The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

the first in the 3 part hobbit movie is a lot of fun and unsurprisingly it looks amazing. ian mckellan returns as gandolf and is fantastic as usual and martin freeman as bilbo is just wonderful. there are some wonderful moments here (bilbo's speech on why he came back, gandolf's speech on why he chose bilbo, gollum, the cave of orcs) but then there is also some moments that were unnecessary or overlong. an example of this would be the rock giant fight. what was the point of that scene? it didn't play into the story and it was very very unbelievable. there is a lot of extra padding (most of it... read more

i'd heard/read the reviews. too long was the general consensus. i'm inclined to agree. i could happily have lost some of the early shire scenes and got straight to the journey. with that in mind; i really enjoyed myself and was in awe at the spectacle playing out in front of me. it took me quite a while to get used to 48fps but i eventually did, until i realised that i'd got used to it at which point it seemed strange again. without comparing it to a 24fps version i can't really give an opinion. the film did look beautiful though. read more