR" format didn't seem to make too much difference, but its effects are probably subliminal, and the 3D was good but not as used as I would have imagined. The fight scenes are jumbled and confused with lots of swirling around and blurry movement that is impossible to follow, something from the original saga that alas has not been improved.
So "AUJ" is a promising start to a new trilogy, but it's just a starter, so don't expect a full course meal because you won't get it. If you loved the book, be prepared for a lot of changes and liberties, because the aim is 2 years down the line to have a 6 movie saga seamlessly blended as a whole.
How good will the Main Course be? Guess we'll have to wait until next Christmas to find out!