Disappointingly, not a patch on LOTR but still worth a watch

Rating: 1/10 (19 December 2012)

I was actually fairly disappointed in 'An Unexpected Journey' if I'm honest, I am a major fan of the lord of the rings books and the films, in fact the collectors edition, directors cut LOTR films may be the best films out there, however I can not say that The Hobbit will be joining them.
There are several reasons for this, firstly is the way in which the dwarfs were portrayed, think back to Gimli in the other films, a brilliant character, tough, aggressive and very visually impressive, the dwarfs in The Hobbit however are nothing like this, they are almost cartoonish in places and more than a few of them appear to have been adapted purely for comical purposes for the film. The harsh, gruff and warrior like appearance of John Rhys-Davies' character has been replaced with comical hair-cuts, enormous noses and in the case of the dwarf Ori (the one who fights with a Dennis the Mennis catapult), a look of simplicity and stupidity that beggar belief. Also, with the exception of Thorin (and possibly Balin), the audience remains distant and completely alienated from the other dwarfs in Thorin's Company, they remain a mindless and needless babble of bumbling music makers for the entire 164 minutes of film, completely unlike in the books where the reader is introduced to all of them and establishes an individual and distinct personality for each and every one.
The film itself is also padded out far too much for my liking, the other LOTR books were turned into a film per book whereas The Hobbit (the shortest book of the four with only 276 pages in the hardback copy and 330 in the paperback) has been stretched and padded out into three separate (and rather long) films, and I'm afraid to say that this shows right from the start.
One of the things that amazed me with the original LOTR films was the fight scenes, how well they were choreographed, and the pace and intensity of the action, the attention to detail, from blood splattered orcs to the scratches and dents in a Gondor chestplate, however in The Hobbit, again, this is not the case. The action scenes have been dubbed down, rather than the intense action of the other LOTR films we get pushing, shoving and and rather boring slow motion fight scene that leaves the audience bored and wondering if they have missed something. Whether or not this was done to ensure the film received a 12A rating rather than something higher and therefore widening the audience and therefore the prospective profits is beyond me but any of the fight scenes from Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers or The Return of the King would trounce all over all of those from The Hobbit combined.
The other main issue I have with the film was the use of the new 'Red Epic' cameras that shoot twice the amount of frames per second to the industry standard cameras, in theory this gives a much cleaner and more defined picture, but in reality what it does is show up every prosthetic nose, every painted set and piece of film fakery that was used in the making of Peter Jackson's latest delve into Middle Earth. The images, are flat and plastic looking with the 48 fps giving an accelerated image that makes even small movements look like a drug induced hallucination, it is only when one of the characters speaks that you realise it is meant to look like this and it is the way in which it was filmed. I will say that I saw the film in 3D, whether or not the 2D version is any better on this front I don't know, but why Peter Jackson couldn't just stick to the same cameras he used in the other films I have no idea.
Having spent the last few paragraphs pulling the film to pieces and picking on every detail that strikes me as a flaw I will say that the film does have it's merits, the casting of Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins is perfect, Andy Serkis yet again delivers an outstanding performance as Gollum and Ian Mckellan is every inch the aged but powerful wizard he always was. Also I will say that the film does pick up as you go through and does get better, whether this is due to the fact that for the first 45 minutes of the film you don't once venture outside of Bilbo's home or whether it's due to the audience adjusting to the effects that the new cameras bring, or perhaps a mix of both I don't know but I can say that, despite the impressions that you may have gained from the negativity of this review so far, it was a good film and I will be seeing the next two, however in my eyes it is not, and never will be, anywhere near as good as the first three LOTR films.