Hugh Disappointment!

Rating: 1/10 (8 April 2013)

I have to say, as a die-hard fan of the books, that this movie was blown for me in the first 20 minutes. I could live with many of the story additions, because I know that one little book was being stretched into three movies, and most of the additions were just to basically take up time (and some were pretty pointless). Those changes didn't change the basic storyline, though, so I was able to let those go. However, the one that I had a major problem with was in the beginning when they showed the Elves refusing to help the dwarfs, and thereby causing the strife between the Elves and the dwarfs. NO! NO! NO! That did NOT happen in the book! That struck me as off right from the start, and I even went back and re-read the book to be sure. It was not the Elves that caused the strife, but the dwarfs' own greed, and this happens later on. What I haven't figured out is if this change in the movie was made to make the dwarfs look better (and less like the greedy buggers that they were back then-remember that they evolved over the course of the series) or the Elves look worse (did somebody think they were too perfect?). What scares me the most is what changes this might cause later on in the following movies. After all, if Thranduil didn't want to risk the lives of his people and won't go to war in this movie, why would he bother later? Same circumstances still apply, right? War would still involve loss of life. Which, presumably, means that there would have to be some other sort of change that will provide the motivation. I can only hope that Jackson doesn't resort to the lure of the gold, because with this story change they could have had that if they had helped in the beginning, and none of this will make any sense.