The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Ratings: 7.7/10

Film Class: A

Genre: Fantasy Adventure

Bilbo Baggins, a Hobbit (aka Halfling), goes on an unexpected journey with a group of 13 Dwarves to the Lonely Mountain, the mountain which the Dwarves once called home but was taken over by the dragon, Smaug. 

If you've watched The Lord of The Rings trilogy, the characters (actually to be specific, the races of Middle-earth such as the Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Wizards, Orcs, Troys etc.), the fantasy world and the story would strike a familiar ring... even if you haven't, the narrative-style story plots/development was clear and introductory even to laymen. 

Since The Hobbit was written and published before The Lord of The Rings as a children's fantasy novel, you can expect the movie to be pretty kiddish at times. The trailer pre-emped me for cheesy light-hearted humor. I cannot help but compare this with The Lord of The Rings, and my expectations of it didn't fail me. 

All in all, I didn't quite like The Hobbit. It was a notch down and the action scenes weren't too pow-wow-ry. Which of course would be unfair of me to fault it because of the genre of it, but all in all, it's achieves what it was intended to, to entertain and to bring the audience into a world new fantasy world, not exactly that new for most. The CG this time round wasn't that awesomely realistic... which also made a fair bit of contribution to its inferiority.

*spoilers ahead* There's more screen time for Gandalf, the Wizard, and I didn't like how everytime the group of Dwarves got into trouble, Gandalf would always come to save the day. It made the Dwarves look pretty weak, unlike the group who went to Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring to rule them all. And while the battle-of-the-wits scene of Smeagol (the cunning schizo Gollum) and Bilbo Baggings was refreshing, it turned out draggy after a while. *major spoilers ahead* The ending scene with the griffins rescuing the group made me wonder why didn't they just bring the entire group to Lonely Mountain? Apart from the fact that it would cut the story short from a trilogy to a monology? 

However, since Bilbo Baggins is the uncle of Frodo Baggins, the protagonist from The Lord of The Rings, there was a cameo of, of course his adopted son Frodo! There were also Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), Saruman (Christopher Lee, not Singapore's Christopher Lee), Smeagol (The Gollum) and Elrond (Hugo Weaving, villain from the Matrix Trilogy and protagonist of V for Vendetta). All of which I believe will be featured again the next 2 sequels to come. 

Don't bother sitting till the end of the credits because there isn't any after credits scenes, the last scene, is of the gold basking Smaug, period. 

So did it have a cliff hanger ending just like most trilogies would? I wouldn't say so, for it ended quite well actually... even though it was pretty anti-climaxal. The nemesis of the supposed Dwarves King, Thorin accompanying the group was the Orc Captain Boldog, who slayed Thorin's father, the previous King. There was a confrontation between Thorin and Boldog at the end, but the action was short-lived, hence, the disappointing anti-climaxal ending. 

Thorin had the charisma of Aragorn (the human "King" from Lord of The Rings), a character worth cheering for, but despite the disappointment, I'm putting my chips on an epic duel of him with Boldog in the upcoming sequels.