So I saw the movie last night in IMAX for the 48 FPS.
I must say the 3D was great and the 48 FPS didn't ruin the magic like some people said, in fact it... wasn't really all that noticable. Sadly my theatre didn't get the special Hobbit themed 3D glasses and I got stuck with the shitty theatre ones.

I even got some sweet posters for being at the midnight IMAX release


Now about the movie. I honestly thought it was great. The story works as an actual prequel... in that you see Ian Holm and Elijah Wood before the events of LOTR so I think you could theoretically watch the Hobbit first without problem. I dunno how that will tie up at the end of the third movie.

The effects were great. And while I agree the Orcs should have been just prostetics (because they looked similar to how they looked in LOTR) the goblins were more a different breed this time, taking on a more... cartoony look I guess.

The pacing was good. The random stuff they added was a mixed bag... Radagast seemed a bit forced but I assume he will return next movie, not entirely sure.

The movie had an overly lighter tone than LOTR that's for sure. It was sort of an LOTR meets the Goonies sort of romp. And if you don't go in there thinking it'll be LOTR you should be fine.

The movie had some great moments and some amusing references to the world behind the hobbit and simarillion stuff was sometimes vaguely mentioned

Spoiler	+
(in an amusing scene Gandalf mentions the blue wizards but then admits he'd forgotten their names, alluding to the fact that Tolkien never states what names they have and you never see them, lol)

I say it's a definite watch. While it starts slow, FOTR started slow too so who knows where it could go from here. I have high hopes though.

Malion @ 14/12/2012 15:28

So I saw the movie last night in IMAX for the 48 FPS. I must say the 3D was great and the 48 FPS didn't ruin the magic like some people said, in fact it... wasn't really all that noticable. Sadly my theatre didn't get the special Hobbit themed 3D glasses and I got stuck with the shitty theatre ones. I even got some sweet posters for being at the midnight IMAX release Now about the movie. I honestly thought it was great. The story works as an actual prequel... in that you see Ian Holm and Elijah Wood before the events of LOTR so I think you could theoretically watch the Hobbit first without problem. I dunno how that will tie up at the end of the third movie. The effects were great. And while I agree the Orcs should have been just prostetics (because they looked similar to how they looked in LOTR) the goblins were more a different breed this time, taking on a more... cartoony look I guess. The pacing was good. The random stuff they added was a mixed bag... Radagast seemed a bit forced but I assume he will return next movie, not entirely sure. The movie had an overly lighter tone than LOTR that's for sure. It was sort of an LOTR meets the Goonies sort of romp. And if you don't go in there thinking it'll be LOTR you should be fine. The movie had some great moments and some amusing references to the world behind the hobbit and simarillion stuff was sometimes vaguely mentioned Spoiler + (in an amusing scene Gandalf mentions the blue wizards but then admits he'd forgotten their names, alluding to the fact that Tolkien never states what names they have and you never see them, lol) I say it's a definite watch. While it starts slow, FOTR started slow too so who knows where it could go from here. I have high hopes though.

I just wanna know one thing

Spoiler	+
Is the necromancer Spoiler + (Sauron) shown in Mirkwood in this one?

In response to Jeff

Spoiler	+
Yes you see him, at least in silhouette. He doesn't say anything yet though.

To Mal

Spoiler	+
I wonder if he will have more of a speaking role in the sequels.

Gonna go see it tomorrow. I absolutely loathe Tolkien's writing, but I'm literally going just so that I will be able to participate meaningfully in this thread. So expect a witty commentary, eventually.

lol at you going strictly to reply to this thread (:

An FE thread would deserve it more than anything!

Should be seeing it with some pals whenever I can find 3 hours of free time next week. I AM MORE EXCITED THAN LIFE YOU CANT BELIEVE

saw it tonight. liked it! it was way sillier than the LOTR triloygy. i kept thinking of the shia lebuef scene in the new Indiana Jones movie where hes swinging on vines with monkeys... anyway, i still liked the movie a lot and was more than happy to be back in Middle Earth. its not as good as teh LOTRs but I love that I've got new awesome material to watch. CG in 3D wasnt that bad tbh!

The hobbit feet looked like crap though.

You certainly saw the feet a lot more in this movie. But I didn't think they looked too bad... I suppose the 48fps made everything fake stand out. They had to swap to wigs with real hair because they actually looked fake on film.

