Director Peter Jackson’s return to the land of Orcs, Dwarves, Elves, Wizards and Hobbits turns out to be a happy homecoming. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey recaptures much of the epic spectacle of the filmmaker’s massively successful Lord Of The Rings trilogy, smoothly setting in motion another large-scale adventure that will be carried forward in two subsequent films over the next two years. Boasting an appreciably dark tone and a seemingly endless array of visual astonishments, this Hobbit suggests that, nine years removed from his last J.R.R. Tolkien adaptation, Jackson has lost none of his ability to deliver this sort of brawny mainstream entertainment.
Based on Tolkien’s 1937 book and set 60 years before the Lord Of The Rings films, this first chapter of THE HOBBIT trilogy shares with the first Rings film, The Fellowship Of The Ring, a slow build-up in which the major characters and stakes are introduced before getting down to the business of delivering one gripping sequence after another. With several Rings participants involved in this prequel - including Ian McKellen’s Gandalf, Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel, and Hugo Weaving’s Elrond - the new movie has constant comforting echoes from the earlier trilogy, although this can also create a nagging familiarity that can leave the viewer feeling that he’s seen all this before. (Once again, a timid Hobbit, with the help of a wise Wizard, goes off to find himself in the big, scary world.)
Jackson’s dynamic dramatic sense is such that his battle scenes have a mythic grandeur to them, successfully achieving a storybook sweep that has little concern for realism
Whether it’s Howard Shore’s resonant score or Andrew Lesnie’s striking cinematography, which easily transitions from the bucolic beauty of Bilbo’s Shire home to the cruel carnage of the battlefield, THE HOBBIT is utterly immersive. [EDITED]


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