The Hobbit - a short movie review

This picture you see here is my favorite memory with Tahereh.  After convincing her I could read the story well and do different voices for the characters she agreed to let me read most of the book to her.  One of my hidden passions is story-telling, I love it.  My dad use to tells us stories and I remember him getting so into the characters,  sometimes even playing a musical instrument to enhance the mood.  I also enjoy creating the mood so on this occasion, when we were at the part where the Orcs set fire to the trees and start singing their catchy death song, a bonfire was the perfect addition.  We sat around for awhile and it was a great time.

However, this is a movie review, not a book review, because I just came back from watching The Hobbit by Peter Jackson.  I liked the cinematography, the soundtrack, the special effects, the costumes were great, watching it in IMAX 3D was memorable but my main issue is it's basically a different story than the book.  Jackson re-interprets so many key elements of the book that you have to watch the movie as if it's a different story with similar characters.  For example, in the book, I remember Tahereh commenting on how useless the Dwarves were because they kept getting themselves into trouble and Bilbo is the one who always had to get them out of trouble.  In the movie (part 1) the Dwarves are always getting Bilbo out of trouble.  So when they make any comments about how useless he is to the whole expedition I kinda feel sad for him.  And there are so many of those slight changes that create different emotions than the book did.  This would be fine but Jackson runs into inconsistency problems by trying to create new emotions while at the same time trying to stick to the original ones.

Here's an example: The beginning scenes when the dwarves make an unexpected visit on the hobbit.  Bilbo is furious and we get the feeling he really does not want to go on the journey.  He goes to sleep upset.  He wakes up and his house is in perfect condition.  He sees the "journey contract" on the table.  He runs out of his house dressed to go on an adventure.   

So why did Bilbo go on the adventure?  There's no conection, it's an emotional void where the viewer is asked to fill in the blanks with their own illogical reasoning.  I don't enjoy being illogical which is why I did not enjoy this movie.  My suggestion is read the book, watch the movie and you'll understand.  Otherwise if you haven't read the book and don't know much about Middle Earth you might enjoy it a little more than those that thought Tolkien knew best.

On a side note - there is a cartoon called The Hobbit which does a much better job of sticking to Tolkien's story and quite fun to watch.