What To Expect In An Unexpected Journey

"Bilbo Baggins, I'm looking for someone to share in an adventure."       

            To all Lord of the Rings fans, it is just about time to get out your holes and take a journey once more into Middle Earth as Bilbo Baggins, hobbit, has been chosen to join Gandalf the Grey and 12 other dwarves in a quest neither Bilbo nor you will ever forget.

            

            Let me get this straight, I’m not a LOTR fan at all. I’ve read the trilogy and find Tolkien’s style quite unusual but that’s about it. I also remember how my brothers teased me that I looked like Gollum. Anyway I haven’t read The Hobbit, but was planning to, when the news that it will hit the big screen came to my knowing. To make the story short, I was not able to read it-fortunately! It made my anticipation for the movie even greater!

          

         The Hobbit- An Unexpected Journey is the prequel to the trilogy. It basically revolves around the story of Bilbo Baggins who takes an adventure to help his new-found friends and how he had on his hands the ring that he passed on to Frodo. After counting many years, The Hobbit was finally decided to be brought to life with the craftsmanship of award-winning director Peter Jackson who directed the LOTR trilogy.

           With all the buzz of excitement, everyone wants to know whether it’s greater or simply trying to make the same legacy that its predecessors made. And I am most-convinced to tell you that this film will bag awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing to name a few. The film took a different path, compared to the three previous films, which will absolutely take the audience by surprise.

           The film, which runs for 3 hours, was not purely drama and adventure plus awesome visual effects as others expected it to be. It had a comic tone in it which makes the movie lighter and more appealing to all sorts of audience compared to the trilogy. The adventure part is played very well, shifting from one place to another while constantly trying to develop suspense with all the battles happening. I also like how it started with the present and used flashback as its plot device as Bilbo tried to recollect and narrate what happened in the past. I would say that the intro, although quite long, perfectly established the foundation of the entire film.

            

               The Lord of the Rings trilogy won several awards because of its amazing visual effects and that was on 2002. 10 years ago!!!! Showcasing its much-boasted graphics, the film proved why Jackson and the LOTR franchise was truly a success! The movie tried 48 frames per second and it was a marvel to look at because you could see different things happening on the screen. Another key feature of the film is the CGI most especially on the schizophrenic Gollum. If you found the making of Gollum quite astonishing wait ‘til you see him on this film. Thanks to modern technology, Gollum still had that perfect mouth synching and all and even better! 

            

                Furthermore, some had doubts whether the film could pull it off again now that there’s a new set of characters. Not to worry you’ll see familiar faces like Gandalf the Grey, Saruman the White, Lady Galadriel and so on. But the real challenge was enticing the audience to welcome the new characters which mostly included dwarves and orcs. It was a fresh sight with all those jolly dwarves. Andy Serkis, who plays as Smeagle/Gollum, deserves to be nominated or even awarded for his remarkable performance.

            

                 The first thing I felt was that the movie was quite dragging in the start. There were also a handful of dead and boring scenes. In addition to that, the characters were not as established as I expected. You would remember some names and faces because that “some” were the only ones given the chance on the limelight.

            

               But as a whole, I’d say that the film is almost perfect. That is why I’d give it a 9 out of 10. Now it’s time to sing that dwarf-song again…“Far over the misty mountains…”