Birthday Movie Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2D)

Today is my birthday and I'm now 22. In celebration of this, I'm going to do one last movie review for this year and that film is the first in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, An Unexpected Journey. While the film is based on one half of the book (and there's only one book on this by the way), the book will be spilt into 3 parts (although initially it was going to be 2 which makes more sense but anyway). Before I get into this, I'm reviewing the 2D one as the 3D one with 48fps doesn't really appeal to me and I also haven't read the book so what you're getting is purely based on what I saw at the cinema. I will however compare it to the LOTR trilogy (which takes place after the events of The Hobbit) and see where we go from there, so let's go:

As Bilbo Baggins approaches his 111th birthday, he decides that it's time to tell Frodo, the full story of his adventure with the Dwarfs. The story begins way before Bilbo's involvement where the King of Erebor, known as the dwarf, Thror has begone an era of prosperity upon his kingdom, which lasts until the arrival of Smaug the dragon. Smaug destroys the town of Dale and decides to drive out the dwarfs out of the kingdom of Erebor which allows him to acquire their hoard of gold. In the events that lead up to Bilbo's involvement, the king is beheaded by the leader of the Orcs during the battle of Azanulbizar and the dwarfes cry for assistance from the Elves is not given, making them enemies. Bilbo then somehow gets involved in all of this when Gandalf places a mark on his door, leading a group of Dwarfes to his house, where they explain their plans to reclaim their treasure from Smaug. Bilbo reluctantly joins them on their quest and gets dubbed as the Burglar, starting of what could be the first of his many adventures.

I see now why a lot of people have mixed feelings about this film. From what I've heard, the book isn't that long and if all the films are 3 hours long, then Jackson really needs to think of something to act as filler. Nevertheless it's still worth seeing if you're into this sort of film but I personally would avoid seeing the 48fps version as that's been given bad reviews and I can tell why. It's more light hearted and a little bit more funny than LOTR, but it only shows how epic it is in the fight scenes more than anything else, but that's not a bad thing. For any fan of LOTR, I would go and see this film at least once as it's very, very long so be prepared. 9/10

And that concludes my reviews for the year so apart from the usual Videos and song of the week, and the Monthly update posts, I will be having a bit of a break from reviews, but I will return during the middle of January. Until then, have a happy new year.