3D and a trilogy is not doing The Hobbit any favors

Rating: 3/10 (16 December 2013)

I was very surprised to learn that The Hobbit would be a trilogy. This second installment makes it clear that Jackson did not have enough content from the book for great screen writing across 3 films, so expect a lot of cheesy, brain-dead fluff throughout this movie. I was pretty disappointed.
Parts of the movie are downright boring because they don't add anything to the story. The scene where the master of the lake town is getting out of bed scratching his butt and emptying his chamber pot? Totally unnecessary! Likewise, most of the dialogue from the people of lake town was not necessary. I didn't appreciate the liberties taken with the writing.
The cinematography from LotR was beautiful, stunning... and with the 3D for the Hobbit, the cinematography just doesn't live up. The 3D is best during action scenes and I would agree enhances the action some, but during all other parts of the movie with rolling, scenic hills or intimate dialogue between characters, the 3D filming brings the film down. I am not sure if this is because they need to use different angles, lenses and setups to make the 3D work, but something is way off. Sometimes I felt like I was watching a bad history channel movie.
Sometimes it looks extremely real, but at the same time, extremely fake. Most of the time it just looks fake. I could not get over the feeling that I was watching actors in a studio or on set with fake lighting. The 3D kind of ruined the film's ability to pull in a viewer into a fantasy world the way the LotR movies did.
I will not watch this movie again and I think Jackson missed the opportunity to make a great movie with The Hobbit. I would never have compared the original LotR movies to something you would see on a made-for-TV-movie.