More King Kong than the LoTR

Rating: 5/10 (20 December 2013)

After reading all the positive reviews before I watched the movie, I was fairly optimistic The Hobbit trilogy took all those much needed adjustments in direction and fixed the problems of the first movie. Unfortunately I've let my hopes fly too high yet again.
Without going in any details about the story, the movie felt like an unsatisfying mess. The biggest problem for me is its identity crisis. In general I consider myself a very open-minded movie goer as long as the movies are fully aware with their purpose, direction and the reason why the audience are going to enjoy it. Even bad movies per se can be good in the sense that they may not pretend to be anything other than bad. So the audience takes the movie on its face value and enjoy it for what it is.
With the hobbit I just can't understand what the makers tried to achieve - it's a bit of a child book story but with some gore and violence and dark epic tones. As a story driven movie where character development is in the background, the pacing is slow and without a clear direction. I can't believe the same team made the classic that is The Two Towers as well as the rest LoTR movies. The movie I felt is very comparable to other PJ's works like King Kong, which again wasn't character driven and the pace was too bad and ruined the movie.
The second movie was the defining one for this trilogy. The ton has been already set and its too late to backtrack with the 3rd one. Such a shame really...