The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was a wonderful return to Middle Earth. It contained just the right balance of the lightheartedness present in the book and the darker themes occuring in the background leading up to the Lord of the Rings. The make-up, costumes, landscapes, and the almost every instance of cgi were all beautiful and fantastic. There were a couple instances where the effects looked a little cheap. To me, Azog looked very fake and plastic-y. The wargs, especially when jumping and running quickly, looked fake as well. Some of the camera moves during action scenes especially seemed unorganic. There were a couple other instances of poor CGI, but overall it was fantastic. Gollum was amazingly realistic and perfectly acted by Andy Serkis. If every CGI character had as much work put into it as did gollum, this film would be unmatched visually in every way. Martin Freeman perfectly portrayed Bilbo, and the rest of the cast was fantastic as well. I usually am not one to complain about a movie differing from the book it is based upon, but the added warg chase scene with radagast seemed unneccessary and cheesy, and I do wish the scene in the fir trees were just a little bit more like the book. The modification of the stone giants scene, however, I thought was fantastic. The glimpses of Smaug and Erebor have me extremely excited to see the second movie next year. I have focused on the negatives in this review, but my impression of the movie overall is overwhelmingly positive. Only time will tell where it falls in relation to the LotR films in my heart, but at the moment I believe it is right there with them.

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