Very disappointing experience

Rating: 4/10 (29 May 2013)

First off: I was very excited about this movie. Being a LOTR fan, I was expecting something grand.
I couldn't have been more disappointed.
The general impressions I got from this were that:

this was more about making a new blockbuster trilogy than about making a good movie; why make 3 movies from a 300 pages book with a pretty simple plot if not to make money?

the spirit of the book was not respected; so many long action scenes were added, plus references to the LOTR story that I was more intrigued by these than by the original story. They were trying too hard to make a connection to the LOTR storyline instead of focusing to the story of The Hobbit, which was completely superfluous in my opinion

the lighter tone of The Hobbit book compared to LOTR was not respected.

And as if this was not enough, 3D doesn't add anything to the movie. In my opinion, 3D is mostly used more as a gadget to attract people and sell more expensive movie tickets than to actually improve the movie experience.
I'm not saying that 3D is completely useless. There are examples of movies where 3D completely makes sense (ex. Life of Pi). This just isn't one of them.
In conclusion, I think the movie would have been vastly improved if it had been treated as a story on its own instead of a LOTR franchise prequel.