"One ill turn deserves another. It is over! Embrace the power of the Ring or embrace your own destruction!"

Rating: 1/10 (23 December 2013)

Firstly, I loved Tolkien's books (especially the Hobbit) and was absolutely enchanted with Peter Jacksons film versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In fact, those are some of my favorite memories of my adolescence. My Dad coming home with our first DVD player and picking a movie to buy with it (and of course he chose "The Fellowship of the Ring"). I was twelve years old. After seeing the FOTR, I went and read the Hobbit and all of The Lord of the Rings books before the Two Towers film had come out. It was a magical experience. It was all so real to me; even at twelve years old, I somehow had this wonderful hope and belief that Tolkien's world was real, and that he hadn't simply made it all up; that maybe it was just a world that had come long before our time. I even spent my free time making bows in the forests surrounding my home, trying to pause the movie to observe the designs on Legolas' bow, and borrowing "The Bowyer's Bible" from an old friend who was also a bow and LOTR enthusiast. Those who knew me in those days remember my bows could shoot over the tallest pine trees in Sam Houston National Forest, which were quite tall.
Anyways the reality is that when the Lord of the Rings films were first being made, Peter Jackson was almost a nobody, and Tolkien was definitely a somebody (relatively speaking). Tolkien was a master story teller, a pioneer in literature, and in many ways a founding author of the fantasy genre. That said, during the making of the Lord of the Rings, Jackson was much more humble and allowed the passionate Tolkien artists and craftsmen to pour their work out (To include staying true to much of Tolkien's source material, and when deviation was necessary, staying true to the spirit of the work). From my observations, I have concluded that the Lord of the Rings film was a masterpiece 10% because of Peter Jackson's directing and adapting and 90% because of the artists, craftsmen, and actors who loved Tolkien's work and poured themselves into recreating it, and of course making minor deviations as necessary for the sake of turning the story from one medium to another (book to film), while staying true to the spirit of the books. During the making of the film, I think that Peter Jackson mostly gave people thumbs up as they poured out their amazing work, but in the end, he got the majority of credit for the masterpiece, physically carrying many of the Oscars and the publicity with it. That's not to say he doesn't deserve his due credit for the logistics, preparation, directing and adaptation of the project (hence the 10%).
So then life went on. Pretty much everyone believed Jackson was a truly great artist and story teller. Jackson had done what was thought for a long time to be impossible. He had brought the Lord of the Rings books to film, and it was done in a masterful way.
And then we saw King Kong, and then we saw District 9 (Both over-rated and highly forgettable films in my humble opinion)and now we're seeing the Hobbit series I'm Afraid the Hobbit is something like %60 Peter Jackson, and only %40 the master artists, craftsmen, and actors that made the original Lord of the Rings films so great. Many of these wonderful people are still present, but they've been pushed into the background to make way for the overconfident director of the Lord of the Rings, who mistakenly decided he was the most qualified to make the most important artistic contributions to the film.
Now we have a film made primarily by Peter Jackson and it is like almost all of his other films (save LOTR): silly, unbelievable, and at best cinema fodder for less appreciative movie goers. I will not tell you what the Hobbit films are (All the other reviews can do that for you), but I will tell you what The Hobbit films are not. They are not the masterpieces made primarily by the Tolkien enthusiasts and great artists that we saw a decade ago. This is Peter Jackson's film, and everyone else, including Tolkien, has been pushed to the sideline.
Four stars instead of one, because the contributions from the great artists and enthusiasts are still quite noticeable.