Here’s one I haven’t seen posted yet, from The Economist.

They’re, well, kinda right.

. I can see why it's getting a negative reaction from critics and industry folk. It almost removes the camera from the equation, and makes it look like you're watching a live performance right in front of you.

I think some people on here saying how good it was are exhibiting "wishful thinking" or are just in denial.

I think some people on here saying how good it was are exhibiting "wishful thinking" or are just in denial.

The movie just wasn't that good. I have been waiting, like so many other people, since the end of ROTK for this day and it was a complete let down for me.

It was a hollow action adventure film, on par with Pirates of the Carribean or Harry Potter - and I didn't even think it was THAT good.

Like many critics are saying, and rightly so IMO is that the movie was just too padded. I could sit here all day and admire Middle Earth and be content with that even with minimal story to keep me interested but Azog's storyline and character design were added in to create a villian with a story arc for the first film after the decision was made to create a trilogy. He just doesnt fit in middle earth. He belongs in an animated version of He-Man or something to that effect.

PJ's lack of practical effects and miniatures is also painfully apparent. The use of these things in LOTR lended the film a certain hand crafted aesthetic that (other than the costumes and props) is all but gone in this film.

Yes, the film should have had a lighter tone, but it doesnt just have a lighter tone - in fact other than the music and beautiful scenery I didn't feel there was much that set this film apart from any other action adventure released over the course of the last five years.

With all of that being said the performances were wonderful and obviously all of the actors and the rest of the production company have put their whole hearts into this project. I hope that with having so much more time to develop and EDIT the second film we will all be pleasantly surprised next December - but I wont be investing as much energy following and anticipating that film as I did this one.

The critics are wrong.

This film isn't bad because of the beginning. The beginning is one of the best things I have ever seen on film. This film is bad because of the middle and end. Which leads me to my ultimate conclusion: Peter really knows how to set up a story, and he has absolutely no idea how to execute it. No clue whatsoever. The middle and end of the film is so incredibly uninteresting, flat, disjointed, heavy-handed, sloppy, fake, bland, thin, and every other insulting description in the book. It is an extended video game cinematic with high production value. There are so few reasons to care about this part of the story, or anyone in it, that it's almost not even worth talking about. But it has left me with such an immensely hollow feeling – borne of the fact that I believe this was the last chance in my life to see Tolkien’s work satisfyingly translated to the screen – that I have to get it off my chest as therapy. This may sound silly, but I went into the film quite happy – my personal and professional life is wonderful at the moment – and left bordering on depressed. I know it’s just a movie, but this is it. I am going to die, and never see a film adaptation of Tolkien’s works that I like. Alright, enough of the Peter Jackson-esque melodrama!

Oh, but the beginning. How absolutely wonderful it was. As the embers floated off into the night sky over Bag End, I said to myself: "Has Peter Jackson done it? Has he finally captured the essence of Tolkien, in just a few scenes?" The answer is yes, he did. He captured it in a bottle, and used it all up at the beginning. Then he lost it. And boy did he lose it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start with what I liked, primarily because I can count that on two hands.

The Good

1. Bilbo and Frodo prologue: Despite being rather unecessary, I unexpectedly enjoyed the framing device. Why? Three reasons. First, it is about Bilbo – the main character of this story (who Peter forgets about later). Second, it’s in the Shire. That is the place Peter does best. Third, it has Ian Holm being an English bon vivante in it. That’s always a good thing. One quibble. Why in the name of Radagast’s Rhosgobel rabbits did they change “and that means comfort” to “and that means good food, a warm hearth, and all kinds of comforts” or some such nonsense? What purpose did that change serve?

2. The Erebor flashback: While I felt Thror’s Scrooge McDuck moment in the vault was a tad ridiculous, and that the interior of Erebor looked more like something from the Thor comic book world than Middle Earth, I ate this flashback up. I especially loved Thror’s awesomely ornate beard, and Thranduil’s fantastic stag-mount. That was a moment of visual imagination that wasn’t in the book, but felt absolutely right. I also didn’t mind the bit about Thranduil abandoning the dwarves, even if it had echoes of Theoden’s “Where was Gondor?” That is primarily because Lee Pace did an extraordinary job of portraying some sort of godly indifference – slowly closing his eyes and turning away. In those few moments, he seemed more elvish than both Weaving’s Elrond and Blanchett’s Galadriel (as much as I love them both as actors). But we shall see if that is sustained in the next film.