Spoiler

+

Alright, let's get the positives out of the way first, because, let's face it, that list is much, much shorter. The movie was entertaining. The special effects were awesome, and the high frame rate really did not deter me in the slightest after I got used to it. The fight between the stone giants was absolutely amazing, and the epic race through the mines slash goblin fight was one of the best things I have ever seen on film. Gollum was fantastically brilliant, and I totally spotted the Wilhelm Scream that sound designer Ben Burtt throws into every one of his movies. (It happens in the goblin chase scene.) Those things alone almost compensated for what I hated. Now, I have probably voiced this opinion in the past, but I am going to take this opportunity to do so again. I think that Tolkien is an abysmal writer. I think that his accomplishments in creating a detailed fantasy world were astonishing, but I think that in translating that world to the written page, Tolkien tried to attempt the impossible, and, in the world's least surprising turn of events ever, failed harder than the man who jumped off the Eiffel Tower to demonstrate his overcoat parachute invention. I have never, NEVER been more vindicated than I was tonight. Honestly, the only plausible explanation I could come up with for why the characters behave the way that they do is that the natural magic which permeates the Middle Earth reality doesn't just affect wizards, but actually gets absorbed into the food and water and starts to act like a hallucinogenic drug. Seriously, every single one of those characters is tripping every second of every day, because there's no other reason for all of them to have the decision-making capability of a drunk sorority girl. Bear in mind, it's not like I went and read up on this. These are all flaws that I spotted on my own, without even trying. Let's start with the Elf King. The dwarfs are fleeing for their lives, and suddenly the elves show up out of nowhere in perfect battle formation. The dwarves ask for help, and the king just turns right the hell around and leaves. Okay, fine, I get that Jackson had to establish the dwarf/elf hatred. Gotcha. But if the dragon isn't the elves' problem... why are they there? There's literally no reason for them to show up at all, unless the Elf Army was running formation drills and somehow happened to wander close to a hellish firestorm without noticing it. Thorin wasn't much better. I have no idea who trained that guy in combat, but he was tripping harder than anybody else. Orc Voldemort had just owned the hell out of his ancestors, and Thorin's entire clan were getting their tiny little butts handed to them on a mithril platter. He's so desperate that he pulls a fracking piece of wood out of nowhere as a shield, and barely manages to cut off Voldemort's arm. But then what the hell was he doing after that? Voldemort just sits down on the battlefield and screams about his arm for like a full five seconds. Bear in mind, this is the guy who was waving his grandfather's severed head around like a party favor. Thorin had enough time to kill Voldemort like eight times over, but apparently he decided to take up macrame or something, because Voldemort's minions had enough time to grab him and drag him all the way into the mine without Thorin giving one single damn about it. Thorin blows another opportunity when they're on the clifftop. He and his band of merry midgets are hanging off the tree branches, and Voldemort is just sitting there, completely stationary, looking at them. For some reason it never occurs to Thorin that he has an archer in his group, who is literally right next to him. One arrow is all it would take, but Thorin decides it's much better to just jump out of the tree and try to take on the entire orc horde by himself. Bear in mind, his grandfather was also kind of a moron. Personally, if a dragon had just come in and nuked half of my people and taken all of my stuff, and I walked halfway across the known universe with the last remaining few of my society, then came to Moria and found a few thousand orcs living there, you know what I'd do? I'd walk the hell away. Pitting the last remnants of your society, who've just been through a majorly harsh journey, up against creatures that fight to the death as part of their daily routine was probably the stupidest possible thing that Thror could have done. Gandalf alone made me actually have to actually resist jumping out of the chair to yell "WHAT THE F@#$@?!?" at the scream at least eight times. Gandalf is absolutely convinced that the entire plot to defeat Smaug is 100% contingent on Bilbo accompanying the group. It is absolutely imperative that Gandalf convince Bilbo to help them out. Asking Bilbo to leave the Shire is a massive deal. So naturally, Gandalf decides that the best way to go about enlisting him is to first creep Bilbo out by showing up awkwardly and acting like a Facebook stalker, then inviting a bunch of people over to his house without telling him, and graffiti-ing his door. He gets even worse when he snarkily demands that Bilbo go get a light - then literally ten seconds later Gandalf snaps his fingers together to make a fire to light his pipe with. He can also do it with his staff, we find out at the end of the movie. That thing could have lit the entire room, but Gandalf makes Bilbo get a candle just to be a douche. Personally, if I were Bilbo, I'd have punched Gandalf in the balls about five times. Then there's the secret key to the back door of Mt. Whereverthehell, which Gandalf has literally been carrying around for sixty-odd years. For some reason, he's deliberately kept this knowledge from Thorin, which means he's purposely let that poor bastard feel like his entire history is lost for over half a century. Once again, Gandalf deserves a punch in the balls. Then there's the entire reason that Bilbo is necessary: because Smaug knows what dwarves smell like, but not hobbits. So of course Smaug will leave him