Eagles Soar, Dwarfs Sing, and Peter Jackson has the one Ring

Rating: 8/10 (17 December 2012)

I will start with the bad, many reviews have discussed this at length, in truth the beginning could have used a bit of tightening, however when the Dwarfs began to sing the folk songs of old, I grinned from ear to ear yes its in the books. Peter Jackson embraces the technological changes since he first lensed the ring Trilogy and lets be honest when he made them back in 2000-2001 they were state of the art of film technology and so to is the Unexpected Journey. He also creates links from the Hobbit to the Ring Trilogy something I really did like after all it is a prequel to the Movies and while no movie is ever as in depth as the book their are strong reasons to create these histories of the characters, in fact Tolkien did much the same writing other tales, along with various notes his son published later and Tolkien himself referred to as his Legendarium. I also think its important to remind ourselves this story was originally published in 1936, with the Ring Trilogy published 1954-55. Whats astonishing to me is how well Peter Jackson relates to these stories along with his creative writing team Fran Walsh and Phillipe Boyens, its nearly impossible to imagine any other team bringing these books to the screen. What I so loved in this first installment was the things I found missing in the original three movies and thats the animals the over-sized rabbits, the spiders, the Eagles I actually teared up seeing them it was as if someone had peered into my imagination and stolen my vision. I will close with the good, CGI was done well don't listen to the haters, Gollum is wicked, visually stunning presentation, exciting and well paced 2nd half of the movie were it not for the pacing in the first 40 minutes I might have given it a 10 but I deducted for it, the acting was good and eventually Bilbo Baggins Lives this first installment is about Courage. Go See it one tiny side note haha I played Smaug in the play many years ago in high school.