The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Peter Jackson creates the same world that he already shown us in the LOTR, but that's not the only thing he repeats.

He also repeats ripping Tolkiens book into a sucession of endless races and actions scenes with orcs falling everywhere and several "inventions" that mess the beautiful story created by the English author.

He also repeats those several minutes of platform game inside caves that we saw in Moria and in his version of King Kong.

If you loved the previous movies from Jackson, you will love this too.

If you are looking for some quality, you will only finding in the re-creation of the Middle Earth and the peformances of Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman and Cate Blanchett....

An other great master peace has been added the the Lord of The Rings collection. This movie was an excellent example of how great actors, an amazing story and a beautiful world can be produced in such an excellent way. Peter Jackson has out done his self by creating this great film. There are differences from the book but I can't complain about any of them, yes I love the original story but this one is still one of the best. All in all a amazing movie....

Over a decade after a little-known director from New Zealand managed to con New Line Cinema into giving him $300 million to make a trilogy based on JRR Tolkien's seminal fantasy (and long considered unfilmable) work The Lord of the Rings, the cinematic landscape for fantasy has changed drastically. Much like Tolkien's tome, the Lord of the Rings films came to utterly define high fantasy in film, with even competing fantasy adaptations like The Chronicles of Narnia and Alice in Wonderland cribbing from Peter Jackon's critically-acclaimed, audience-adored multipart epic. Now Jackson has returned to the land that made him famous for a go-round with Tolkien's earlier work, The Hobbit.

Tolkien's The Hobbit is far more modest in scope than its enormous sequel, and geared for a younger audienc...

Of course off the level of its <em>'The Lord of the Rings'</em> predecessors, but I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed <em>'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey'</em>.

It has good lure to it, the plot is more than interesting, it features pleasant callbacks and - like LOTR - looks exquisite. As for the casting, I like 'em. Martin Freeman (Bilbo) is, like Elijah Wood, an actor I've always found hit-and-miss, but I really did enjoy Freeman's performance here - the humour is his usual schtick, though the rest of his showing is strong.

Ian McKellen (Gandalf) returns and is as much a joy to watch as before. None of the others, though all good, stand out massively, James Nesbitt (Bofur) does bring decent comedic stuff.

Hopefully the two sequels to this are just as fantastic!...

There is no doubt that Peter Jackson does a great job bring Tolkien’s fantasies to life, much better, I imagine, than anyone must have assumed when they heard about the Lord of the Rings series way back when.

I must confess that I don’t like them as much as I enjoyed reading the books. I am sure there are complex reasons applicable to me. I read them when I was very young and it would be difficult to match that first-time experience. Also, the fighting and battles seem more central to the story than I remember. Perhaps that relates more to the modern movie audience rather than my memory.

As a funny side note, the film seemed to resemble in places that other fantasy series: the Jurassic Park franchise, in that they seemed to always be going from one close call to another, and the ...

It's one thing saying this isn't "Lord of the Rings" but it's quite another trying to watch without constantly comparing them. The same style of production with wonderful visual effects, Howard Shore's superb score and for much of the time it features many of the same actors from the earlier Peter Jackson trilogy. Similarly, it takes an age to get going. This first of three struggles in a different way too - there are no clearly defined roles for the characters; no "fellowship" if you like, for either the characters or the audience to focus on, so we are effectively starting from scratch with a whole slew of new characters whilst having to adjust to the new timelines for those we already know. Much less of a problem for those who have read the books, but for us other mortals that takes a w...