alone. Alright, even if you assume that it abso-bloody-lutely has to be Bilbo, and no other hobbit can possibly pull that off - and there's no good reason to think that, except that Gandalf in his "infinite wisdom" perceives that Bilbo is the chosen one, or whatever - that idea is about six different levels of stupid. If Smaug is already used to the smell of dwarves... wouldn't that mean that he wouldn't really notice that another dwarf showing up? Moreover, if Bilbo's scent is completely alien to Smaug, why the hell would that make Smaug less suspicious. If you know anything about any kind of predatory animal, you know that they are fascinated by new smells, and they'll automatically pay more attention to a new one, because they want to know if it signals a new kind of food. Hell, even Gollum behaves this way - he's thrilled that Bilbo's showed up, because he'd probably taste delicious. But for some reason Gandalf thinks that Smaug is going to say to himself, "Hmm. There's a new smell in this room, completely unlike anything I've smelled in my entire life, much less the past sixty years that I've been sitting here without moving. I'm pretty sure that's worth ignoring." Gandalf gets another epic douche moment when he finds the secret passageway to Rivendell behind the rock. He literally just leaves the group behind to go looking for it, without telling any of them that where he's going or what he's looking for. But then when he finds it he just screams "OVER HERE, YOU FOOLS!" like it's their fault for not noticing that he'd found the secret passageway that he deliberately didn't tell them about. Then when Thorin disagrees with him about the safety of the troll area, Gandalf's solution is to get pissed off and leave. That's right. His logic is literally, "I'm completely convinced that this area isn't safe, so I'm going to walk away all on my own, while at the same time leaving you completely defenceless against the monsters." He decides to redeem himself by breaking a rock and stone-ifying the trolls - which, based on how light it was getting, would have happened in about five minutes anyway. The only difference between him showing up and not showing up is that it's slightly faster and the dwarves get slightly less roasted - which wouldn't have been an issue if he hadn't been throwing a temper tantrum in the first place. Then when he's going against the Goblin King, Gandalf suddenly pulls out this massive Kamehameha blast that completely knocks all of the goblins off their feet. If Gandalf's got that ability, why the flying hell didn't he use it against the orcs earlier? Or the wargs that had them cornered on the clifftop? That thing would have knocked them all into the chasm. But, you know, climbing the trees was a much better strategy. And what about the flying eagles? Why the hell couldn't Gandalf have summoned those five minutes into the movie and just flown them straight to Mt. Whereverthehell? It would have saved a hell of a lot of time, and probably would give them the advantage of surprise. But I guess Gandalf just has some kind of walking fetish, or something. Then you've got Radagast's "diversion," which is a double ballpuncher because both parties manage to epicfail their intended jobs. Radagast actually manages to lead the orcs directly towards the dwarves like four straight times - and every time, the dwarves are clearly visible. Given that the orcs are not actually obligated to catch Radagast, and ARE obligated to catch the dwarves, I have no idea why the hell they choose to ignore the obvious band of dwarves in their peripheral vision and go chase bunnies instead. Voldemort also manages to forget that archers exist when he corners the merry men on the clifftop. Seriously. His entire plan is thwarted when they come up with the bold plan of simply getting a few feet off the ground. He doesn't have any archers with him. He doesn't have any slingshots with him. It never occurs to them that they can just start throwing stuff, such as, oh, say, the twenty million rocks that are lying around on account of it being a frigging mountain. It's just his wolves, apparently, and they manage to successfully knock over every tree but one. At this point there is literally nothing stopping him and his orc minions from simply walking up to that last tree and cutting the roots. Bam, tree falls, everyone is dead. Hell, given that all of the dwarves managed to straight-up walk down the tree and join the fray later on, he could have just walked right the hell up there and killed all of them. But instead he just sits there and talks smack about Thorin's family. And let's not even talk about Bilbo. He makes the suicidal decision to try and pickpocket a troll's garage-door-sized sword, because he's incapable of untying a few knots which were tied by guys with clumsy fingers the size of Volkswagens. Attempting to get this sword very nearly gets him killed. Five minutes later, when Gandalf tries to give him a knife, Bilbo announces that he has no need for one. No, Bilbo. You literally just about partywiped because you didn't have a knife on you. He's even dumber in the goblin mine. The rest of the group gets captured by about ten million goblins, and he's left standing there all alone. Having narrowly escaped capture by not drawing attention to himself, what does our hero do? He draws a bright blue glowing lightsabre and waves it around. It's also pretty idiotic that he tries to reason with Gollum. The guy is obviously pants-on-head insane, but for some reason you think that by outsmarting him and making him feel inferior, that's going to make him inclined to hold up his end of the deal? Honestly, I don't know how much of this was Tolkien and how much was Jackson, but the fact of the matter is that this kind of crap ruined the movie for me. If I liked everything about it except the people, then I probably could have spent my time watching stock footage of New Zealand landscapes for three hours and achieved approximately the same result.

