The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first in Peter Jackson’s brand new Hobbit trilogy that’s a prequel to the extremely popular Lord of the Rings series, premiered in New Zealand yesterday night.

The movie stars fan favorites Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Elijah Wood and Orlando Bloom.

And people are pumped about it.

So pumped, in fact, that lucky audience members who got to see the world premiere last night took to Twitter to express their thoughts – in advance of an embargo on any reviews of the film.

Score one for the movie industry laymen! We get an inside look at one of the most anticipated films on the winter Hollywood circuit without having to pay the ticket price.

Here’s a look at some of the opinions:

Over on IMDB, 3,943 users have given the movie a weighted average vote of 9.3 / 10.

So Twitter’s not the only social site enabling users to communicate early thoughts about movies. But it is the quickest and farthest-reaching social site for communicating those opinions. In our opinion.

The film is scheduled for general release on December 14, 2012. Are you planning on seeing it?

(Movie theater image from Shutterstock)