Since its release, the one criticism leveled most consistently against The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was its length. Eager to fill the giant void in their profit margins left by the departure of Harry Potter, Warner Bros leveraged a three-film cycle out of Peter Jackson, stretching J.R.R. Tolkien's comparatively slim novel far past its breaking point. The result was a pretty good film in a lot of ways, but one whose flabby center and general overindulgence prevented it from joining the pantheon of greats occupied by The Lord of the Rings. As you may have gathered, adding another fifteen minute doesn't exactly improve matters. Hit the jump for my full review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Extended Edition Blu-ray. An Unexpected Journey covers only the first six chapters of The Hobbit, an impossibly small amount of time for such a large film. Director Peter Jackson and his colleagues filled it by pulling huge amounts of backstory from Tolkien's archives, as well as expanding the danger represented by the mysterious Necromancer (a subplot only hinted at in the book and basically used to get the wizard Gandalf out of the way). It works largely because the story remains so charming and Jackson knows it so well. He got a lot of help from cast members both old and new, topped by Martin Freeman's pitch-perfect rendition of the put-upon hobbit, Bilbo Baggins. Chosen by Gandalf (Ian McKellan) as the "lucky number" addition to a company of thirteen, he journeys towards the Lonely Mountain to help ...
No comments:
Post a Comment