3. All of Bag End: The “good morning” dialogue. Brilliant. Bilbo doesn’t mean most of what he says! The arrival of the dwarves. Brilliant. I especially loved the short bit where Dwalin sits down and eats Bilbo’s dinner, which we just watched him preparing for himself. Bilbo awkwardly sitting next to Dwalin while his hulking form literally gobbles up his comfortable life, made the point of the story far better than most of the film does (and it was very funny, to boot). Here was the clash of timid, modern England and her viral, glorious, barbaric past, communicated in one scene. And then Balin’s response to Bilbo, when he says “good evening?” “Yes, yes it is.” That is spot on. Bilbo, the modern English man, was just uttering a pleasantry. And Balin, a dwarf of the ancient English past, takes his comment literally! Just perfect. Chip the glasses was good, for many of the same reasons, and then the Misty Mountains song. OH MY GAWD. This was the best representation of “the call of the wild” that I have ever seen on film. Thorin and company sing like ancient snake-charmers (beautifully shot too), and Bilbo listens from his room. With only a few shots, you could feel Bilbo drawn into the depths of the past, and the allure of ancient wonders. The primordial fire wakes up in his heart at that moment, and we didn’t need a flashback or anything to make the point. The camera pans to the fireplace, up and out the chimney, following the embers of the fire into the night sky. It could not be better. Then one of my favorite scenes in the film. Bilbo’s initial false relief at seeing the dwarves gone, followed by a deep disappointment. The camera-work, and Freeman’s brilliant acting, communicates this subtly and profoundly. Yes, Peter Jackson can do subtle. And he can do it very well. If only he trusted this kind of storytelling more often…

4. The outskirts of the Shire: Bilbo’s arrival, Balin’s “welcome Master Baggins,” Bilbo’s first go at pony-riding, the bet, and his “I forgot my handkerchief!” All light, jaunty, but refreshingly funny. It is Bilbo-centric, and is the most meaningful and natural group interaction we see in the entire film.

5. Balin’s description of Thorin’s personal story: Ken Stott is great. And the flashback to Azanulbizar was evocative (BTW, I saw Bolg quite clearly in closeup for a few seconds). And, it’s always good to see dwarves in battle. Even if they are being hurled off cliffs.

6. Azog’s design: Not the character so much, but the design. It’s genius (the best-designed orc character I have yet seen – almost a marble statue of an orc deity come to life. Much, much better than the uninspired Uruk Hai designs, including Lurtz).

7. Most of the troll business: I liked the trolls, and especially liked the unexpectedly horrifying image of one of them carrying the ponies to their deaths. I also didn’t mind the “Bilbo negotiation,” and found the parasites stuff to be pretty funny. Here, instead of a full-on deus ex machina, we have a Bilbo assist, followed by the Gandalf slam dunk (if you notice, Bilbo sees Gandalf scurrying out of view, which emboldens him to continue stalling). But Peter marred this scene with a few too many stupid gags, and a totally uninspired fight scene. It ended up feeling rather blah by the end of it.

8. Balin and Bofur: These two were the best dwarves of the bunch. Why? Because we got to spend a little time with them, and they were well-acted by Stott and Nesbitt. I loved all of Balin’s dialogue (except when he inexplicably becomes a voice of unreason, when he advises Thorin to not show Elrond the map). And despite the stupidity of Bilbo deciding to go home, I found the scene between him and Bofur in that moment to be incredibly effective. It’s just too bad that Peter decided to dwell on ten billion minutes of crappy CGI running and fighting, rather than spending time on the dwarves and Bilbo.

The Okay

1. The Goblin King’s personality: I was pleasantly surprised that he wasn’t the “Kill the dwarf-scum” type of limited vocabulary orc/goblin. While some of his routine was certainly silly, this part of the film desperately needed some personality. Otherwise, it would have been overwhelmed by CGI nothingness.

2. Most of Riddles in the Dark: While I think it would have been far more effective to visually play this scene ala Sheen and Brando in Apocalypse Now, it was competently executed. It wasn’t the tour de force some reviewers have claimed, but it was decent enough…

3. The flight of the thrush: A nice touch. Saved AUJ from being one of the worst films I have seen in the cinema in the past decade.

