So, my take on it is that it is WAY WAY WAY overlong, and starts off super-slow, but is in the end a fine enough movie. The thing is, it’s not adding a whole lot for me — yes, it’s more of Jackson’s Middle Earth, and that’s cool and all, but… I really would have liked to see someone else’s Middle Earth. And trailers suggest that Guillermo del Toro’s Middle Earth would have had giant robots fighting orcs, so you know, opportunity missed.

Thoughts:

  1. So the movie is interesting in that it’s basically composed of three elements: a) stuff from The Hobbit, b) Silmarillion-like backstory for LOTR, and c) total cinematic invention just to have more fight scenes. Weirdly enough, it’s the backstory stuff that I like the most. If you thought LOTR didn’t have enough proper nouns or history in it, this remedies that for you!

1a. Although, honestly, I probably could have done without the backstory on the Mystery Of Why Frodo Was Sitting There Waiting For Gandalf At The Beginning of Fellowship, And How Bilbo Got That Sign On His Door.

  1. So I saw it in a 24fps theatre, and it looked basically fine-ish. I did think some of the effects looked a bit cheap, but enh.

  2. Man, they are putting like EVERY WORD of the Hobbit in here, including all the songs apparently. SO MUCH SINGING.

  3. To expand on what I said up-top about seeing more of Jackson, there are at least three or four things in this movie that are almost total reprises of LOTR, like almost shot-for-shot identical.

  4. Ians Holm and McKellen seem the full ten years older; Christopher Lee miraculously appears to have not aged a day in the last decade.

  5. One of the things I really like about the movie: All the inexplicable “this happens, then this happens” stuff from the book, which makes sense in a kidbook but not in an epic fantasy movie trilogy, gets deepened and realistified. It’s kind of like how the Marvel movies made the stuff a little more realistic and explicable. Bilbo’s character is much better developed in the movie, and the obstacles they face seem more integrated into the fundamental goals and big challenges they face rather than just a series of unfortunate events.

  6. WHAT THE FUCK THREE HOURS AND THEY’RE ONLY THAT FAR!