Pass the Popcorn review

Rating: 7/10 (10 October 2013)

The first part of the long-awaited adaptation of Tolkien's The Hobbit came out in December of last year. It obviously made everyone interested and left different impressions. The whole adaptation's a little weird, since there's three movies planned, based on one book that has barely 300 pages, while one part of Lord of the Rings consists of more than 400 pages. So, no need to say that everything's going to be stretched out more than it has to be. The Hobbit also includes information and additions from other books, but that's not enough to create three movies. Imagine if LOTR had three movie adaptations for each book. Funny, right? Money clearly does its work.
The story in The Hobbit is a prequel to Lord of the Rings. Bilbo (Martin Freeman), the Hobbit, goes on an adventure with thirteen dwarfs led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), and the well known wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), to reclaim the dwarfs' gold and homeland which was destroyed by a dragon called Smaug. This is the most simplified version of the plot. The film starts with old Bilbo (Ian Holm) who starts writing the story based on his adventures that started 60 years ago. It's a really nice beginning and intro to the whole background story that needs to be known in order to understand the plot, so I'll give Jackson an A+ for the beginning.
I would also give an A+ to the next scene, which starts with an amazing display of Erebor – the Lonely Mountain and the city of Dale, which lays outside the dwarven kingdom, and which introduces one of the main characters – Thorin Oakenshield. His grandfather, king Thror, rules the Kingdom under the Mountain, which is wealthy and full of gold (who would expect that from dwarfs, eh?). All this gold attracts the dragon, who destroys the kingdom and claims the gold for himself. The film continues with one more scene with old Bilbo, who's remembering how it all started. Gandalf visited him asking if he's interested in going on an adventure, which Bilbo automatically declined. However, his response did not discourage Gandalf from his intentions, so he left a mark on his door which the dwarfs would later notice. The next half an hour is spent introducing us to the dwarfs who are coming to Bilbo's dinner party that Gandalf set up. In this part of the movie, some of the scenes and dwarf portrayals are a little goofy, but appealing. They show two sides of the dwarfs – the 'party' and the 'serious' side. At first, they leave a funny impression with all the eating and drinking, but when Thorin kicks in they're all up for some serious s**t.
The book readers will notice one constant phrase that kept getting on my nerves – 'reclaiming the homeland'. The f**k? Of course that their mission involves 'reclaiming the homeland', but if the gold wasn't in their homeland I'm sure as hell they wouldn't care about it, since dwarfs are all about gold. I get that reclaiming homeland sounds more epic than reclaiming gold, but it keeps being presented as their main goal. As they start their journey, they meet Radagast (Sylvester McCoy), one of the five Wizards of Middle-earth (who was not in the book, but at the time The Hobbit novel is set was in the same areas as Bilbo and the dwarfs), who introduces Dol Guldur and the threat that lays in the abandoned fortress – The Necromancer. This is useful for understanding the complete story, even though the novel The Hobbit does not involve too many facts about Dol Guldur. This plot line about Dol Guldur will come later in play, possibly in the third Hobbit movie, when Jackson's planning to give more details about Gandalf's undeveloped disappearance in the novel. From this perspective, this introduction to Dol Guldur worked out great.
There's one more thing that considerably differentiates the movie from the book and that's – drum roll – Azog (Manu Bennett). He is not present in the book, but here he plays a major antagonist role. Furthermore, the big problem is that he died in the battle of Azanulbizar (although he wasn't killed by Thorin) and yet, I repeat, he's the main antagonist in the movie, if we exclude Smaug (should I even call Smaug an antagonist?). There was a lot of material in Tolkien's work that could've been used instead of Azog that wouldn't have been so contradictory to the book. On the other hand, I understand that such a movie has got to have an antagonist, especially since Smaug's main part comes in the third movie (I guess).
On a positive side, there are a lot of epic scenes in the movie, including Trolls, Rivendell, the Goblin king and Stone giants, and of course the amazing New Zealand landscapes. On a negative side, you can't really get attached to all the characters, since there's too many of them, and they all follow the same storyline so nobody in particular stands out – excluding Bilbo, Thorin, and maybe Balin. In conclusion, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a pretty good movie and I'm really looking forward to the two sequels. I guess Peter Jackson has many reasons for all the things that he included in the movie and that differ from the book, both the minor and major ones and I hope they'll fit in the whole trilogy.
Rating: 7/10 Read more at http://passpopcorn.wordpress.com/