The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
★★★½ — The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
The Hobbit is my favourite novel. Has been since I was a kid. So sitting down with Peter Jackson's adaptation of it is never a neutral experience for me. It's personal. And An Unexpected Journey earns a lot of goodwill from me, genuinely, while also testing it in ways that are hard to ignore.
Think of it like this: imagine someone took your most beloved book, had it beautifully illustrated by the finest artists in the world, printed it on thick, heavy paper with gold-leaf lettering, and then quietly slipped in three extra chapters of footnotes you didn't ask for. That's this film. Gorgeous to look at, warm in all the right places, and occasionally lost up its own appendices.
The opening act is, to my mind, close to perfect. The Shire has never felt more like home. The dwarves pile into Bag End with such infectious energy that you're grinning before you've even clocked what's happening. Martin Freeman as Bilbo is inspired casting: flustered, decent, quietly funny, and immediately somebody you want to follow across Middle-earth. Howard Shore's score does what it always does, which is make your chest ache in the best possible way. And the flashback to Erebor, the mountain kingdom falling to dragon-fire, is the kind of sequence that justifies the whole enterprise. Tragic, glittering, enormous in scope. I'd watch an entire film set in that moment alone.
But here's where I have to be honest with myself. This film is stretched. Visibly, self-consciously stretched. A story that Tolkien told with lightness and pace, a children's adventure that moves like a river, gets pulled into the shape of an epic trilogy whether it fits or not. The White Council scenes grind things to a halt. Azog turning up again and again as a CGI heavy starts to feel less threatening and more like an obligation. The pacing lurches between cosy fireside warmth, frantic chase sequences, and lore-dumps that feel like they've been copy-pasted from the appendices of The Return of the King. It's like watching a first-time Dungeons and Dragons dungeon master who's just discovered there are extra books they haven't read to the table yet, and insists on sharing all of them at once.
And yet. And yet, I keep coming back to those moments when the film just breathes. When it remembers it's supposed to be a story about a small, comfortable person discovering that the world is enormous and strange and worth seeing. Those moments are pure Tolkien. The riddles in the dark sequence has a brilliant, tense intimacy to it. The camaraderie among the company feels earned. The ache of homesickness that Bilbo carries, that quiet bravery underneath the bluster, lands every time.
I reviewed The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies as well, and what I'll say is this: for all its padding, An Unexpected Journey is comfortably the best of the three. The sequels somehow manage to make Middle-earth feel small and mechanical, which is a remarkable failure given the source material. This one, for all its bloat, still has wonder in it.
Does it capture the soul of Tolkien's book? Not fully, no. The book is leaner, funnier, and more trusting of its own simplicity. Jackson can't quite resist the urge to make everything bigger, darker, more connected to the mythology of the wider world. Sometimes that works. Often it doesn't. If you want to see what Jackson can do when he's firing on all cylinders and the material demands genuine epic scale, I'd point you toward The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, which remains the gold standard for this kind of storytelling.
But here's the thing. I walked out of the cinema in 2012 with a big, daft smile on my face. Four stars. Flawed, overstuffed, occasionally maddening, but still a film that captures the wonder, the warmth, and the homesick heart of a story I've loved my whole life. I'll take it.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2012 | Watched: 2025-06-05
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: HBO Max Amazon Channel · HBO Max
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Peter Jackson: King Kong (2005) · The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) · The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) · The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
More with Martin Freeman: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) · The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
More from New Zealand: What We Do in the Shadows (2014) · Mortal Engines (2018) · King Kong (2005) · 'Aho'eitu (2015)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)
More fantasy: Viy (1967) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
