The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Movie times again and it was time for the Hobbit. BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR! Fast action, awesome music and amazing sets. Great actors and a decent script. Although it is almost 3 hours long it keep you entertained and make you crave for more. Well worth a watch or even more. The story itself as a movie builds up the character decently and subtley differentiate the dwarves, although I can't say which name fits to which dwarf names, more their character traits. As a non-Tolkien fan It should be a good movie... for a Tolkien fan on the other hand (and here be spoilers):

Gonna be frank, most changes from the book I can justify in some way. For example, take the troll scene. In the book Thorin and co has just parted ways with Gandalf, short on food and with bad weather they are a bit grumpy, they see a ligth and send Bilbo to investigate. He finds three trolls preparing muttons. Bilbo see their wallet and deceide to steal it to prove his worth, but when he grabs it it talks and he is captured. After some blubering the trolls realice there is dwarves nearby and put one by one in a sack when they try to check on Bilbo. Except Thorin who fights them for awhile. Then Gandalf comes back and save them by mimiking their voices. In the film on the other hand Gandalf takes a walk to cool himself down from the obnoxious dwarves, the trolls steal their ponies, Bilbo tries to free them, get caught, dwarves try to save him, they fail and are almost cooked before Bilbo stalls for time until Gandalf shows up and breals a rock so that the sun turns them into stone. The changes establish Bilbo as a fast thinker, the dwarves a little bit more competent than in the book (how can you not suspect something wrong by sending one by one and none come back?) and probably shortened the capturing scene and one of the more fairy tale elements that feels to much "unreal" is gone.

Then we have the dwarven back-story. First a bit of nit-picking, discontinuity in the first minutes with the escape from Erebor, Thorin and Balin should have escaped together while Thror and Thrain took the secret door which gave the dwarves the idea to use it (if I remember correctly, haven't read that book in years). Anyway, it establish Thorin a bit more, but then we have the Azog story. Azog is the one that killed his grandfather the king when he and his servant went to Moria, the survent was released with the head of the king with the word Azog imprinted on his forhead, giving Azog the name Defiler (which cames out of nowhere in the film). This enrages the dwarves clans so they unite to avenge this shame and they march on Moria and fights a war driving the goblins and orcs back. During this fight Thorin gets the name oakenshield since he protects himself with an oaken bransh or staff (don't know which since it might differ in the translation between english and swedish) and Azog is slain by Dain Ironfoot as he hunt him down into Moria, but deceide to leave when he feels the prescense of the balrog. Not so much in the movie with Thorin maiming Azog and establish him as primary villain. In the movies defence it makes for a better antagonist than Smaug who they brilliantly teases the movie goers with from beginning to end only showing his shadow on the ground and in the smoke from the ruins he created until the very end.

The biggest change is probably the appearance of the White Council and the Dol Guldur subplot filling up the story which is more of a traveling guide across Middle Earth.  Anyway, the last thing to comment upon is the swedish subtitles writers who did an excellent job by sticking to the old translation where Rivendell is Vattnadal intead of Riftedal, and Baggins is Bagger instead of Secker (although for some reason Bag End became Säckers ände instead of Baggershus). Well, it was the right choice as a consistency toward the original movies. And I like Ohlmarks translation better, both for its nostalgia and also for a more lively text (although that might get me killed by real tolkien fans).