The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Peter Jackson, 2012)

Right from the off, we're back in the cosy slippers of Hobbiton and it's like we'd never left. God knows why Tolkien obsessives had reservations about the casting of Martin Freeman as Bilbo: his discomfited and indignant air fits the bill perfectly as he gets swept along by Gandalf and a band of uncouth dwarves on the quest to regain their city from the dragon Smaug. More doubts might be expressed about the wisdom of stretching the story with extra scenes to a trilogy, considering the book was substantially shorter than any of the Lord of the Rings ones, and no amount of justification of this on narrative grounds by Jackson will convince me that the studio's thirst for lucre wasn't the main motivation. But it does come with a side benefit, namely that the pace can afford to be more relaxed and allows for a deeper build-up of character, which is just as well when you have fifteen heroes.
The sets, backdrops and set pieces are even more breathtaking than before, and the original story outline is followed from checkpoint to checkpoint, even if it is embellished in between. It is a disappointment, however, that once again the fight and chase scenes towards the end get too overblown and protracted, the cardinal sin of so many more mundane action-based films, with multiple repetitions of the same types of cliffhanger: at times it actually starts feeling like a loop tape of sword-slashes, collapsing bridges and people nearly falling into chasms. Jackson should be told that there's no point in trying to outdo the battles of his last Middle-Earth excursion: this story was always meant to be smaller. This also applies to the challenges of the heroes: after a while it's difficult to fear for their lives when they are apparently indestructible. It may be a fantasy world, but it should still stick to its own ground rules. We'll see how things go from here on.

6/10