Where's the magic?

Rating: 6/10 (28 July 2013)

I definitely felt like the magic of the original trilogy was missing here, the issue isn't so much with making three, three hours films based on thin amounts of source material (with extended editions mind you) which is even testing when you watch the original trilogy. They really don't hand out Oscars for best adapted screenplay for the good of their health.
The problem really lies in the production, it's entirely over extended. It's photographic process resembled an aesthetic similar to a role play, like the police were going to show up at the end a la Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The effects of this are significantly reduced on DVD which is a format I definitely recommend seeing this in. There were way too many CGI effects in some places which again just screams "THIS IS FAKE!" or at the very least made it look like a cartoon. The entire movie looks like one big Photoshop. It was a huge disappointment considering how well done the costume design was on the original trilogy. I guess gone are the days where people could make classic movies where the only gimmick they had was a faulty mechanical shark.
This is by no means a bad movie, my high regard of the LOTR movies kept this engaging from start to finish, and I don't really think there's much merit in comparing like movies, however they've made it very clear that Peter Jackson wants these movies on the same shelf, in the same box as the LOTR movies. I just felt really disappointed at how over produced it was and let down because it really was due to adding in the stuff that draws a crowd to the box office and not the tangible elements that make movie classics.