Films are released, they are discussed, they are judged and
they are revered or forgotten. Occasionally after several years or even decades
they are reassessed by fans and critics and their historical placing my rise or
fall. I’ve decided to reassess a film myself but it isn’t a film I saw decades
or even years ago, it’s a film I saw just four months and nineteen days ago.
Like a lot of people who grew up watching Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy I couldn’t wait for the release of the
first instalment of his second Middle Earth trilogy, The Hobbit and Unexpected Journey. I saw it just before Christmas
last year and was hugely disappointed, so much so that I gave the film just
4/10 when I reviewed it. To put that into context, that’s the same rating I
gave to Rock of Ages and We Bought a Zoo, two films I never want
to see again.
For me the main problem with the movie was that it was
ruined by one thing; 3D. I thought the 3D in The Hobbit was pointless (if you’ll excuse the pun). It darkened
the screen, hiding the beautiful landscapes and made the scenes set underground
as easy to see as a particularly difficult to see thing, being viewed by a
blind man, facing the other way. The images were also fuzzy and the motion blur
I got from the action scenes meant that I often just gave up and closed my
eyes. All in all it was a disaster. So having reviewed the film and received
exasperated looks from friends who read it, I vowed to re-view it when it came
out on Blu-Ray. So was I right?
