The Hobbit: An Unexpected Adventure

Okay so I have long been a Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Middle Earth fan and aficionado. I saw all three LOTR movies in the theaters and extended versions, got the posters, and learned the lines so that I could begin the quoting, but lately I have been slacking on the job and people have noticed. When the critically acclaimed movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Adventure opened up and debuted, I was not there. I was halfway across the world living my own unexpected journey in Australia. Yet, when I returned to the states, weeks passed and I still had not viewed the movie that I claimed to love and adore. People were astounded and aghast. Well things have changed. I was finally able to watch the whirlwind  adventure of Bilbo Baggins through Middle Earth and I was amazed. The framework of the plot, jaw dropping special effects, and magnificent soundtrack work together in order to transport the audience into a different time and place. You go from sitting in your neighborhood movie theater to walking down the roads of Hobbiton towards Bag End, and in the blink of an eye the viewers are taken on an adventure in search of mystical treasure by the notes of a seemingly simple song and soon enough find themselves transported into a sector of life never before seen.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Adventure is directed by Peter Jackson, the same man who directed The Lord of the Rings Series. Because of this, the feeling of The Hobbit mirrors the same aura of The Lord of the Rings movies many ways. The use of the same actors as well as the same locations helps to integrate the audience into the plot from the very beginning. The plot works as a series of flashbacks that Bilbo Baggins experiences while Frodo is getting ready to set of on his expedition to destroy the one ring. For this reason Bilbo's memories of his first journey provide background and explain how the whole book series began. This works to answer some questions and fill in some blanks that some viewers may have had while watching The Lord of the Rings movies. There are some locations that are recognizable from The Fellowship especially. It shows how epic the series truly is in retrospect.


Within The Hobbit there are also some amazing special effects at use. It is astonishing to see how much has developed in just the past five years. The Weta Workshop has produced some of the most phenomenal changes in characters like the orcs and the landscape of Middle Earth. For example, the changes that they made to Gollum were totally jaw dropping. The extra muscles visible in just his facial features that made Gollum's emotions much more evident and tangible than they were in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It brought the audience in a step closer to the interactions between the characters. Additionally, the extra features Weta was able to include in the landscape features brought another level of reality to the tale. While the story of Bilbo builds and his group of friends make their journey, the audience gets to see the amazing surroundings of Middle Earth. From the ethereal mountains standing guard around Rivendell to the bountiful forests Radagast the Brown protects from evil, the audience is taken through each part of Middle Earth and shown every detail with such precision. This is an element that many movies lack these days, but in The Hobbit you are shown what you cannot anywhere else.

Finally, what makes the movie is its soundtrack. The music playing in the background holds all the emotion and carries the viewers throughout the movie on a cascade of notes and rhythms. This is especially true in The Hobbit. The soundtrack composed by Howard Shore, the same musician who composed The Lord of the Rings soundtrack, brings an extra dimension into the movie. The music included in this Tolkien tale is not only instrumental. There are songs sung by the group of Dwarfs who travel with Bilbo on his unexpected journey. These songs transport the viewers to a time of old, a simpler time. In fact, when Howard Shore was asked about The Hobbit soundtrack said, "Everything I knew about composing, orchestrating, conducting-- everything I had learned about music was in it." Because of this, the music is correlates perfectly with the action of the film and story.

In the end, it matters not what the critics or reviewers say. The Hobbit works as it was meant. It is a story explaining the history of a character risking everything in order to make a real life for himself. Bilbo goes on an unexpected journey, just as every human does. Life is itself an unexpected journey. Each day you wake up you do not know exactly what will happen. You may have things planned for the day, but unexpected opportunities may pop up an change your life completely. I think that is exactly what Tolkien wanted everyone to realize as he wrote this classic literary masterpiece. Life may be filled with good and evil forces, but an individual's decisions and choices determine where their life ultimately goes.