Review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) by Xavier C — 17 Jan 2015

As a person who never saw the original LotR trilogy or read the books, it feels like there's an overwhelming amount of lore to figure out at times. But since a lot of people already do understand the lore, and since this is already a long movie, I understand why they decided not to add more exposition.The plot is awesome with a great sense of adventure. Saying the ending was unsatisfying would be an understatement. It is clearly not meant to stand on its own, what with being the beginning of a movie trilogy that is derived from a single book. It did, however, really make me want to see the next movie right away, and I'm glad that I was able to do just that.

There was a ton of CGI in it, which I didn't mind because it was all well done and when a movie is committed to making a movie so full of CGI, it doesn't seem lazy or distracting like in other movies.

The characters are all nice. Bilbo is very well acted. I lost track of all the dwarves except Thorin; having 13 of them all traveling together made it nearly impossible to recognize them all. Nobody steals the show the way Gollum did. Andy Serkis brought the character to life with his iconic voice work, his eerie and unnatural movements, and of course his obsession with the ring. He's an amazing character.

I can't wait to see the rest of the trilogy.