THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY Trailer Shown At AICN's Butt-Numb-A-Thon

"It’s more character-based than epic, but it’s like slipping into a warm embrace from a very old friend that you haven’t seen in many years. Truly wonderful."

By Matt Holmes /

The first trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has played at AICN's epic Butt-Numb-A-Thon Texas film festival over the weekend, ahead of it's expected unspooling with prints of The Adventures of Tintin opening December 21st in the US. There has also been some reports that it might play with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows that opens this Friday as both films are Warner Bros productions but don't hold me on that. If nothing else, expect the trailer before Christmas and probably online. Peter Jackson has certainly been good to us fans worldwide with his production diaries and I imagine we will get another one detailing how he has crafted the trailer. Reactions are all over twitter but as they were asked by the director and the in attendance Elijah Wood to not go into detail on what they had seen. Unlike the journalists who attended The Dark Knight Rises prologue screening on Thursday and gave a play-by-play report, the geeks at the festival were pretty respectful. Nordling writes in his AICN report;
Yes, we saw THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY trailer thanks to Gandalf The Grey magically transporting Quint from the beautiful landscapes of Middle-Earth to the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas. No, I can€™t talk about any specifics except to say that something I always treasured from the original book is in the trailer in a big way and I was very happy to hear it. The trailer will play in front of THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN and it€™s simply sublime. It€™s more character-based than epic, but it€™s like slipping into a warm embrace from a very old friend that you haven€™t seen in many years. Truly wonderful.
The last sentence from Nordling truly has me excited. One of the worrying aspects of any director returning to a universe a decade later is whether he can recapture the feel and the magic of what he had created previously. And the 'old friend warm embrace' is like music to my ears. Wow, I can't wait to see this. Christmas will certainly come early with the unveiling of The Dark Knight Rises prologue, the trailer for that movie and this teaser trailer for The Lord of the Rings prequel before Christmas.