Another Classic Addition To The Lord Of The Rings Films

Rating: 9/10 (14 January 2015)

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey takes us back to Middle Earth, but this time it's the telling of the story of Bilbo Baggins and his, well, unexpected adventure in how he comes to help dwarfs reclaim their kingdom and how he come to find the one ring.
This movie's an absolute eye feast and is just as big as Peter Jackson's other Lord of the Ring's movies. The visuals are absolutely stunning, the photography's amazing and the cast of characters are really well done, with actors like McKellen, Serkis, Lee etc reprising their roles. Maybe the battle scenes are not as big, but that's obviously a given as this is 13 dwarfs, a wizard and a hobbit who engage in battle scenes and not a massive army.
As a personal side note, regarding the two or three dwarfs who have Scottish accents...it was very refreshing to hear REAL Scottish accents from REAL Scottish actors. Being from Scotland myself, there's nothing worse in hearing a grounds keeper Willie or Christopher Lambert Highlander-type Scottish accent in movies. Another wee thing I'm glad about is the rating. The PG13 keeps the scenes that are supposed to be tense and creepy as such and are not toned down to seem "cartoonish". It would have been totally unjustified to have made these scenes anything less than what they were supposed to be as the sense of atmosphere they bring is excellent.
Now, ardent followers of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit books will no doubt complain about things that are in the book but not the move, or things that are in the movie but aren't in the book, but this is a movie adaptation and it's not as if the book was butchered like what Stanley Kubrick done to The Shining (even though that was still a fantastic movie in it's own right). I've read the book and enjoyed that, and now I've seen this 1st part to the movie adaptation and thoroughly enjoyed that. I can only hope that the next part is just as enjoyable as this one.
I definitely recommend seeing this movie.