The Hobbit & Wreck-it Ralph

I'm currently on sick leave from my job, so I figure it's time to review some of the movies I've seen in the past month.

The Hobbit

Peter Jackson once again gives us a stunning Tolkien trilogy.... except it's based on one book instead of three. Two books if you count the Silmarillion (yes I did have to look up how to spell that title).

The Hobbit is a short book. As an adult you can read it in a day. Jackson is showing it to us over the course of 8 & 1/2 hours.
So this is a very long movie, and it feels long.
That being said, I still highly recommend this flick.
It has something that LOTR didn't have, and that's adventure for the sake of adventure.
In LOTR the ensemble makes their epic journey because if they don't then the bad guy get's his OBJECT OF ULTIMATE POWER and takes over the world.
In The Hobbit they go on the adventure for wealth, prestige, and to reclaim what was stolen from them. If they suddenly decided to go home and say "to hell" with the stupid quest, they'd be back where they started, but no worse off. Bilbo chose adventure, Frodo had adventure forced upon him.
And the results are telling too. At the beginning of LOTR Bilbo is wealthy and surprisingly old for a Hobbit. His adventures rewarded him. At the end of LOTR Frodo is forced to retire to Elf Heaven only a couple years after his quest. Meaning he never got to marry, probably never even had sex (unless him and Sam got freaky off-screen). Effectively he was punished for the quest that he was forced into. Plus the whole losing a finger and being tortured by the being off all evil.

So end result, The Hobbit is basically the same concept as LOTR but with fewer elves, more dwarves, a happier story, and a goddamn dragon.



Now onto Wreck-it Ralph.

Honestly, this is my movie of the year. I've seen alot of movies this year, but this was my favorite, I went back to see it again in theaters and I added it to my Amazon.com wishlist immediately after leaving the theater for the first time.

Settling in close to the most nostalgic portion of my heart, it tells the story of a old school arcade videogame villain who grows tired of being the villain and wants to be the hero. The rules of his world are such that he literally cannot ever be a hero or else humans will realize that video game characters were alive (kinda like Tron). So he sets off to prove himself a hero in other video games. And of course he fucks it up, because, hey, he's "Wreck-it Ralph" not "Automatically-succeed-at-everything Ralph".
But what really makes me happy in this film is the sense of personal growth for every single character. Everyone in the cast grows, even minor characters get to grow.
The story drops hints about the eventual outcome of the plot, but they aren't so heavy-handed that you're likely to guess the twist until it actually happens.

So yeah, if you can find it still in theaters, go see this movie, if not, just buy it on DVD. Hell, I'm gonna get whatever DVD/Blue ray super combo pack I can for this movie, and watch it until I burn a hole in the disc.

Every time I left the theater after watching that movie I just felt happier, and I want to own it just so I can continue feeling that.