'The Hobbit: The Motion Picture Trilogy' Blu-ray box set review

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(C) 2015 Warner Bros./Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios




The Hobbit Motion Picture Trilogy
Nine years after director Peter Jackson concluded his The Lord of the Rings film trilogy with the Academy Award-winning epic The Return of the King, Warner Bros. released The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Starring Ian McKellen as Gandalf, Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins, Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, and Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield, this 2012 fantasy film is the first installment of an ambitious trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 novel, The Hobbit.
An Unexpected Journey was followed by The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in 2013. A year later, Warner Bros. closed the story arc with The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

The Hobbit Motion Picture Trilogy is the prequel to Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkien’s three-volume novel The Lord of the Rings. Thematically, The Hobbit is faithful to the spirit of Tolkien’s book, the script by Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Guillermo del Toro is a vastly expanded version. To tell a larger and more complex story than Tolkien originally told in his 1937 children’s book, the filmmakers added material based on The Lord of the Rings’ Appendices, created new characters, and included others from the Rings cycle to link both trilogies.
Set 60 years before The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,  The Hobbit Motion Picture Trilogy follows the adventures of Bilbo Baggins, a 51-year-old Hobbit who lived a quiet and uneventful life in The Shire until Gandalf the Wizard recruits him to go on an unexpected journey to the Lonely Mountain. Bilbo’s role: to be the mission’s “burglar: as part of Thorin Oakenshield’s party of 12 Dwarves. Their goal: to take back the Lonely Mountain from the gold-loving Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch), one of the last great Dragons to plague Middle-Earth.

The Box Set
For the U.S. home media market, New Line Home Video has released all three films in The Hobbit trilogy individually on Blu-ray and DVD, starting with An Unexpected Journey on March 19, 2013. Eight months later, New Line released an extended edition of the film that’s 25 minutes longer. The Desolation of Smaug was dropped on April 8, 2014 (theatrical version) and on November 5, 2014 (extended version). The most recent release was the theatrical version The Battle of the Five Armies, which hit stores on March 24, 2015.
On the same date of The Battle of the Five Armies’ debut on Blu-ray and DVD, New Line Home Video also rolled out The Hobbit: The Motion Picture Trilogy.  This 9-disc set includes the 2012-2014 feature films on three Blu-ray discs (BDs) and three standard definition DVDs, three BDs of extra features, and the code for a digital copy download that expires on March 24, 2015.

(For technical specs of this set, please see the Blu-ray/DVD specifications section below.)
My Take
Even though I wasn’t enthused about the massive alterations made to The Hobbit by Peter Jackson and his creative team, I decided to get this box set for several reasons:
  • The Hobbit is the first book in the War of the Ring story arc and preceded The Lord of the Rings by 17 years. Though its writing is geared toward younger readers, it’s the prelude to The Felllowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King.
  • I own both versions (theatrical and extended) of The Lord of the Rings, and I tend to be a completist when it comes to multi-film sagas.
  • Box sets are often a better bargain than buying each film’s home video release individually.

As with the home video releases of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, this box set has its pros and cons.
On the positive side of the scale, The Hobbit: The Motion Picture Trilogy contains all three installments of Jackson’s prequel trilogy in their original theatrical release edition. The movies are presented in glorious 1080p video resolution and digitally mastered audio in several languages. The set also includes copies of the feature films on DVD so viewers can play them on home computers or on standard definition DVD players. For viewers who want to download a digital copy for mobile devices, New Line Home Video and Warner Bros. Entertainment include a code that expires in March 2018.

On the negative side, the extra features on the theatrical release edition are not spectacular. Although the studios (Warner Bros., New Line Cinema, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) behind The Hobbit included three special features  BDs (one for each film), these don’t contain anything truly special.

Yes, there are behind-the-scenes featurettes and interviews in those three extra features BDs, but none of them are as comprehensive as those in The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy - Extended Edition box set. All of the participants in the featurettes are staff members of WETA Digital, Wingnut Films, and what have you, but director Peter Jackson and the more prominent members of his creative team (including Guillermo del Toro, the trilogy’s original director) are absent.  
Also like with The Lord of the Rings home video releases, the theatrical editions of An Unexpected Journey. The Desolation of Smaug, and The Battle of The Five Armies lack an audio commentary track by Jackson and his colleagues.

Why? Because come November 2015, New Line Home Video and Warner Bros. Entertainment will release the pricier 15-disc BD/DVD The Hobbit: The Motion Picture Trilogy - Extended Edition box set. Like its 2011 The Lord of the Rings counterpart, The Hobbit’s extended edition box set will be given the red carpet treatment, with a book-like slipcover and a treasure trove of extras that film geeks want.    
Video
Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: see individual releases
Original aspect ratio: see individual releases

Audio
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1
French: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1

Subtitles
English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese

Discs
Blu-ray Disc
Nine-disc set (6 BDs, 3 DVDs)
UV digital copy
Digital copy
DVD copy

Playback
Region A (BD), 1 (DVD)

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