So I went to see the Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey last night and it was for the most part awesome. I went with my chap and some friends, we also went to see it in 3D and HFR because it kind of was how Peter Jackson wanted us to see it and I wanted to see what he did with the technology.
So this is your warning, this post may contain spoilers, now I have tried not to spoiler but if you are sensitive about some things then you might want to bookmark this for later when you have seen it.
I went to see this film with a couple of reservations, firstly The Hobbit isn't the biggest book in the world, I was wondering how on earth it could be stretched out to two films let alone three. Having said that it part one felt action packed and was enjoyable.
Things that worked for me: Peter Jackson and his team clearly have crafted at making it fit in with the LoTR trilogy, so we get glimpses of Frodo and Ian Holm as older Bilbo lots of nods to Fellowship and it felt like part of the furniture.
Martin Freeman is his own Bilbo, I'm glad he didn't do a Ewan Macgregor in Star Wars and try to emulate Ian Holmes, he brought his own thing to the part and he is a perfect home-loving hobbit. The relationship between him and Thorin and him and Gandalf was excellent.
The company of Dwarves, there are so many of them, that I cannot even begin to get my head around all of them. They felt like part rugby team on tour, part questing company so that rang true for me too. I adored James Nesbitt as Bofur a lovable rogue of a dwarf. Ken Stott was fab as Balin. The downside with the dwarves is that there are just too many of them to keep them straight in my head. I was reduced to making up names for a lot of them just to keep them straight in my head. Though Fili and Kili are easy to remember especially as they are rather easy on the eye...
One unexpected thing that Jackson did was that he made Thorin Sexy. How much that is down to the yummy Richard Armitage being deeply attractive I'm not sure, but even in the chunky dwarf boots and swinging an axe I was more than a little bit attracted to Thorin. Dwarfs are not supposed to be sexy, they fight, fart and sing about gold right? Well Thorin would not be kicked out of bed for any of those things. Also Aiden Turner who I normally think looks like he needs a good wash was cute as a dwarf, I clearly like dwellers from under mountains.
I think Andy Serkis is a genius, Gollum as ever was pitched perfectly and the scene between Gollum and Bilbo was the highlight of the film for me.
The Goblin King was utterly revolting and I felt a bit sick watching him on the screen.
Benedict Cumberbatch made the briefest of appearances in a blink-and-you-miss-him kind of way.
Sylvester McCoy was amazing, Radaghast was wonderful, with his rabbits and his hedgehogs and the birdnesst, utterly marvellous.
There were songs. I hate the songs in the books, they make me curl up in acute embarrassment, however, the songs that are used in the film work as far as they go, so much so I'm kind of desperate to go and pick up the CD and listen to Dwarves singing...
So what did I think of HFR? I think it's interesting, I think there were moments in the film where the CGI stuck out like a sore thumb in ways that it didn't in the the LoTR trilogy and there were moments where things felt too sharp and that my eyes couldn't quite keep up with everything going on in a scene, too much data. Having said that I loved the swoopy shots of the Goblin King's domain whereas some of the other scenes felt a bit much. Smaug's destruction of Dale was just too much for me to cope with. We felt that at times some of these effects looked like ones that you see in an expensive BBC adaptation but looked cheap in a film. I don't want to be horrid about any of the film, I'm just not sure that the technology is ready yet. Most of the time it looked amazing, just occasionally and I don't want to bitch about it anymore.
That said, awesome and enjoyable.
Go see, ASAP!
