The Hobbit

Last night I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  I'm still sorta gathering my thoughts about it.  I drove 100 miles (each way) to see it in high frame rate and I gotta tell you, technically it's beautiful.  Peter Jackson has a wonderful eye for beauty (and for ugly) and he uses 3D to enhance his movie, not the other way around.  It was nice to visit old friends (Blibo, Gandalf, Elrond, and even Frodo makes a brief appearance).  I like that they put some of the songs that Tolkien had in the book in the movie (the dish-washing scene/song is pretty funny).  As with all Peter Jackson films the CGI is flawless to the point you forget you're watching a CGI character.

But (you knew that was coming), they strayed from Tolkien a lot.  They added new characters and new plot Tolkien never devised.  The dialogue in some of those scenes clunks badly.  I know they are making three movies (why? greed?) so they need more plot than Tolkien provided.  Maybe if they'd stuck with two movies, stuck more with Tolkien, it would have been better.  They also used any excuse to have a sword fight.

And, I know it's a fantasy, but I doubt even dwarves could fall 100 feet onto rock, groan a bit, and jump up and fight orcs as if nothing happened.

I find myself wondering if I'll pay to see the other two movies in the theater or just wait for them to come out on Blu-ray.

Oh, and this wasn't the film makers' fault but there were 20 minutes of previews before the movie.  I found that excessive (especially for a two-and-a-half hour long movie).