The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Rating: 6/10 (20 December 2012)

When it was announced that Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings Trilogy) would be extending The Hobbit into a trilogy, many wondered how the director would manage to stretch a seemingly brief story into roughly 9 hours worth of epic filmmaking. The first film in the series, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey attempts to recall the epic scale of the preceding trilogy by combining deliberate pacing with Jackson's tireless attention to detail with mostly mixed results. While An Unexpected Journey has its strengths, including Jackson's typically excellent camera work and charming performances from star Martin Freeman (BBC's Sherlock) and Ian McKellen (reprising his Gandalf role from the previous Lord of the Rings films), the film unfortunately feels like an overlong prologue stretched well beyond its means.
Much of An Unexpected Journey's first half is spent reintroducing viewers to Middle Earth while also presenting the new cast of regulars who better fit into the Hobbit mythology. Forced to carry more narrative elements than it can handle, the film begins to feel drawn out and unfocused as it progresses. Tone is also an issue here. The film seems too jokey for its own good, cramming its broad humor into so much of the journey that the scenes with more dramatic weight attached to them actually feel like a pleasant change of pace. One scene specifically, featuring a trio of monstrous trolls attempting their best Three Stooges impressions will surely leave some viewers rolling their eyes.
Presented in 3D at 48 frames per second (the way Jackson has said he meant the film to be seen), the film often looks like a cross between a video game and the world's most expensive soap opera. There are several truly breathtaking landscape shots, but as the camera creeps closer towards its subjects everything begins to look cartoonish and artificial. The action sequences are most affected, closer resembling a World of Warcraft game than the wonderfully staged battles seen in the Lord of the Rings series. The higher frame rate ultimately seems more like a gimmicky distraction than a technological game-changer.
For better or worse, The Hobbit trilogy will always be tied to, and unfairly measured against Jackson's previous Lord of the Rings trilogy. The acting here is mostly strong, the set pieces rich and elaborate, and the narrative primed for a more momentous turn when the series resumes. Still, while it may not be fair to call An Unexpected Journey a bad film, it certainly struggles to live up to its triumphant predecessors.