Our Christmas movie this year (and probably for the next two years- apologies in advance to the Missus) was The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (hereafter known as The Hobbit 1, because I don't want to keep typing the whole title out.) We had a minor crisis with the movie at first- as whatever website we checked had apparently said 12:15 and we had gotten there in time to find out that no such showing apparently existed. We made a nice recovery and got tickets for the 1:00 3D showing instead which excited me a little bit.
The Hobbit 1 (and 2 and 3, I think) were filmed in a higher frame speed (48 FPS- not sure how that works now that everything's digital) which apparently makes the quality extremely high and make it look extremely realistic and that frame speed was supposed to (at least according to the interwebs) make the movie look even more amazing in 3D. I'm happy to report that it did so! This was probably the best 3D I've ever seen. It was subtle- so elves, orcs, rocks, whatever weren't constantly flying out of the screen at you. However, the one criticism I've heard of it is that it makes things just a little too real and makes things seem a little artificial sometimes. I would only say that there were a couple of points where it made things seem like a movie set- but I didn't care because it was a fantabulous looking movie set.
So, the movie: kids, I have to say, I was dubious going in- and I'm only marginally less dubious now. The Hobbit, although I love that book dearly, is not a lot of book. The Lord of The Rings, taken as one volume is one hell of a doorstop- The Hobbit is not. So getting three movies out of the source material seemed like a hefty undertaking and Peter Jackson just about pulls it off in the first movie.
For those that don't know- this is essentially being set as a the prequel to The Lord of the Rings movies telling the story of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), a Hobbit far too comfortable in his life who gets picked to be the 14th member of a company bent on reclaiming the dwarf kingdom of Erebor from the dragon Smaug. Their leader, Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) is the Prince of that lost realm and having lived in exile for many years is ready to reclaim his home. (Joining him are: Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dwalin, Balin, Dori, Nori, Ori, Fili, Kili, Oin and Gloin- and of course, Gandalf.)
Appropriately enough, The Hobbit 1 get it's characters about a third of the way there, I'd reckon. Bilbo and Company leave The Shire, have an encounter with some trolls, get chased by orcs and wargs before encountering another wizard of Gandalf's order, Radagast The Brown (Sylvester McCoy) who has some news for Gandalf. (More on that later.) They make it to Rivendell where Gandalf is summoned to a meeting of The White Council while the dwarves make a break for the mountains where they eventually get captured by goblins- though Bilbo gets separated and ends up in a duel of riddles with none other than Gollum- he also, funnily enough, finds a ring. (Dum dum dummmmmmmm!)
After one last go-round with the orcs, our heroes get rescued from burning pine trees by the Eagles and finally catch a glimpse of their destination, still far ahead of them- and Smaug wakes up.
Overall: The Hobbit 1 hovers on the edge of true greatness but doesn't quite get there. I don't think the three hour running time was fully justified. (I mean we have a whole sub-plot with Azog the Defiler and multiple fight scenes/running away from orcs. Then we get the same damn thing with the goblins under the mountain. Little bit of overkill, I think- and I wish the goblins had been portrayed with a wee bit more menace than they were. I remember those goblins being downright mean and nasty.) The movie nicely establishes where The Hobbit movies are going to stand in relation to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy- and I didn't mind whole subplot with The Necromancer (really Sauron, just not powerful yet) and Radagast since that was drawn from the insane amounts of appendices and excess source material of the books.
I did love, love, LOVE the music! The dwarves and the plates and singing the dirge for their homeland was awesome. There's so much poetry and music in the books- all of them, including The Lord of the Rings that gets cut out so it was nice to see it in the movie. They also nail the Riddles In The Dark with Gollum- they just hit that one out of the park. One of the iconic chapters of the book- if not in the genre of fantasy as a whole. But, kids, I'd say *** out of **** though. It was good- maybe even really good. But I don't think it justified its three hour running time and it felt like it was three hours at several points. I'm a little worried about the next two movies but I'm willing to give them a chance.
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