A brilliant screen adaptation!

Rating: 10/10 (27 July 2013)

I was always a bigger fan of the Lord of the Rings than of the Hobbit. It's only logical: The Hobbit was written earlier, it's a children's story, it felt to me like it was a rather inconsistent story about dwarfs with a mission hopping from one plot obstacle to another like people go to random attractions in a fun park. However, I did enjoy the story! Still, it had some flaws.
Then the movie came out and it's absolutely brilliant. They added just the right things to give the story more 'balls' and increase the suspense, they were loyal to the concepts in the book that were most essential, ... They turned the book into a timeless adventure for a very wide range of viewers.
Like the Lord of the Rings was a meaningful story about 'carrying on', having the courage to fulfill your destiny, the importance of friendship and so much other timeless wisdom; the Hobbit was exactly that about 'having the courage to take the leap', leaving routine habits and taking a risk, taking off on a journey to freedom and adventure, to 'whatever doesn't kill you can only make you stronger', ... It especially appeals to us, tiny Belgians of Flanders, who are actually the real life versions of Hobbits, dying of old age in the exact same tiny village we grew up in, never taking risks, saving up money our entire lives just to put it in a sock under our mattress and pass it on to our children when we die, always worrying about money while we have this elaborate social backup system, never launching an idea that hasn't proved to be successful elsewhere first, etc. This is a true story, more so than some other dark and gritty realistic stories about family conflicts.
Peter Jackson gave this story exactly what it deserved. Azog gave it more force and 'necessity' and added more suspense, the dwarfs got more individual personalities (while in the book, they sometimes seem more like 'that bunch of dwarfs'), etc. An Unexpected Journey lifts the Hobbit up to a whole new level.
Of course, as one might expect, there are a lot of 'true fans' verbally demolishing this movie 'because it's nothing like the book'. It's probably the very same ones who thought The Lord of the Rings trilogy was a terrible movie adaptation just because Tom Bombadil was never mentioned. But although I have in fact, you don't need to study film and literature extensively at university to realise a movie is a completely different medium and that novels are not necessarily better than their film adaptations (e.g. The Chronicles of Narnia for example).
I was thrilled when I heard they were going to turn The Hobbit into a trilogy adding extra content from the Silmarillion, the Appendix of the Lord of the Rings and the notes on the Hobbit from Tolkien himself to improve a novel that (he would have been the first to admit) was flawed. All the flaws the novel had were straightened away by the movie and, with a proper understanding of the medium, I'm sure that eventually Tolkien would have agreed.
I am convinced that this is one of the best screen adaptations 'ever'. It remains loyal to the themes and lore of Tolkien, the emotional connections and it even takes into account the notes and comments by Tolkien and reckons with the rest of his oeuvre, making a brilliant connection to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. People shouldn't forget the novel was written by Tolkien more than 75 years ago (for his own children) without the intention of ever having it published and that a very literal translation of the book to the screen simply wouldn't work. Peter Jackson is one of the few who understands that adaptations should be creative rather than literal and should elevate the entire work. And I haven't even mentioned the wonderful talent at WETA yet and the way a Tolkien story lifts the creative power of Howard Shore up from all the composers in the world to an unreal, intuitive and almost spiritual level.
This is a great movie definitely worth seeing! I'm very much looking forward to the sequels!