The narrator is under the spell of a manipulative eye

Rating: Null/10 (20 December 2012)

First of all, we need to have some perspective. Roughly speaking, Middle Earth was not conceived from the outset as a coherent mythology. The Hobbit was written first, a simple bedtime story for Tolkien's own children. Then over the course of the next decade, bit by bit he stretched that into the apocalyptic conclusion of LOTR, while furnishing but ultimately leaving unfinished the entire cosmogony behind it.
There are two reasons why I think the endeavor proved such an overwhelming success. One is of course the cunningly crafted narrative; in both Hobbit and LOTR, our eyes in the story belong to what amounts to child or childlike protagonists—'halflings'—around which, he erects a cosmogonic struggle between gods and sundry ancient beings far beyond what we can readily imagine.
And because he was an erudite man in his field, and wanted next to the fairytale to indulge his passion for language and myth, this allowed him to tinker with all sorts of minutiae that looking back upon, satisfy a sense of unearthing something whole. Overall, it is a simple but powerful effect.
The second reason is more subtle, but every bit as powerful; the books came with maps. More on that in future posts.
The rest of Tolkien's creation is seriously hampered by his romantic feelings towards archaic notions of harmony (to the point: Melkor's discord in the celestial music as the birth of evil), but at least this double perspective is worthwhile and creates gripping fiction: child eyes inside the story as we explore huge machinery, and visual—bird's eye—control of mapping the imagination.
So nevermind what Jackson did or didn't to the original story of this. Nevermind too the obvious rehash of his Fellowship: Shire preparation, Erebor and the battle at Moria as historic background, perilous journey over mountains, Rivendell and "something moves in the darkness..", Goblin Town as Moria including the bridge standoff, Boromir's Uruk-hai death (almost).
And I am okay with Jackson's decision for this to be another epic and 9- hours in total, and firmly behind his decision to loosely expand this beyond the limits of a pretty messy book. It feels good to be back, and though Tolkien liked to regard his work as a solid saga, in reality it emerged in a constant state of flux, rewrite and embellishment—if anything, Jackson is keeping true to the spirit of it.
So what the heck is wrong with this?
Jackson eliminates the double perspective—we are never, with the exception perhaps of the scene with the stone giants, both inside and hovering above the story at the god level. The hobbit disappears in the noise for large chunks of story. The funpark ride through Goblin Town is a major offender of this: the camera swoops in amazing ways, but we don't have an anchor inside the ride, and this is the reason (not bad cg work) why it feels fake and video-gamey. How exciting to imagine the scene in Tony Scott's hands a la Unstoppable.
The big problem though is that Jackson, as exemplified in his Kong, is a poor storyteller, he has no sense. The film IS padded and overlong, because he has not found a powerful center, and this is where he should have proved his mettle, since the book—modestly conceived in the 30's— lacks that center.
Look, we know who the Necromancer is. We know at this point that this is the prelude to world end—far from what Tolkien originally conceived. Furthermore, the film IS the memoir of an old man, here's the great part, already at that point under the spell of a manipulative eye. And a member of the fellowship is the author of the most captivating narrative device in the whole Tolkien universe: Balin of Moria.
So, there are 6 more hours to ago of this. But, I am simply aghast that Jackson secured such a huge cinematic canvas, so rife with narrative possibilities, and is wringing out the same old blockbuster nonsense. I take offense as an appreciative viewer of well crafted cinema.
This is pss poor entertainment.