brilliant pictures, horrible plot

Rating: 2/10 (10 January 2013)

After Peter Jackson had made the Lord of the Rings in such a magnificent way, following the the plot of the books very satisfyingly, I was really looking forward to go see the Hobbit. I expected to see another epic movie. Very unfortunately, Jackson seemingly thought of himself as the new Tolkien this time and adjusted the story freely according to his wishes.
The movie starts very promising. The Intro is amazing and the landscapes and cities as well as the costumes look perfect as we know it from the Lord of the Rings. Still the first scene, where the dwarfs are introduced, is a joy, not too funny, not too serious and the dwarfs look truly amazing.
But where the journey starts, and therefore the actual movie, the enjoyment ends. It starts a story that jumps between three plots that are poorly connected and from which two have nothing to do with the Hobbit. It seems that Peter Jackson wants to link the Hobbit to the Lord of the Rings and to some other, as far as I remember my Tolkien readings, totally invented story about some vengeful Ork Lord. This is completely unnecessary for telling the story of the Hobbit, but would be okay, if it would make the movie more interesting. However the opposite is the case. It makes the story slowly limp forward from one original scene to the next, so the bored spectator asks himself how this movie will ever come to an end. The only (desired?) effect is, that the story doesn't fit into one movie anymore and three movies had to be produced out of a book, that is thinner than any one of the three parts of the Lord of the Rings. Additionally, with few exceptions, the single scenes are done very badly, including the ones that follow the original plot. The action is ridiculously over exaggerated and there is a lot of badly placed comedy in the scenes. By that, the last excitement that one had when reading the book, gets lost.
Summa summarum, I went to the cinema with the expectation to see an epic movie, was delighted by a great beginning, started to be inpatient as the story would not go on, got bored after a while, became angry when the movie stopped without anything had really happened and left the cinema very disappointed. This movie is not epic at all, it is ridiculous! Shame on Peter Jackson for ruining that story in such a way, having such great technique and being able to create such great images of middle-earth. I wish nobody would go watch the 2nd and 3rd anymore. But probably I'll go myself nevertheless and get disappointed again.