Reviews

This was a stupendous Tour de Force of television writing. I haven't ever written a review for a TV episode before but I just couldn't resist after witnessing something this special.

Being a Moffat episode, I had high hopes before I started watching it. "The Empty Child" had still been my favorite episode of the reboot and "The Girl in the Fireplace" was also a good one (even though it didn't blow me away).

This season, there were couple of very crappy filler episodes which were making me question why I was even watching Dr. Who now. Boy am I glad I didn't jump ship.

This episode *screams* The Moffat Brilliance. It's quite possibly Exhibit A in how he's a master of developing a mystery and unraveling it while maintaining his trademark creepiness.

Take a bow Steven Moffat, take a bow.

Remember those days when everyone claimed that the LotR trilogy isn't three separate movies but one movie split into three? It might have been true about the original trilogy, but it could not have been truer about the Hobbit.

The LotR trilogy, while being shot and produced simultaneously, was actually sourced from three different books which had their own arcs and conclusions to make each part stand out on its own. In terms of movies; each movie had drama, character development and action you would care about. This was an impossible feat with the Hobbit trilogy considering the sparseness/mood of the source material. The result? After the first movies you'll see legions of people decrying it for lack of action until the final few moments. After the third, it's vice versa. For fans of Peter Jackson's vision of Middle-earth, this is in fact great news.

See, if you take BoFA as a standalone movie it does have its flaws - - some pretty serious. If you take the Hobbit trilogy as a chance to relive *that* Middle-earth, you'll get exactly the movie experience that you could have hoped for after LotR. For those fans, I'd recommend watching the first two movies like, in the 6 hours preceding the third one's showtime. All the drama, character development from the first two will start resonating with the action found in the final part.

Not only the LotR trilogy was a masterpiece, each part of it was a great film on its own. The Hobbit trilogy, on the other hand, is *one* great movie for fans of Peter Jackson's Cinematic Universe split into three disjointed ones. The trilogy gets 10/10 for what I wanted from it, the movie gets 6.

I have to admit, when I went to the theater I was jittery about what Peter Jackson might do to one of the most cherished parts of my childhood -- and life. Movies, stories and epic fantasy obsessions came and passed by. When the first Rings movies came out I was a fan of a certain teen wizard with a scar on his forehead. Twelve years later, after going through works of Kubrick, Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Coppola and Welles; I look back and cringe at why I even saw the first three movies of the Harry Potter series. But the only fanboy hat that consistently remained perched on my head throughout this period was Middle Earth and Tolkien.

Owing to the unprecedented success, there are many kinds of people who watched LOTR movies. There were those who didn't find hairy-feet teens fighting an evil fireball to be their cup of tea, e.g., Ebert. While I have great respect for Roger -- and find myself aligning his reviews many times -- he falls in this category. Fortunately, I do enjoy movies about wizards flying on giant eagles.

There are those who love the books and despise Jackson for botching up their visions of Middle-Earth. I read another guy's review here who said that Twilight movie makers were more faithful to their source material than Jackson. That's understandable. These people had a different view of how Middle-Earth should have been on screen, let's wait for a few more decades and hope someone adapts it again.

Then there are those who were absolutely immersed in the movies. Sure the movies are different from source material. Going back to the Twilight complaint, compared to Tolkien's works it was written last Friday. Being modern, it already was suitable for screenplay in a manner Tolkien's works would never be. I loved reading about Bombadil, but that just doesn't work on a screen. We watched the original movies many many times, extended versions many more, and felt more than delighted to give Jackson the license to entertain us with his interpretation of Middle-Earth on screen. We wished and prayed for another chance to live in that world, we cringed when Del Toro was on the horizon and Jackson was nowhere nearby. We celebrated when Jackson returned with everyone else on board. Being one of these people, I put on my 3D glasses and became concerned as soon as I saw a supposedly younger Gandalf showing the heart-breaking mellowing of Ian McKellen in his face.

Luckily, I have never been happier to be proved wrong. They did it again! For the next two and a half hours I found myself fading away in Jackson's grand vision of Middle-Earth just as I did 12 years ago. Sure, some characters were there who weren't present in the book. Some had their stories modified, but for me, that *worked*. By the time the movie ended I had the *exact* same feeling of anticipation I felt at the end of Fellowship. I wanted it to go on. I wanted to stay in Middle-Earth.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is not just a movie based on The Hobbit. It's an adaptation of various events that happened at a certain time period in Tolkien's legendarium. It has Silmarillion, it has Unfinished Tales. But more importantly, it has *Peter Jackson*. It makes you feel nostalgic without losing the novelty. It makes you marvel at the achievement of technology, it makes you gape in wonder at Middle-Earth. Ian McKellen as Gandalf is still the greatest wizard to ever be filmed. Martin Freeman is leaps and bounds ahead of Elijah Wood as the main hobbit (no disrespect to Woods, Freeman's talent is just on another level). Richard Armitage commands authority as Thorin Oakenshielf. Last but not the least, Peter Jackson makes you feel grateful for the chance to be there and back again.

I have no idea how a neutral would find this movie. Perhaps long, tedious, or even fun. I just am glad that I am not a neutral in this case.