11. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
Almost ten years after The Lord of the Rings trilogy had come to its epic conclusion Peter Jackson returned to Middle Earth, stepping into the director's chair in place of Guillermo del Toro for the opening installment of a new saga that would attempt to justify stretching JRR Tolkien's 300 page source novel into 9 hours of cinema. Despite the director's passion and command of the material, An Unexpected Journey is technologically flawless, yet a little underwhelming. Adding material from the various appendices of Tolkien's mythology to craft a trilogy smacks of blatant commercialism, and I firmly believe the story would work better as a two-movie arc as was originally intended. At an unnecessary 170 minutes, the narrative moves at a plodding pace (especially in the first act) and there are too many scenes that appear to be nothing more than filler to pad out the opening chapter, with many of the important story beats saved for the following two movies. However, An Unexpected Journey is not without its merits; Martin Freeman is perfectly cast as Bilbo Baggins (the rest of the ensemble cast are also uniformly excellent, particularly Ian McKellen and Richard Armitage), the movie is as visually stunning as we've come to expect from Jackson's forays into Middle Earth, and the Riddles in the Dark scene is one of the best in the entire series. An Unexpected Journey opened lower than many had predicted with a first weekend gross of $84.6m, and ultimately became the lowest-grossing movie in the Lord of the Rings series at the domestic box office, even with ten years of ticket price inflation and the addition of 3D. Despite mixed reviews, the ever-expanding international market were eager to return to Middle Earth, and the movie generated over $700m overseas to close with a worldwide total of $1.017bn. Each movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy grossed more in total than its predecessor; next month's release of The Desolation of Smaug will see The Hobbit franchise attempt to repeat the trick.