NOW. Onto the movie itself. I'm going to include the whole experience, I'm gonna start from the beginning, and for once, I'm gonna go more in depth. I'm still not gonna give TOO much info so as not to spoil the story though. My mom heard a review on the radio that said that the movie should be seen in 3D, and that's just what we did. It was the first movie I've ever seen in 3D, and it was pretty amazing. There was one point at the end where I literally flinched because I thought a pine cone was coming right at me. At first the 3D gave me a annoying headache, but I got used to it pretty quick. It made the backgrounds stand out, and since New Zealand is a beautiful country, this was awesome.
After sitting through like twenty minutes of previews (all of which seemed to be about a destroyed post-apocalypse Earth being taken over and reclaimed or fought against...) the movie finally began. I was thrown off at first because it began with the Warner Brothers logo. Even though I somewhat obsessively followed the making-of process, I was unaware the Warner Brothers were involved. Then came the MGM logo. I was also unaware of MGM being involved. THEN came the New Line Cinemas logo, and by that time I had realized it was playing LOTR music and that the film must be starting. The movie starts with Old Bilbo talking to himself (although he's addressing Frodo, he's not actually speaking to anyone) about telling Frodo about the truth of his adventures. After a short prologue about the lonely mountain and the dragon taking over (all filled with information I felt a bit odd that Bilbo would be so well-versed in) Frodo came into the movie. It was quite a bit nostalgic to see Elijah Wood come back as Frodo,and he didn't look a day older (quite a feat, since over ten years have passed since LOTR first came out). After Frodo goes away to wait for Gandalf (which would lead directly into his introduction into Fellowship of the Ring), the story begins. It was a good opening, but the only thing that I disliked about it was the fact that while narrating the beginning of the story, Bilbo's lines are direct from the book EXCEPT that they changed it. That ticked me off and my Mom leaned over and said "You couldn't just keep the wording?" The actual line is this: "In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing to sit down on or to eat: it was a Hobbit hole, and that means comfort." They butchered that line, and it was a bit aggravating.
Martin Freeman's performance as young Bilbo Baggins was really, really good. He has a lot of the same figgity mannerisms that Ian Holm had as old Bilbo in LOTR, while adding his own characteristics to the character. Ian McKellen's performance of Gandalf at first seemed a bit different to me, but I couldn't quite put my hand on why it seemed that way... but it soon felt just like it did before long. The dwarves were pretty good, too. They created a (quite different) back story for Thorin, who I think they tried to give him some distinct Aragorn characteristics, not the least bit noticeable is his scruffily good looks. Seriously. He's a dwarf. That's a thought I also had about the two youngest dwarves Fili and Kili. Kili just plain looks like a young man, and not a dwarf. Ori was a bit weird looking, and I was worried that his looks would detract from my opinion of him in the movie, but I eventually just accepted him. Balin was really good in my opinion. Apart from Thorin, Balin was probably the dwarf that Tolkien developed as a character the most. Oin, Gloin, Dori, Nori, Bifur, Bombur, and Dwalin didn't get very much screen time, but I was surprised that Bofur got as much screen time as he did. I was reading the book right before the film came out, and I was paying attention to how many lines each dwarf got, and Bofur definitely wasn't one of the top-runners.
The story of The Hobbit was written as a children's story. This effect doesn't quite transfer over to the movie, which creates a lot more action and suspense than was in the whole book. There were SO many goblins, and they've made them more terrifying than they were in FOTR. There's also one thing that really seemed just plain wrong, and that was The Great Goblin. His voice was just plain too normal, and it really made him less scary. In the book, Thorin mentions a goblin by the name of Azog, who was only MENTIONED and was never in the book himself (that I remember). The movie brings him in a much more prominent role, as a hunter Orc out for revenge against Thorin. This automatically created new sequences for the movie that weren't in the book, including a prolonged chase sequence before the company reaches Rivendell. It was like the castle raid scene in Prince Caspian, which was created for the movie based on one sentence in the book.
Given that they are taking one book and making it into three movies, they have got to be filling it in with some new material. They explore Gandalf's absences in the book, since he does leave the company periodically. I won't go into detail, but Gandalf and the brown Wizard Radigast discover that an ancient evil has found its way back into the world. If you can't already guess what that is alluding to, I'm not gonna say it. But they found a way to work Galadriel and Saruman back into the movie, even though neither were in the book (neither was Radigast for that matter). Radigast was a little bit overdone in my opinion, but I can see what they were doing.
The ending was a bit drawn out. Obviously, since it's being made into three movies, they did not even get to the lonely mountain. For non-spoiling reasons I won't say what this drawn-out ending is, but rest assured it's nowhere near as drawn-out as the ending of Return of the King.
As always, one of my favorite parts of the entire movie was the music. Those who know me know I am a sucker for a good movie score, and I am especially partial to Howard Shore's music for The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Like I said in my pre-review, I was overjoyed when I learned that Howard Shore would return to write the music for the Hobbit films. The music is simply amazing, as amazing as I could have even expected. The only things that I didn't like about the score were just four things: Three music ques from LOTR were brought back, but used in completely wrong contexts. The Lothlorien theme was used in a Rivendell setting (and I'm not talking about when Galadirel was there, that moment was justified.) In another scene, they used the Ring Wraith theme for dramatic effect when Thorin stands up to fight against an Orc (again completely out of context for the theme), and finally a theme for the race of men that was used at the very end. Since there were no men in this film (they were all Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves, Trolls, Orcs, Goblins, and Wizards), this was a bad move. The only other thing that I thought could have been better (though I still loved it the way it was) was the fact that the main theme of the film gets a bit repetitive. All this being said, these are things that detracted a tiny bit for me personally, and doesn't by any means mean that I thought it was anything less than amazing. I loved it a lot.
I have listed all these differences from the book in a somewhat negative light, but that does not at all mean that I thought the movie was bad. On the contrary, I liked the film very much. It is such an iconic story, and with Peter Jackson and all the same people who made Lord of the Rings the success of a film as it was, there isn't much you can do to make a bad movie (and why would you want to make a bad movie?) I recommend watching it in 3D like I did. I have heard that the new 48 fps technology makes some people sick, but the effect is better in 3D. Plus, you get an awesome pair of 3D glasses with The Hobbit logo on them.
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