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This post was originally written early in the morning on Friday, December 14th. In light of that day's tragedy, it was taken down and replaced with one that I felt was more appropriate. I actually will be going to see this movie tonight. Here is the post:
I've read some negative post-release reviews about The Hobbit this morning, and this has got me thinking about what my expectations are, since I've been looking forward to its release for over a year now. I think that the best way to talk about The Hobbit is to look at what I've experienced watching LOTR.
I never liked how the LOTR trilogy had so much fighting and so little depth (besides the built-in depth of the scenery, the costumes, and making Middle Earth into a believable place). I enjoyed the extended DVD versions much more than the theater versions of these movies. I have always expected The Hobbit to be more of the same. The more encyclopedic this movie is, the better in my view - although I do hope it isn't "sluggish." The quality that is the *most* fun for me is that these movies are so good at recreating (almost exactly) the imaginary Tolkien worlds that I dreamed up in my head when I read the stories as a boy. I'm left feeling a magical middle-earthy sense of deja-vu with each film, as if I want to take all of my friends around on a tour of the places where I grew up. Perhaps that's because the imaginary world of a 10 year old is so vivid, and these movies do manage, better than anything else, to recreate the lush and whimsical Tolkien-lands, wherein my memories still enjoy luxuriating on a green hillside, puffing on a pipe full of Old Toby.
I guess I'm hoping that The Hobbit takes me down that same road to my childhood visions of magic and lore. If it accomplishes that and nothing more, it will have lived up to my expectations, although I imagine that I might feel it should have been shorter, could have been more true to the original book, and might have been better as just one movie, instead of three.
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