One does not simply review The Hobbit. Reviewing this movie means explaining the other movies that art part of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, explaining why people liked this movie and didn’t like this movie and why you should like it anyway despite all the haters (haters are people who don’t like something just to not like it. It’s a lot easier to complain about a situation than it is to fix it)
So let’s jump right into it. The Hobbit is a prequel to The Lord of the Rings trilogy. That means it took place before all the other movies. If you were a movie your parents would be the prequel to you. Your parents prequel was your grandparents.
The movie starts out way before any of other movies take place, back where there was a kingdom ruled by dwarves full of rare jewels and metals. The dwarves in the area mined out the caves with all of these rare good deep into the earth. All the while, the good king of the drawves is beginning to start take more and more of the gold and other riches for himself. Eventually this becomes a problem because dragons love riches and they don’t like dwards. Eventually Smaug- a really grumpy greedy dragon comes by and instead of being civil about wanting the gold burns the village and everyone it runs into to make everyone run away from their home country.
Now the dwarves with no home have no choice but to wander off and find a place to stay all the while fighting off orcs (who are a lot like dragons- they just can’t seem to get along with anyone). In one of these battles the dwarf king is slain and Thorin- the prince of dwarves takes over as king and leads his kingdom to a temporary place to call home but everyone really yearns for their home.
A little while later, in a peaceful valley lives a hobbit (they’re like small people but with hairy feet and friendly attitudes) named Bilbo Baggins living a quiet life in his hut. Until one day a man named Gandalf comes by and says that he’s going on an adventure. To which Bilbo bravely replies “No”. Closes the door on Gandalf and goes back to living his peaceful life.
The next part is hard to understand so I broke it down into a metaphor. Picture your at your house eating Doritos (if you don’t like Dorritos think of a snack you do like.) and playing videogames all quietly at your house. Suddenly you hear a knock at the door and it’s one of your friends. Well you weren’t expecting any company but you let him in anyway. Your friend turns off your videogame and plays another one and starts eating your dorritos. Before you get a chance to ask why, someone knocks on the door and there’s two more of your friends at the door who do the same thing. By the end of the night you have twelves people eating your Doritos and playing all your videogames. Now picture that instead of Doritos it’s all of your food by the fridge load and instead of playing videogames it’s breaking furniture and instead of friends it’s dwarves you’ve never met in your life and that’s what happens to Frodo.
Eventually Gandalf comes and explains to Bilbo that these dwarfs are all going on an adventure and Bilbo would be going too. To which Bilbo bravely replies “No!”. But by the end of the night, Bilbo begins to think about what life would be like if he didn’t have his comfy house with his comfy videogames and Doritos and decides that he wants to help these dwarfs get their home back. So Bilbo at the last second joins up with them and goes on an crazy adventure.
Running into trolls who want to eat them, goblins who want to capture them and orcs who want to kill them. There’s even mountains that start moving on their own. There’s also wizards with crazy magical powers, elves with pointy ears and rings with cool effects. So believe me, even though the movie is three hours long you’ll wish it was longer by the end (except for the elf village part, you’ll wish that ended 20 minutes before it started). That’s the good about the movie.
Now, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I respect that (and so should you). But I want to talk a little about the critiques about this movie (that means the reviews that suggest there being deep problems with this movie).
13 Main Characters.
To understand why this movie is a little hard to review, picture your grampa telling you a story about life “back in his day” and he lists off a bunch of people you don’t know and you don’t have any paper to write it all down on. And while you are trying to keep up with all the people in his story you have to keep track of what he’s talking about, where he is going and you have no idea where the story is going to end. Watching The Hobbit to some people is a lot like that. But the thing you have to remember is that:
If you remember the names Gandalf, Bilbo and Thorin you can see the entire movie and understand 99% of the important things going on. The little details are there for the people who read the book and are looking to see their favorite characters discussed. It’s not to say they aren’t important but names aren’t the most important thing to remember. Sometimes you might meet people in real life you only run into for a few minutes, never catch their name and think, “What a great person!”. Just because you don’t remember someones name doesn’t mean you don’t think they’re great. But trust me, remembering names makes people feel special. No one wants to be thought of as “That one guy” or “That one girl”. But since this is a movie and you’re (probably) not going to meet these dwarves and hobbits in real life it’s not going to be a problem.
Too Long
A lot of people complain about how long this movie is. Don’t watch this movie if you’re in a hurry to get out of it. You ever been at a friends house and you didn’t want to leave even though you were there all day? If you go into this movie with that attitude you’ll love it. If you go into this movie with a bad attitude because of how long it is, you’ll leave it the same way. I don’t want to get deep on you but everything is about attitude. If you go in with a bad attitude you’ll leave with one, and vis versa. I know it’s long, but that doesn’t mean it’s boring.
Not as good
Great deal of people are complaining about this movie strictly because some think this movie “Isn’t as good as the others”. To me, I think it’s not very fair for people to be comparing all these movies to one another since they all do something different for the series. Let me put it a different way: Imagine if you were really good at math but you weren’t good at writing. Now what if your teacher came up to you during writing class and said, “Your not good at this, so you must be bad at everything” That would seem really unfair. She didn’t even consider how good you were at running, multiplication tables or any of that. She just up and judged you. That’s what movie critics do to this movie. They wanted this movie to be just like all the others but it wasn’t and that made them not like it. Just because something isn’t the same as the other doesn’t mean it’s bad!
What we can learn from all this
Obviously you’re opinion and my opinion are not always going to be the same. That’s what makes us human (and me a chameleon) is that we are all different. You may end up agreeing with me and liking this movie or you may end up thinking you don’t like this movie. But the point is let it be YOUR OPINION. Don’t let negative reviews weigh your decision on how good a movie is. Sometimes even your friends try to convince you their opinion of something even when you don’t agree. That’s also known as peer pressure, it’s also known as jumping on the bandwagon. Your opinion, popular or not is your opinion and you should appreciate it for what it is. So let people know your opinion (if they ask) and don’t let them decide it for you. You are your own person, and so is your opinion. Of course that could just be MY opinion.
