Review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) by Alan Fong D — 02 Jan 2015

I gotta admit, all the hype and buzz surrounding this epic 'LOTR' prequel is no doubt excessively built and promoted. Thing is, people tend to compare this one to Jackson's highly acclaimed original Middle-Earth trilogy, which completely makes no sense at all considering the very different nature exhibited by both storyline.

While 'LOTR' is grounded to be one of the greatest dark fantasy epics ever to be brought to the silver screen, 'The Hobbit', much as honest and down-to-Earth as its central protagonist, is no where near the scale.

Beneath all the controversies involving the film's use of 48FPS frame rate and various technical adversities during the shooting, Peter Jackson had managed to craft out a fine piece of adventure flick.

Beautiful New Zealand landscapes, enchanting special effects, epic film score and magnificent performances especially by McKellen and Serkis, these may be the essence of 'The Hobbit'. However, the main problem regarding 'The Hobbit' is that it feels really tiresome, much like a chore to me, to stand through the very lazy pacing of the story.

I mean, putting out the 300-page prequel in a trilogy isn't the brightest choice around to go with especially if you compare, let's say, the amount of source materials plus story complexities, to the original 'LOTR' trilogy.

This one really should better off being a stand-alone movie instead of getting a franchise-milking treatment. There are parts where you'll find to be something unnecessarily churned out from the book all for the sake of prolonging the running time, or, of course, creating an entire prequel trilogy for the big bucks.

Anyhow, 'The Hobbit' fares as a rather long highway-avoiding bus ride back into Middle-Earth. 'The Hobbit' is faithful to the original material, but somehow it undermines the very foundation of the adventure prequel by breaking it up into a draggy three-part series.