The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Review

I've watch The Hobbit first as a full length animated movie by Rankin-Bass. It was my first immersion with the Middle Earth of J.R.R. Tolkien. After many years, I never expected that the world Tolkien created would be made into a movie when Peter Jackson made the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. The stories of Tolkien was a model that pioneered the fantasy and the role-playing genre.

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

The Hobbit is not the prequel of Lord Of The Rings but it gives us a background how the One Ring was found. If you were able to watch the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, you can see that reprising the characters for The Hobbit are Gandalf(Ian McKellan), Elrond(Hugo Weaving) , Galadriel(Cate Blanchett), Gollum(Andy Serkis) and cameo appearances by Frodo(Elijah Wood) and the older Bilbo Baggins(Ian Holm).

In the Lord Of The Rings, we only knew one dwarf warrior Gimli. In The Hobbit, you will encounter a band of dwarf warriors and you will see how well dwarves can fight even without aid of taller humans or elves.

In book adaptations, it would be a good idea to split it in three movies but since The Hobbit is a short book, I think it was stretched too much unlike The Two Towers which is much more longer but I have yet to see the next movie for my verdict. Just like any adaptations, there are still inconsistencies. Nevertheless, it is good to go see the Middle Earth realm once again and I thank Peter Jackson for bringing us back to Middle Earth once again.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is showing in 2D, 3D, and IMAX cinemas starting December 13, 2012. The second part, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, on  the same date next year and the concluding movie, The Hobbit: There And Back Again on July 18, 2014. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is released in the Philippines by Warner Bros. The Philippine premiere was held last December 12, 2012 at IMAX Theater of SM Mall Of Asia.