The Hobbits come from a magical realm called "Diagonal Earth."

MGM just released the first trailer for Peter Jackson’s fourth Hobbit movie, the first of the two-part The Hobbit, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Judging by people’s reactions — “shaking and crying!”, “Peter Jackson is a God,” (just to quote a few from my Facebook wall), people are reeeeeeally excited about it. All I’m saying is, don’t over exert yourself. Grab your inhalers and meet me after the jump.

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” follows title character Bilbo Baggins, who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakensheild. Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers. Although their goal lies to the East and the wastelands of the Lonely Mountain first they must escape the goblin tunnels, where Bilbo meets the creature that will change his life forever … Gollum. Here, alone with Gollum, on the shores of an underground lake, the unassuming Bilbo Baggins not only discovers depths ofguile and courage that surprise even him, he also gains possession of Gollum’s “precious” ring that holds unexpected and useful qualities … A simple, gold ring that is tied to the fate of all Middle-earth in ways Bilbo cannot begin to know.

I know I probably have a different perspective on this than most, but I stayed with a friend in Melbourne a few years back, and he had no cable, just a couple special edition Lord of the Rings DVDs with like 20 hours of footage on them, and that was all we watched for a week, until I wanted to cut my eyes out and eat them. Nothing but orc fights and Peter Jackson droning on and on and on about using state of the art computers to get the enchanting look of his magical kingdom juuuuust right. So even though The Hobbit was by far the best book of the series, now, as soon I hear Ian McKellan’s epic voiceovers or see Andy Serkis doing his wheezy goblin act, it hits me like four bottles of NyQuil at a Ken Burns film festival. This looks like… the dullest thing in the world. It looks like the New Zealand of movies. I’m sorry, I will shoot some meth and we can both be excited for this together. We have a year before it comes out. Plenty of time to find some meth.

Sidenote: Have you noticed 80% of Led Zeppelin’s songs are Lord of the Rings references? It’s fun to go back and listen to them while imagining Robert Plant as the world’s biggest Lord of the Rings nerd.

[HD available at Apple]