This Movie is based on an original script, not on any book ever written, certainly not one written by JRR Tolkien. Why, it is not really even about one hobbit!

Rating: 1/10 (4 January 2014)

Peter Jackson did let us down. The fact that there are a lot related writings to the Hobbit can in no way be used as a reason to justify 3 movies since the changes are for the most part completely different from the other original writings. Look .. I get that a movie director should have some leeway in changing the story .. I even like the elvish warrior lady Tauriel  but so many of the changes are simply stupid  Gandalf goes off to this mountain to meet Radagast?! Because? Did they really need to go there to decide to go to Dol Guldur? And what exactly does Gandalf hope to accomplish? In the book there was an actual battle, an attack by the forces of the White Council. Why not do just that?! It would be far cooler than Gandalf getting stuck hanging in a bird cage.
Peter Jackson has transformed the story of the Hobbit so much that it scarcely resembles the original. It is not that none of the changes do not work, many in fact do, but for every 1 that does, there are 3 others which are simply laughably stupid. And it is these stupid ones, and there are scores of these, that basically ruined the movie for me.
So Smaug is fighting 10 dwarfs and 1 hobbit, all unarmed, and cannot kill a single one? So he goes to Lake Town rather than simply continue the fight with these unarmed foes? Why in the world would Smaug leave the dwarfs and Bilbo in possession of the Erebor and its staggering treasure so he could make an attack on Esgaroth, a place he could attack and obliterate any time after he kills and eats the dwarfs and one hobbit? There are so many of these staggering dumb plot devices like this that it is just shameful that Tolkien's name has to be associated with this pile of golden dung. We can only hope that someday some director with a bit more class and common sense and artistic integrity, will give a far better interpretation of a classic fantasy story rather than mangling one into something absolutely pathetic. And I won't even go into the Hanna Barbara cartoon physics that seem to operate every time the dwarfs encounter foes, destroying any last vestige of dignity or parallel real world Tolkien intentionally created over 6 decades of his life.
And there has to be three movies to tell this story because .... ? Three movies and so many characters never are even fully developed like over half the dwarfs and Beorn.
The truth is this trilogy is more about more money than anything else, and never about getting it right or otherwise Bilbo would actually be major hero in the movie rather than an afterthought. It is basically a glorified, cheap cell phone video game.
Peter Jackson does not understand nor care about Tolkien's work no matter how much he professes otherwise. I only wish the real JRR Tolkien were here to shred him personally into "quivering ribbons" verbally with his razor sharp wit. See The Letters of JRR Tolkien for a sample review of Tolkien's for a proposed movie script during his lifetime.