Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson returns to the realm in which he made his career more then a decade ago, and in turn he does nothing new with it. It is perhaps not surprising that Jackson would be tempted by this project, rooted as it is in what proved to be his zenith. Audiences in general it seems have not known exactly what to make of Jackson's films made subsequent to the Lord of the Rings trilogy (King Kong, The Lovely Bones), though the same could honestly be said for his pre-LOTR's work (The Frighteners, Meet the Feebles). Jackson seems intent on focusing his energies on epic adaptations of existing properties, and in no way does he shy away from length, excess length in fact is one of his signatures.
The Hobbit was originally a book that author J.R.R. Tolkien had written for his children, but its surprising success upon publication prompted the author to embark on a darker, longer, and for more ambitious and adult sequel that came to be his three volume epic novel The Lord of the Rings. But I don't think Peter Jackson likes the idea of "smaller" much. Instead of a simple children's film, The Hobbit is for adults, or kind of, it wants to be for adults, but it can't help but be something of a sick sister in comparison with LOTR. Jackson really pads this thing out, somehow making it into three movies. He introduces a lot of foreshadowing of the Lord of The Rings movies, and actors like Ian McKellen, Hugo Weaving, and Cate Blanchett reprise their roles from the earlier trilogy. There is plenty of what The Nostalgia Chick calls "Forced Peej Conflict", whose seemingly only purpose is to make the story longer.
All this being said however this first volume of the The Hobbit is not a bad film, its just a safe film, where we've seen everything before. The appeal lies in a desire to return to the world of the LOTR trilogy and see it fleshed out. I was not a huge fan of the original films but I liked them, and I liked this, though at the same time I can't escape the feeling that its all just slumming. ***
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