If
you've been looking for a good fantasy movie to watch then you've
come to the right place. Today, I'll be recommending/reviewing The
Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey which is probably the best film that
I've seen in the past few months.
The
Hobbit follows Bilbo Baggins, uncle of Frodo Baggins, who appeared in
the Lord of the Rings trilogy played by Sir Ian Holm. In this film, Holm
makes an appearance early on in the film as “old Bilbo” but
Martin Freeman takes the role of “young Bilbo” for the rest of
the movie. Without giving too much away, the story involves Bilbo
being whisked away on a quest by Gandalf (played by Sir Ian McKellen)
and a band of dwarves which brings him face to face with perils that
he has never encountered before.
The
actors in the movie performed brilliantly. Freeman did an excellent
job as Bilbo and it was good to see Ian McKellen reprising his role
as Gandalf the Grey. Another cast member who really caught my eye
during the film was Richard Armitage who plays the dwarf leader
Thorin Oakenshield. He definitely stood out as a powerful character,
much like Aragorn did in The Return of the King. Some of the dwarves
don't get noticed all that well mostly because they aren't essential
to the story. However, Peter Jackson did a really good job of giving
all of the dwarves as big of a role as possible so that the audience
can develop at least some sort of connection with them. An additional
character that I should mention is Radagast the Brown (played by Sylvester McCoy), a wizard who
really adds some entertainment to the movie.
The cinematography in this movie is stunning. If you've ever seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies, you'll be reminded of the beauty of those landscapes in this film as well. Jackson did a lot of work looking for shooting locations in New Zealand for The Hobbit trilogy and we get to see some new areas of the country in this film (and we haven't even seen all of it yet with two more Hobbit movies to come). In addition, the new dwarven kingdom of Erebor and the familiar elven paradise of Rivendell are both spectacular sites to behold. In addition to Erebor, we get to see some other new areas as well which I won't mention to prevent spoiling the movie for anyone. All I will say is that they too are very well done. You can get an even greater appreciation for how well designed they are if you watch the video blogs that were made for the film.
One
of the most striking things for me about this movie was the music.
Howard Shore's scores in the Lord of the Rings trilogy were simply
amazing and he has outdown himself in The Hobbit. The Misty Mountains
song during the early part of the movie is chilling to say the least.
This song is also manipulated throughout the film into orchestral
forms which sound really good.
I
really can't say enough about how good this movie is. However, I
would be dishonest if I didn't mention to you that I had some
problems with it the first time that I saw it. For example, I wasn't
the biggest fan of some of the CGI stuff in Erebor which didn't look
very real to me. Moreover, I saw some motifs that occurred in both
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings series which I was a little
disappointed with because I'm a big fan of novelty and not a big fan
of repetitive stuff.
After
watching the film a few times though (and watching all of the video
blogs) I came to really love this film. I saw how great it really is
and how much work was put into it. In addition, the flaws also faded
away after I thought about the movie and watched it again. For
example, the CGI stuff didn't really bother me as much after a while
and motifs occur throughout every kind of literature (especially
throughout literature written by the same person) and it's not always
a bad thing.
Overall,
I suggest you watch the movie for yourself and decide how good it is.
It really is a masterpiece of a film in my opinion and I think it's
one of the best recent movies out there now. If I were to give it a rating, I would give it a 9.5/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment