The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Peter Jackson really changed the whole feeling of these films; the first of the Lord of the Rings trilogy was dark, with one thing in mind; getting to Mordor. The film was too light, and cheerful. I'm particularly confused about the Radagast character, a wizard who served as a mention only in the book. There is an entire subplot with him in this film, which isn't really relative other than to set up for a possible battle with the Necromancer, another character who NEVER appeared in the book except for a mention. All we knew then was that Gandalf had business to attend to south from the border of Mirkwood. All in all, great acting, Ian Mckellen reprises his role expertly. Seeing Christopher Lee return also was a nice move. Went on for too long, and making 3 movies is a sell out, it takes 9 hours or so to listen to the audiobook, I was hoping for an in depth film but all I got was a load of side stories not relevant. Also on a side note, the Android and iOS games were a good example of how much of a sell out this whole franchise is. Instead of an interesting and intense adventure game, we got a city building freemium game. I'd prefer spending £30 on a decent console game.

If ever there was a case of milking a cash cow this was it. Seriously, how much time needs to be spent on gathering a bunch of dwarves together for a pre-adventure dinner?! The Hobbit is a decent short story. It is not 3 films' worth! It would have made 1 cracking 2.5hr film, and an equal to The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I lost the will to live after the first 1.5hr in the cinema. Simply awful. Shame on you Peter Jackson.

Some nice realisation of Tolkein's world, but simply too overblown. Jackson should have stuck to making a single film, rather than trying to stretch another Lord of the Rings trilogy out of this little story. The rot sets in here and it gets much worse in the following instalments, as the title character and central plot becomes forgotten amidst a mess of invented characters and scenarios taken from the pages of other books. In the words of Bilbo, it's "like butter stretched over too much bread."