‘The Hobbit’ and the technology of cinema

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first part of the trilogy, is everything it promised to be. Middle-Earth created (again) in extraordinary detail; monsters and trolls as only Peter Jackson and his people can make them; jaw-dropping action sequences; grim men standing on the edges of cliffs overlooking vast New Zealand vistas. Enough reviews have already been published, and many of you may have already seen the film. I don’t intend to go over beaten ground, like whether The Hobbit is too long (167 minutes), whether the battles are stretched a bit too much (a common criticism of Jackson), whether the film has any heart (another common criticism, especially after King Kong), and so on. I only want to talk about where The Hobbit stands as a technological feat of cinema.