Rob @ 17/12/2012 1:02

Spoiler + Alright, let's get the positives out of the way first, because, let's face it, that list is much, much shorter. The movie was entertaining. The special effects were awesome, and the high frame rate really did not deter me in the slightest after I got used to it. The fight between the stone giants was absolutely amazing, and the epic race through the mines slash goblin fight was one of the best things I have ever seen on film. Gollum was fantastically brilliant, and I totally spotted the Wilhelm Scream that sound designer Ben Burtt throws into every one of his movies. (It happens in the goblin chase scene.) Those things alone almost compensated for what I hated. Now, I have probably voiced this opinion in the past, but I am going to take this opportunity to do so again. I think that Tolkien is an abysmal writer. I think that his accomplishments in creating a detailed fantasy world were astonishing, but I think that in translating that world to the written page, Tolkien tried to attempt the impossible, and, in the world's least surprising turn of events ever, failed harder than the man who jumped off the Eiffel Tower to demonstrate his overcoat parachute invention. I have never, NEVER been more vindicated than I was tonight. Honestly, the only plausible explanation I could come up with for why the characters behave the way that they do is that the natural magic which permeates the Middle Earth reality doesn't just affect wizards, but actually gets absorbed into the food and water and starts to act like a hallucinogenic drug. Seriously, every single one of those characters is tripping every second of every day, because there's no other reason for all of them to have the decision-making capability of a drunk sorority girl. Bear in mind, it's not like I went and read up on this. These are all flaws that I spotted on my own, without even trying. Let's start with the Elf King. The dwarfs are fleeing for their lives, and suddenly the elves show up out of nowhere in perfect battle formation. The dwarves ask for help, and the king just turns right the hell around and leaves. Okay, fine, I get that Jackson had to establish the dwarf/elf hatred. Gotcha. But if the dragon isn't the elves' problem... why are they there? There's literally no reason for them to show up at all, unless the Elf Army was running formation drills and somehow happened to wander close to a hellish firestorm without noticing it. Thorin wasn't much better. I have no idea who trained that guy in combat, but he was tripping harder than anybody else. Orc Voldemort had just owned the hell out of his ancestors, and Thorin's entire clan were getting their tiny little butts handed to them on a mithril platter. He's so desperate that he pulls a fracking piece of wood out of nowhere as a shield, and barely manages to cut off Voldemort's arm. But then what the hell was he doing after that? Voldemort just sits down on the battlefield and screams about his arm for like a full five seconds. Bear in mind, this is the guy who was waving his grandfather's severed head around like a party favor. Thorin had enough time to kill Voldemort like eight times over, but apparently he decided to take up macrame or something, because Voldemort's minions had enough time to grab him and drag him all the way into the mine without Thorin giving one single damn about it. Thorin blows another opportunity when they're on the clifftop. He and his band of merry midgets are hanging off the tree branches, and Voldemort is just sitting there, completely stationary, looking at them. For some reason it never occurs to Thorin that he has an archer in his group, who is literally right next to him. One arrow is all it would take, but Thorin decides it's much better to just jump out of the tree and try to take on the entire orc horde by himself. Bear in mind, his grandfather was also kind of a moron. Personally, if a dragon had just come in and nuked half of my people and taken all of my stuff, and I walked halfway across the known universe with the last remaining few of my society, then came to Moria and found a few thousand orcs living there, you know what I'd do? I'd walk the hell away. Pitting the last remnants of your society, who've just been through a majorly harsh journey, up against creatures that fight to the death as part of their daily routine was probably the stupidest possible thing that Thror could have done. Gandalf alone made me actually have to actually resist jumping out of the chair to yell "WHAT THE F@#$@?!?" at the scream at least eight times. Gandalf is absolutely convinced that the entire plot to defeat Smaug is 100% contingent on Bilbo accompanying the group. It is absolutely imperative that Gandalf convince Bilbo to help them out. Asking Bilbo to leave the Shire is a massive deal. So naturally, Gandalf decides that the best way to go about enlisting him is to first creep Bilbo out by showing up awkwardly and acting like a Facebook stalker, then inviting a bunch of people over to his house without telling him, and graffiti-ing his door. He gets even worse when he snarkily demands that Bilbo go get a light - then literally ten seconds later Gandalf snaps his fingers together to make a fire to light his pipe with. He can also do it with his staff, we find out at the end of the movie. That thing could have lit the entire room, but Gandalf makes Bilbo get a candle just to be a douche. Personally, if I were Bilbo, I'd have punched Gandalf in the balls about five times. Then there's the secret key to the back door of Mt. Whereverthehell, which Gandalf has literally been carrying around for sixty-odd years. For some reason, he's deliberately kept this knowledge from Thorin, which means he's purposely let that poor bastard feel like his entire history is lost for over half a century. Once again, Gandalf deserves a punch in the balls. Then there's the entire reason that Bilbo is necessary: because Smaug knows what dwarves smell like, but not hobbits. So of course Smaug will