Last night I finally got to join the masses and watch The Hobbit movie on the big screen. Not sure how many ways I can say ‘I love it’ so I hope you’re counting although I will try to be balanced.

There are many differences to the book and some of them work for me while others don’t. The book starts off with a description of Hobbits and where they live, the movie starts off with some sweeping shots of Hobbiton, Bilbo’s house and then takes us inside. Bilbo sits down with pen and paper to start writing his memoirs which we hear as a voice over and see the history before our story begins, this is good as it gives us a good overview of why Thorin does what he does and how much emotional pain he’s in, something covered later on in the book. We move on quickly after Frodo’s been through and they’ve discussed The Party (Bilbo’s 111th Birthday from The Lord of the Rings), their relatives and then we move back 60 years to when Bilbo and Gandalf first speak.

In this early part, even through the party with the Dwarves, we don’t see Bilbo as being much of anything, he doesn’t appear to even have a sharp wit and doesn’t manage to rebut anything very cleverly at all. The Good Morning scene is funny though. The song is wonderful, just beautifully done and I loved how they threw all the plates around without dropping any (heavens knows how many takes they did or how much was CGI but I enjoyed seeing that scene). Later on, his wit seems to shine through, he’s the one who remembers Trolls have problems with sunlight and manages to delay proceedings until Gandalf gets there and assists the sunlight to hit the Trolls, so there’s been a little bit of rewriting of the story there.

The bit that interests me is where Bilbo actually makes up his mind to go on the adventure, this is so different from the book where he was caught up in the events of the night that he is eventually put to bed and Gandalf comes in the next morning to clean up and send him on his way. I think I prefer the film on this point, it doesn’t make sense for someone who is so wedded to his home that he has to be thrust out on an adventure to suddenly pluck up the courage part way through and be able to match wits, sword fight and generally get himself and his companions out of trouble, it makes far more sense for someone who’s chosen the adventure to do all that. I always wondered about that part in the book, just never really rang true to me.

Other bits I absolutely loved:

Rivendell – We see it from across the bridge and it looks super gorgeous as it should, although we don’t hear the elves singing and greeting the travellers as they cross the bridge and I was looking forward to that. We do get the singing later on.

The Stone Giants – Loved these! They seemed to have matched the images in my head reasonably well and then taken it to the next level, awesome!

Goblin Cave – The entrance to their cave was bigger than I’d imagined but it makes great sense as it had to shelter 14 people and keep them dry, I enjoyed the entrance as it opened up as well. Just before it opened up Bilbo was awake and starting to sneak off home which just seemed to make sense as if you’re not really invested in an adventure then until your emotions change you’re going to take every chance you can to leave. Absolutely adored what they did with the inside of the cave, it showed so, so many levels and so, so many Goblins, lots of depth here.

The music – didn’t notice much during the movie but afterwards there was stirring music by Neil Finn and Steven Gallagher.

The Eagles – always loved the Eagles and nothing’s changed. We don’t hear them talking in this movie and they drop the company off on a totally out of the way place instead of in their eyrie.

Dialogue – various parts of it were taken directly from the book, yes!

Things that were just totally wrong:

Bilbo wasn’t appreciably smaller than the Dwarves. In the book they’re able to carry him on their backs without slowing them down but as he’s the same size as they are that’s not going to happen in the movie. Several of them do seem able to pick him up by the shoulders but it’s not as described in the book.

Bilbo kicked Gollum in the head as he jumped over him to get to the exit of the Goblin Cave. That never happened in the book and I don’t feel it added anything.

This is long enough, suffice to say I loved the movie, thought it was a good rendition of the book, many of the changes made it make more sense and I loved how they managed to get into my head and bring those images onto the screen.  Now I need the DVD so I can watch it again, possibly as many times as I’ve read the book, and also view the extras. One day.