i had read a lot of the reviews. i try not to let that stuff color my opinions, but i did want to adjust my expectations. i wasn't too worried because i just kept seeing complaints about length and HFR, which are mostly non-factors for me, but being familiar with The Hobbit book i was expecting something not as good as LotR. much to my surprise, AUJ wasn't all that far off from that incredibly high standard. critics will be critics and in some ways a prequel enterprise is doomed from the start in terms of the prevalent critical perspective, but it is very, very difficult for me to understand the mixed or blatantly negative reactions from some fans who loved PJ's LotR movies. of course there are flaws in AUJ, but to me they are so small and mostly insignificant compared to the larger whole. the LotR movies had more than their share of issue and flaws, too, and yet people seem to gloss that over or are more forgiving because they are now so familiar with those movies and take more of the good than the bad when they watch them. for instance, there is absolutely nothing in AUJ that comes anywhere close to making me wince the way dark nuclear Galadriel or the cross-dissolve Uruk-Hai pursuit through the woods does in FotR, and yet FotR is one of my favorite movies ever!

i do feel like maybe there is some shift in the critical discourse. TDKR got mostly positive reviews but there was quite a vocal contingent of negativity that didn't like how serious the movie was. in the end, i think Hathaway and the conclusion of the film won it a lot of good favor...but it did not enjoy anywhere near the same kind of positive critical consensus that a much slighter film like The Avengers did. some critics even think Battleship is a better film than TDKR or AUJ, which is just ludicrous to me. it feels like, more and more, genre movies are looked down upon if they have real ambitions in terms of their storytelling and themes. like those things should be reserved for dramas and let the popcorn movies just focus on entertaining us as efficiently as possible. so you end up having the two polar opposities of the critic-proof spectrum, The Avengers and Zero Dark Thirty. i also feel like, right now, very little merit is being given to adaptations of popular properties, even if those adaptations are spectacularly well-done. i watched Les Mis yesterday and, i have to admit, i cried through almost 70% of the movie (maybe i'm getting softer as i get older, i dunno). and this is a movie that is getting even more of a middling or negative reaction from the critics than AUJ has. no, it's not anywhere near perfect and such a faithful translation of the musical doesn't always work as well as it could cinematically...but the story and music are as good as ever, the production values are top-notch, most of the performances are stellar and very intensely felt (particularly Hathaway and Jackman), and the film has a great integrity. but somehow these things, as you say, are no longer enough. critics now want everything more perfect, more inspired somehow, more more more than whatever it is they get when they have some pre-set expectations in hand.