Downward spiral

Rating: 2/10 (12 January 2013)

After the LotR trilogy, my hopes weren't exactly high when I heard that Jackson was doing the Hobbit as well. They shrank even more when I heard that instead of two films, there was going to be three.
The original trilogy had a decent start with FotR, but TTT and RotK got lost in unnecessary plot changes, bad pacing, excessive CGI and the worst of Hollywood clichés.
And to no surprise, Jackson picks up exactly where he stopped, making "The Hobbit" an excruciating feat that lacks any kind of depth and character development, and instead focuses on blatantly obvious CGI orcs, unnecessary and unrealistic (even for a fantasy universe) battle scenes and all the gimmicks modern cinema has to offer, to extract even more money from movie goers.
Also, this film should not be called The Hobbit, because poor Bilbo gets lost in all the other stuff that Jackson put into the film. The book was almost exclusively about Bilbo's point of view. And that made it special, and, if it had been kept for the silver screen, would have made The Hobbit its own movie. However, watching the movie, you can't shake off the feeling that you're watching the Fellowship again, except with dwarfs.
Adding insult to injury, Jackson not only neglects Bilbo, he also depicts his character in the wrong way and rushes its development, with quite alienating effects.
The magic of the book is certainly lost then, and all we got is a worse copy of the FotR, with less interesting characters and more fighting, which had me ultimately bored and looking frequently at my watch for the second part of the movie, relieved when it was finally over.