Waste of Good Story Rights

Rating: 6/10 (7 January 2013)

The joy of reading the Hobbit is that it's a humble and somewhat gentle tale for children. Quite why Jackson et al have decided to turn it into a 3 episode overblown epic is unknown. Well, apart the extra money of tieing people into 3 films instead of 1. However, the cracks caused by the necessary padding (the book itself is smaller than a single Lord of the Rings tome) appear almost immediately the film starts, with rambling exposition and tedious backstory (inaccurately elaborated on from Tolkien's appendices and notes) taking up some 90 minutes of the pre-journey film.
Once things get underway we are set for new lows as the 'humour', which up to now has merely been forced but dreary, becomes childish with snot jokes and toilet seat thrones making a 'comic' appearance. Yes the Hobbit is a children's book, but you'd not take a child to see the film as it has its fair share of decapitations etc, so don't make adults sit through 'jokes' only a 5 year old will laugh at. Oh, and I daren't even mention the bunny pulled sled! More Narnia than Nazgul, and far more likely to appeal to Harry Potter and Twilight fans than Tolkien devotees, this is painful indeed.
All characters are forgettable with the small exception of Bilbo and Gandalf. The 13 Dwarfs meld into one and are all forgettable and interchangeable. We then have the de rigeur trawl through battle scenes, no dount in an effort to generate that LOTR nostalgia. But where in the LOTR trilogy they were epic engagements, here they are laborious affairs with no personal engagement, no sense of peril, just an excuse for a battle on screen.
Then there is a backstory with Pale Orc Azog, a one dimensional villain with none of the motives of Sauron, the machiavellian nature of Saruman, or the deception of The Nine. Again, easy for children to understand but nothing here for an adult.
We then have a massive abuse of Deus Ex Machina, with Gandalf literally being a walking Deux Ex Machina machine (just as well as his magic amounts to a few smoke rings and some lights). Perhaps the book is like this, I cannot remember but things seem far more noticeable on film. Perhaps because we are adults now such writing sticks out like a sore thumb, or perhaps Jackson's treatment of the material and the new writing just throws it into sharp relief. Whatever, it just feels hackneyed.
Anyway, remember to set your alarm to wake you up by the time this rambling, overly-verbous and nauseous mess has finished.