The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Extended Edition) (Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + UltraViolet)

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Extended Edition) (Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + UltraViolet) Overview

Join Peter Jackson on the Journey to the World’s Greatest Adventure Five-disc Extended Edition includes 13 minutes of revealing never-before-seen film footage and nearly 9 hours of fascinating in-depth looks at the production.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Extended Edition) (Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + UltraViolet) Specifications

A fellow named Bilbo Baggins lives in the Shire--but perhaps you've made his acquaintance already? If you're familiar with J.R.R. Tolkien's epic Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the films that Peter Jackson wrought from them, of course you have. And here is Bilbo, played again by Ian Holm, shuffling about his hobbit hole and recalling a grand adventure from his past, when he left the Shire with a wizard and some dwarves and found a certain ring and a very peculiar creature named Gollum. This is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which Jackson and his LOTR crew have expanded on from Tolkien's 1937 novel. And boy, have they expanded: this 169-minute escapade is merely the first of three separate movies made from that one book, and it gets the young Bilbo (played by Martin Freeman) only a little ways into his grand trek. Many loud, garish battles and chases fill the time, along with some (it pains one to say it) fairly tedious adolescent-level humor. Jackson tends to dally with scenes that might have been more effective in half the time, and the bumptious dwarves are some of the least charming characters in the Tolkieniad. Thank goodness, there's Gollum (played, as before, by the digitally transformed Andy Serkis), who shares a riddle-trading scene with Bilbo that sends genuine shivers up the spine. Ian McKellen returns as Gandalf, and a few other LOTR folk make cameos, but the more An Unexpected Journey goes on, the less you sense the magic afoot. Despite the fun moments, this feels like a prologue for the actual movie, which is still to come. (Originally released on many screens in 3-D, the film was also showcased in some theaters in a pioneering format that increased the clarity of the image--or made it look like a soap opera, depending on your receptiveness to the flat, frictionless technology.) --Robert Horton

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