Must read the book first!

Rating: 8/10 (5 January 2013)

If you haven't read the book then you are going to find this movie challenging. It's a huge book and they have tried to shoe-horn it into 2hrs 45 minutes, can you imagine The Lord of the Rings in a short movie...it's kind'a ironic because The Hobbit is a very short novel and Hollywood has stretched it out to three movies, the first one being ohh look 2hrs 45 minutes... doh! This movie needs to be seen on a big screen...it's a big screen movie - or sit very close to your telly, the make-up in particular is wow... distracting even but if you have read the book then there's two major differences; (a) The time-line in the book goes from past to future and then back to the past, it's a Christmas tree shaped time-line...in the movie it switches very rapidly and all over the place...it seems that in the first ?20 minutes it changes almost every two minutes...that will VERY much confuse the viewer..
(b) They have skimmed the story...so so much is missing, I was almost outraged at how much was skipped...the book goes into so much detail but the movie has dropped so much of the content that gives meaning to the scenes...
However, having said that I loved loved loved this movie, it works on so many levels and is so thought provoking, I just can't wait until they do it properly, the way it deserves, in a three movie deal.