#THE HOBBIT AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY MOVIE#

There’s no question that this is a revolutionary technology, as the stunning use of 3D and dazzling integration of live-action footage and special effects make it seem as if the sprawling action of the film is actually happening before our eyes, like live theater, though you may wonder once it’s all done if this is how movies are supposed to behave. The film’s almost herky-jerky images seem as if they’re always trying to catch up to themselves and the effect is jarring and unpleasant.

Jackson’s Shire was always a bit Lucky Charmed, though now it seems undistinguishable from the land Tinky Winky calls home, or the bucolic set used for part of the opening ceremony at this year’s Olympic Games. Because Tolkien’s The Hobbit is a less foreboding work than his Lord of the Rings trilogy, the goofily lighthearted tenor and bouncy fleetness of the film isn’t unexpected or unfortunate for bringing to mind, for better and for worse, Disney’s Alice in Wonderland and The Adventures of the Gummi Bears.īut while Jackson has transported us to Middle-earth before, the place seems almost foreign now, presented anew through a lens that gives faces and landscapes, albeit strikingly detailed, an unmistakably televisual quality. The slender precursor to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is, at heart, the story of a hobbit’s coming of age, and its kid-lit quality is one that Jackson embraces, amplifying it with his dubious decision to shoot the films using 48fps digital cinematography. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. And today, nearly 10 years after the release of The Return of the King, there’s still a sense that these pinnacles of Hollywood filmmaking, symbolism-rich action spectacles about the nature of fellowship, could never have been as emotionally rich as they are if it weren’t for advances in special effects that still feel state of the art, never employed by Jackson at the expense of his unmistakably classicist style.īehold, now, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first of an arguably gratuitous three-part cine-extravaganza adapted from J.R.R.

#THE HOBBIT AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY MOVIE#

Even disbelievers will attest to the movie franchise’s breathless wonder. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy transports us to a mythic land haunted by gruesome ghoulies and gripped by seemingly endless warfare, allowing us to recognize something of ourselves, our modern-day triumphs and follies, in the remarkably staged skirmishes and the negotiations made and alliances formed leading up to them.

The hobbit an unexpected journey