Peter Jackson's Hobbit

Rating: 5/10 (4 January 2014)

This is a good film - but it's not as magical as the LOTR. It feels like it's gone a bit to PJ's head. That he has full liberty to change whatever he wants to increase the length of the story. eg. - you have Orlando Bloom and Evangeline Lilly fighting orcs in Lake Town, or to put it another way 2 made-up characters (a female to create female interest/a love triangle and Orlando just because PJ likes him / thinks the fans like him) fighting orcs that were never in the book until the end. The barrel ride in the book had Bilbo on top of sealed barrels quietly floating down the river to Lake Town. Bilbo opens the lid after 2 days to find some very grumpy dwarfs. Here we have open barrels, a 20minute action scene featuring the above 2 elf characters and more orcs. LOTR changed some things but often to fit it all into 3x 3 films - this is the opposite and on a whole new level! Also the editing to keep cutting to Gandalf's scenes halfway through Bilbo, the dwarfs and the dragon fight reminded me of Return of the Jedi's climax - but ROTJ was a perfect edit. Here it's really ham fisted cutting right in the middle of a chase scene. In ROTJ they cut when there was a convenient quiet point (Luke hides/rests, them big doors closing on Endor, the space attack failing). Here it's just jarring. Also, in the back of people's mind is the fact Gandalf journeyed for weeks to get there so it seems so badly edited to even construe that all of this is happening at the same time. Also, in ROTJ the storeys influenced each other (turning off that energy shield). Here the storey's aren't relevant to each other - at least within the context of the film. It's a mess. Really disappointed how this trilogy is panning out PJ. Some fan boys and people that haven't read the book will rave about the wonderful orcs and action - but that's not the book. Save it all for the final battle in film 3.