leave him alone. Alright, even if you assume that it abso-bloody-lutely has to be Bilbo, and no other hobbit can possibly pull that off - and there's no good reason to think that, except that Gandalf in his "infinite wisdom" perceives that Bilbo is the chosen one, or whatever - that idea is about six different levels of stupid. If Smaug is already used to the smell of dwarves... wouldn't that mean that he wouldn't really notice that another dwarf showing up? Moreover, if Bilbo's scent is completely alien to Smaug, why the hell would that make Smaug less suspicious. If you know anything about any kind of predatory animal, you know that they are fascinated by new smells, and they'll automatically pay more attention to a new one, because they want to know if it signals a new kind of food. Hell, even Gollum behaves this way - he's thrilled that Bilbo's showed up, because he'd probably taste delicious. But for some reason Gandalf thinks that Smaug is going to say to himself, "Hmm. There's a new smell in this room, completely unlike anything I've smelled in my entire life, much less the past sixty years that I've been sitting here without moving. I'm pretty sure that's worth ignoring." Gandalf gets another epic douche moment when he finds the secret passageway to Rivendell behind the rock. He literally just leaves the group behind to go looking for it, without telling any of them that where he's going or what he's looking for. But then when he finds it he just screams "OVER HERE, YOU FOOLS!" like it's their fault for not noticing that he'd found the secret passageway that he deliberately didn't tell them about. Then when Thorin disagrees with him about the safety of the troll area, Gandalf's solution is to get pissed off and leave. That's right. His logic is literally, "I'm completely convinced that this area isn't safe, so I'm going to walk away all on my own, while at the same time leaving you completely defenceless against the monsters." He decides to redeem himself by breaking a rock and stone-ifying the trolls - which, based on how light it was getting, would have happened in about five minutes anyway. The only difference between him showing up and not showing up is that it's slightly faster and the dwarves get slightly less roasted - which wouldn't have been an issue if he hadn't been throwing a temper tantrum in the first place. Then when he's going against the Goblin King, Gandalf suddenly pulls out this massive Kamehameha blast that completely knocks all of the goblins off their feet. If Gandalf's got that ability, why the flying hell didn't he use it against the orcs earlier? Or the wargs that had them cornered on the clifftop? That thing would have knocked them all into the chasm. But, you know, climbing the trees was a much better strategy. And what about the flying eagles? Why the hell couldn't Gandalf have summoned those five minutes into the movie and just flown them straight to Mt. Whereverthehell? It would have saved a hell of a lot of time, and probably would give them the advantage of surprise. But I guess Gandalf just has some kind of walking fetish, or something. Then you've got Radagast's "diversion," which is a double ballpuncher because both parties manage to epicfail their intended jobs. Radagast actually manages to lead the orcs directly towards the dwarves like four straight times - and every time, the dwarves are clearly visible. Given that the orcs are not actually obligated to catch Radagast, and ARE obligated to catch the dwarves, I have no idea why the hell they choose to ignore the obvious band of dwarves in their peripheral vision and go chase bunnies instead. Voldemort also manages to forget that archers exist when he corners the merry men on the clifftop. Seriously. His entire plan is thwarted when they come up with the bold plan of simply getting a few feet off the ground. He doesn't have any archers with him. He doesn't have any slingshots with him. It never occurs to them that they can just start throwing stuff, such as, oh, say, the twenty million rocks that are lying around on account of it being a frigging mountain. It's just his wolves, apparently, and they manage to successfully knock over every tree but one. At this point there is literally nothing stopping him and his orc minions from simply walking up to that last tree and cutting the roots. Bam, tree falls, everyone is dead. Hell, given that all of the dwarves managed to straight-up walk down the tree and join the fray later on, he could have just walked right the hell up there and killed all of them. But instead he just sits there and talks smack about Thorin's family. And let's not even talk about Bilbo. He makes the suicidal decision to try and pickpocket a troll's garage-door-sized sword, because he's incapable of untying a few knots which were tied by guys with clumsy fingers the size of Volkswagens. Attempting to get this sword very nearly gets him killed. Five minutes later, when Gandalf tries to give him a knife, Bilbo announces that he has no need for one. No, Bilbo. You literally just about partywiped because you didn't have a knife on you. He's even dumber in the goblin mine. The rest of the group gets captured by about ten million goblins, and he's left standing there all alone. Having narrowly escaped capture by not drawing attention to himself, what does our hero do? He draws a bright blue glowing lightsabre and waves it around. It's also pretty idiotic that he tries to reason with Gollum. The guy is obviously pants-on-head insane, but for some reason you think that by outsmarting him and making him feel inferior, that's going to make him inclined to hold up his end of the deal? Honestly, I don't know how much of this was Tolkien and how much was Jackson, but the fact of the matter is that this kind of crap ruined the movie for me. If I liked everything about it except the people, then I probably could have spent my time watching stock footage of New Zealand landscapes for three hours and achieved approximately the same result.

