The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

22 January 2017

I really liked The Hobbit as a book, but stayed away from the most recent film adaptation for a few reasons: director Peter Jackson stretched out the story into a trilogy, I don't find Jackson a particularly good director (does OK technically), and LoTR:RotK felt like a such a terrible cash in with acting and script that I had a lot of doubts on a new series. But Amazon had a 99¢ deal so decided to give it a watch. This is for movie 1 of 3.

It felt stretched, and some story aspects felt weak (injecting the Sauron angle was kinda a necessary miss they had to do, but little things like having goblin archers running into dwarves made no kinda of sense). Acting was generally good overall, and it was nice to see some returning roles, but I still don't know if this was the story that needed to be told. ...Though then again, maybe I have a bias against pre-trilogies. 6/10