The Bad and the Ugly

Despite the fact that I really disliked the film, I will spend less time on the bad than the good. That’s because I don’t want to rain on the parade too much, and because there are so many bad things about the film, that I couldn’t possibly list them like I did above. If I did, I would probably list close to 200 examples.

In short, the rest of the movie sucked, and that made the whole film ultimately suck (I don’t believe a film can be good unless most of it is good!). For me, it was so overwhelmingly bad, that it wiped away almost all the moments of charm. Bilbo and the dwarves, and their Lonely Mountain quest, were no longer the focus of the film. In fact, the main purpose of their mission almost became an irritating afterthought – as if Peter Jackson simply didn’t care about it, and would rather have a tedious and thin rivalry between Thorin and Azog, and the backstory of Sauron’s rise, take center stage. But then even those misguided narratives were under-cooked. Everything from this point on felt perfunctory. Radagast’s initial introduction was charming, but that then devolved into utter crap. The warg chase was just awful, and Radagast’s diversionary tactic was criminal. Their method of getting into Rivendell was terrible. The lack of any more interaction between the dwarves, and the dwarves and Bilbo, was indefensible. Rivendell was useless and tacky, and Elrond’s “light table” was almost midichlorian-esque in its destruction of the simplicity and mystery of the source material. The White Council scene, which when I watched on its own seemed okay, was absolutely the wrong thing to show at that point of the film, when we should have been spending time with Bilbo and the dwarves. Galadriel’s chat with Gandalf was awfully boring, meaningless and completely tangential. Was this now also a film about Gandalf overcoming his fears? For god’s sake, focus on Bilbo’s character arc, not Gandalf’s! Do you not trust that storyline?

And after this, basically no more talking or meaningful interactions. Just fighting and shouting and swooping and falling. Mind-numbingly horrible. Oh noes, we’re on the stone giant’s knees! Oh noes, Bilbo is falling! Oh noes, the dwarves are dead! No, they’re alive! A cave! Oh noes, a trap door! Oh noes, we’re falling through a CGI slide! Ladders, wooden bridges, more CGI goblins, the Goblin King jumps up out of nowhere, video game boss-like!

Then Bilbo gives a decent speech, which the previous hour of the film makes you care nothing about, and then its more CGI idiocy. And the trees just HAD to be on the edge of that cliff, and we just HAD to have dwarves hanging off a tree, and thus off the cliff, and then Thorin fights Azog, and Bilbo saves him, and then all the dwarves show up somehow, and….whatever. The eagles were okay.

But this brings me to the final big problem of the film. While I like the man immensely, and believe he is the one actor on the cast that truly understands Tolkien (and speaks about his works far more intelligently than PJ ever has), Richard Armitage is simply not a great actor in this. His Thorin is so astoundingly one-note, that I almost can’t believe it. It may just be PJ, Fran and Philippa’s horrible script, but I’m not so sure. Just imagine what prideful energy a James Cosmo sparring with Gandalf would have given the film. Or an Ian McShane, or a Brian Cox, or any other older actor that has grit, wisdom, experience in his eyes, talent, and a capacity for humor when needed. This was, IMO, an epic miscast. And I didn’t expect that.

But enough of this rant, which is probably almost as mind-numbing as the film.

Conclusion

It’s not a very good film, and that’s that. But the most frustrating part about it is that it had a few small moments of beauty and near-perfection (the first 30 minutes or so, I suppose). If PJ just trusted the kind of storytelling he gives us in Bag End and the flashbacks – meaningful, rich and layered – his films would be excellent. Instead, he always gets away from that in his quest to provide us viewers with Hitchock’s “slice of cake” rather than a “slice of life.” The problem is that Hitchcock’s cake actually tasted pretty good. Jackson’s tastes like the first cake I ever baked, back in college when I was drunk and hungry. It was horrible.

That said, I had some issues. These are all more in sorrow than in anger, because I think Jackson had the opportunity to make a great film but missed it—in part because of the lowest-common-denominator needs of global Hollywood, but also in part because he and screenwriter Philippa Boyens didn’t entirely understand their material or trust their audience...

Too many times we see something that is visually cool but emotionally empty...