Saw The Hobbit this past Saturday.
It was pretty good, though imo if they'd cut it down by half and hour, it would have been "really good" instead of just "pretty good."
And I don't mean the "boring" pastoral scenes. Those were delightfully Tolkienesque, and after all, immersing oneself in Middle-earth is a large part of the appeal of Tolkien in the first place. I didn't mind the talking and the resting and the traveling. In fact, I wish we'd seen more of the eating! The famous Hobbit eating habits, what with second breakfasts and elevenses weren't featured at all, and I was quite looking forward to them. One of my main disappointments was the extremely modest (I may even term it meager) meal Bilbo prepared for himself for dinner at the start of the film.
No, what I mean are the battle scenes. Those got tiring. Most of them could have stood to be quite a few minutes shorter, and one protracted battle with orcs especially left me zoning out in the middle, and wishing it had been limited to 3-4 minutes, tops. I mean, it wasn't even very important.
Some other critiques:
The orcs and trolls and goblins all looked FAR too much the same. Can't we get some differentiation between the less humanoid races? Why are they all clammy and pale and bald with the pointy ears and similar eyes and teeth? Couldn't tell them apart sometimes.
The "haha the fat dwarf eats a lot" humor fell totally flat for me, and was also part of what I would have cut out. I mean, ideological issues aside, it just wasn't funny--it was tiresome. Disney knows how to do such humor successfully; Peter Jackson apparently doesn't.
Finally, what is up with the three handsome dwarves? I am WAY against that. First off, it makes no sense. It's already been established in this universe that dwarves are stocky, funny-looking men with thick beards and bulbous noses. How do you suddenly get CW-pinup looking dudes among them? Why do these dreamboats, and they alone, forego the prevailing dwarf fashion for heavy braided beards and bushy hair? And in general, it is irritating that anyone deemed to be "heroic" or noble or worthy of being at the helm of the story has to be prettied up to look more like Aragorn than like Gimli.
        Thorin Oakenshield is not supposed to be a matinee idol.
