The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

This is a fun and enjoyable fantasy film with exciting action that does a great job at capturing the emotion and tone of the book. And just like the hobbit book it is not as good as the Lord of the Rings but it’s still pretty good in its own right, though the beginning of the film is a little slow and takes a good 40 minutes or so to get things going the film gets very entertaining once your able to get over that hill.

Thoroughly entertaining!!!👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

A common and contemptible phenomenon — largely as within comparatively recent cinema — involves decisions to (not quite seamlessly, we can safely say) stitch a few preschool “laughs” into what might have been all glimmer, yielding only to sparkle. “Biology-Affirming” does not quite translate as “Life-Affirming”. And no, a story of warfare (which thus does not quite limit itself to sugar and stardust and unicorns) will not tend to forbid an element of, say, grit and fire . . . however, I refer most pointedly here to the ludicrously unnecessary, hence intrusive, practice of attempting to brand something as a Family Film — how lovely — by daubing it with something misguidedly deemed Humor Such As Will Be, By Gum, Plumb Good Fun Fer Th’ Whole Goshderned Kit-’N’-Kaboodle Of Any Passel O’ Young Uns Wantin’ T’ See It . . . and this is often what we get from people who, throughout the rest of such a film, truly do demonstrate Genuine Brilliance. I mean that: incredible skills; many smart decisions on how best to use those skills; terrific overall results . . . but then, added in, Them There Bits O’ Bathos. I am far from being the first to arrive at the next observation . . . Tolkien seems to have intended for halflings — their warmly and appealingly back-to-nature-never-did-abandon-it ways, their enjoyment of tobacco, ale, great food, and frequent humor — to make these stories all the more widely accessible; so, too, for some similar traits in Gandalf and others; well and good; it works! The casting and acting for Gandalf, Bilbo, and Friends? Sublime. The treatment of Bilbo’s pity for Gollum is no less than celestial; such respect for kindness is crucial to Tolkien Books AND Films. Meanwhile, so far as I am concerned, such Very Low “humor” as doth besiege and hinder many, many otherwise fine films . . . aye, this pestilential scourge ’pon much as be else wrought with dignity and majesty . . . is neither Tolkien nor, in any era, wisdom. If an entire film is intentionally or unintentionally inane, fine . . . let That Kind Of Film attract and indeed entertain That Audience. Live and let live. That all said . . . At Last! . . . IF these films — AS Trilogy, in the Theatrical Version, hence certainly in their Extended Version — were going to enlarge so ambitiously upon the novel from 1937, this expansion was rather well done, it seems to me. There IS a LOT of battle, battle, battle (clearly not Tolkien’s raison d’être). The present story, far the lesser one (or component of one) as versus The Lord of the Rings, is nonetheless filmed with some reasonably equivalent outcome; hence four stars; Thank You!

I can't seem to get the feature called "The Company of Thoran" to work on my iPhone. It shows up just fine on my iPad. Please fix this. I'm not sure what to do.

Please put the Spanish tracking

This is a great movie. Even someone without a previous knowledge of an LOTR movie will, most likely, enjoy this film. The characters' stories are well-placed (except for the dwarf extras, but THAT doesn't matter), there is a lot of great action, an interesting plot, and most importantly, lovable, awesome-sauce, characters.

Just no. This was 6 hours of my life I'll never get back.

Making a movie trilogy from one book is a task I would only give Peter Jackson. This movie felt just as magical as The Lord of the Rings. Are these as good as The Lord of the Rings? yes. The plot is from the book and true to the book and the story is just wonderful. A+ quality. A must have for any movie library. I would go with the extended version here as it has only ten to fifteen minutes extra and is just phenomenal.

This is a really good movie even thou the extended cut only adds 13 minutes it makes it better. Worth the money

It began in a train on the ground, in an extensive train ride, in the future Middle-Earth-on-our-Earth nation of New Zealand. On that train, during that ride, future director Peter Jackson read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. Later in his life (1999-2003), he would direct a trilogy of movies based on that trilogy of books, earning near-universal appraisal for his efforts. Eight or so years after finishing that, he would start directing a trilogy of movies based on one book. The results: different from, and inferior to, the Lord of the Rings. The plot is simpler than that, and simple enough to follow. Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holme as the elderly Bilbo at the start, Martin Freeman for the actual story sixty years before Lord of the Rings starts) is an ordinary hobbit, chosen by the wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellon) to be the burglar for a group of thirteen dwarves: Fili, Kili, Oin, Gloin, Dwalin, Balin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Ori, Nori, Dori, and the king under the mountain, Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage). You’ll notice I didn’t specify the other actors, because the cast is simply too big. After a gathering in Bilbo’s home, they set out on the adventure a solid 40+ minutes after the Warner Bros. and New Line logos, slow even to the most patient. Bilbo is our main character: he is the eyes of the viewer in this case, and his homesickness is relatable to those of us who value a home. While the cast is vast, the only characters we need development of are Bilbo, Thorin, and Gandalf. Fili (Dean Gormon), Kili (Aidan Turner), Dwalin (Graham McTaversh) and Balin (Ken Stott) provide the most support from the other twelve dwarves, the rest of whom are merely in the background most of the time, except for at least one stand-out moment each. The Lord of the Rings broke ground in terms of visual effects: Massive CGI battles, but up close, practical effects were king, but CGI only returned to up-close with Andy Serkis’ motion capture performance as Gollum. You could see everything, but most of the up-closes on the villains were excessively CGI, some just straight-up repulsive: Trolls and goblins look like they walked right out of Narnia and into Middle-Earth, though Azog’s CGI did not detract too much. It was just more synthetic than Lord of the Rings. However, something that returns from the Lord of the Rings that we all can enjoy is Howard Shore’s soundtrack, which provides new and hummable tunes along with old familiar Lord of the Rings music. They’re used long enough to evoke nostalgia, but not so long as to be an excessive call back. All in all, An Unexpected Journey is an expectedly good start to the first part of one story from one book: one book to take place before them all. One book to bring this and the other two together, and in continuity, bind them.