Spoiler	+
Funny, I thought Gandalf was just as idiotic as well when I saw it. Some scenes were quite silly like the Radagast chase sequence and the Gandalf stuff but for the most part it was fun. Definitely not the same as LOTR.

i'mma watch a crappy cam-rip with shady colors and 1 forth of the screen missing, some time this week, maybe....

I liked it a lot :)

Seeing this on Saturday. 48fps, 3D, ultrascreen, the whole gamut. Excited! Despite the underwhelming reviews

NOW THAT I'VE HAD SOME TIME (as well as a viewing of the first hour of TT last night before I went to bed), some thoughts!

The CGI was nowhere near as invasive as I'd feared. It certainly wasn't TPM-level bad. Though there is lots of it, and in places where it doesn't always seem necessary (particularly the orcs), the more cartoony nature suits this film. It is tonally separate enough from LOTR that it warrants a less grim, realistic aesthetic.

I didn't feel the 3 hours at all. Unlike LOTR, which is certainly a better, more important, more expansive series of films than this will ever be, there were no particularly SLOW bits where I just wanted it to move on. Every moment felt so LOVINGLY CRAFTED that I just couldn't help but enjoy it. Even the fanservice-y bits were fun.

Structurally, it's a bit weird. The movie stops for flashbacks and intros all the damn time, and it doesn't really build much momentum until the last hour. Like I said, it's still FUN because of how fully realized the world is, but Bilbo and Thorin's basic arcs spend a lot of time not really developing because the movie has to work in service of other plotlines (the thing that felt most timewasting in retrospect was Radagast.)

Speaking of Radagast, I liked him! I kept hearing comparisons to Jar Jar, and anticipated the worst, but I thought he was a fun character and (with the exception of the bird shit on his head), not terribly unfunny!

The action setpieces are also really good (though the copious CGI probably does affect the overall weight of them somewhat). They manage to be thrilling despite the fact that you know every character is going to survive. Especially the Warg chases and the GOBLIN ESCAPE (which is probably the most outright entertaining bits in all the movies).

The characterization was a bit odd though. Balin, Thorin, Bilbo, and LOTR characters are well-defined, but a lot of the dwarves just feel tertiary. Which is of course understandable given the source material, but I was hoping with three hours I could be more emotionally invested in the individual members of the company. The other most developed dwarves are Fili and Kili and they sucked

Overall though, it was great. I had a fantastic time being BACK IN MIDDLE EARTH or whatever and the fact that this is happening for two more movies makes me so happy