Filler Material

Rating: 5/10 (29 December 2013)

As anybody who has read the book knows "the Hobbit" was intended to be pure "fantasy" with a little "adventure" thrown in for good measure. And when compared with the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy it was the shortest book of them all. So it came as a big surprise to me when I learned that "the Hobbit" was being made into 3 separate movies. Begging the question: Was this being done to capture the essence of the book or was this simply a scheme to make more money? Well, having just watched this movie I can honestly say that this isn't about capturing art for art's sake-it's about making money. So much so that the producer took a portion of the"fantasy and adventure" from the book and basically used "CGI and action" as filler material. After all, he's got two more movies to make. Now, to be fair the other "Lord of the Rings" films had more than their fair share of CGI and action too. But they managed to incorporate the splendor of the fantasy to a certain degree. This movie has CGI and action. And I have no doubt the next two films will have more of the same. But it should have been much better. As such I rate this movie as only average.