The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has lived up to expectations dominating the US box office earning $84.8 million for Peter Jackson’s first part in a new Middle Earth trilogy.
The film is a prequel to the Oscar winning The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but the book was actually written first by J. R. R. Tolkein. It tells of homely hobbit Bilbo Baggins and his adventures with wizard Gandalf and a group of merry dwarves en route to do battle with the evil gold hoarding dragon, Smaug.
The movie stars Martin Freeman (from The Office and Sherlock), a host of British faces familiar from TV (Richard Armitrage, James Nesbitt and Ken Stott) and also has Sir Ian McKellen reprising his role as Gandalf the Grey.
Peter Jackson, the Kiwi director famous for Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Heavenly Creatures and an early spate of low budget zombie movies, was originally only meant to produce one film which became two parts then when Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro left the project, he took the reigns, much to the delight of the Rings fans. Jackson then decided to make the movie into a trilogy – something which has encountered some criticism as a form of commercialism.
However, can you blame Jackson or New Line for trying to milk this cash cow before it finally ends? It is hard to see where the cinematic world of Middle Earth can go after the last of these films is released in December 2014.
Of course perhaps the answer lies online and in the world of videogames, and there is still The Silmarillion, which could be made into a movie. However that book is not exactly fit for the cinema as it is a collection of stories, poems and myths created by Tolkein. But I am sure someone will probably give it a go to cash in.
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy grossed $2.9 billion, so it is no wonder that we perhaps haven’t seen the end of Middle Earth yet.
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