Big is not always better

Rating: 5/10 (19 December 2012)

People will always compare it with the LOTR trilogy, consciously or otherwise. And that is the biggest challenge facing the Hobbit trilogy. After watching it my first comment was, it should have been made before the LOTR trilogy.
As a film on its own, it is overall a very impressive effort. I read many reviews which criticised the inflation of certain scenes to make up the 3 hours and I entirely agree. I also agree that certain characters did not need to be in the film. But when I saw the Warner Brothers and MGM logos at the start of the film, I did wonder what level of control Peter Jackson had over the script content...
The Hobbit should not be a trilogy and the films do not need to be 3 hours duration each. There is no need to force the story to match the LOTR trilogy. I dread to think what extra material is going to be included in the Director's cut...