In response to: “Don’t believe me? Do this experiment – ask Fantasy enthusiasts to name at least one story that eclipses and overshadows Lord of the Rings with respect to scope, storytelling skill, literary value, critical reception, and etc. There is no book or book series out there that most fans of the genre could collectively agree to be “better than Tolkien” in every aspect. There are quite a few novels and series that are great in their own little way, but none of them can’t compare to the legend that is LotR.”

A Song of Ice and Fire. Both Tolkien and Martin stand on equal footing based on the fact that both worlds are so incredibly intricate beyond what we read on the surface. The history of Middle Earth that Tolkien wrote is just as impressive as the detailed religions that Martin created for his universe. They are not the same story at all, that’s for sure, but I think that Martin has proven himself time and time again to be just as talented and he gets so little recognition for it.@ Anwyn:

@ Chris K:

Yeah, I heard of phantom edit but have never seen it. Is it available anywhere?

@ Victoria:

More musical numbers I presume. I think they will probably wrap up the reminder of the “journey” in the next movie, and part 3 will be pretty much “The Battle of Five Armies, The Movie”.

Thanks for the thorough review. I’ve read the source material so many years ago I barely remembered the plot. Let’s say, I’m OK with the movie – New Zealand is breath-taking, I like Martin Freeman from Sherlock, I like Richard Armitage no matter what :) and so on. The only question remains – WTF are they going to do for 6 more hours of screen time? 6! More! Hours!

Remember when Episode 1 came out and someone re-did the entire movie with “The Phantom Edit”? I hope some genius does that with the The Hobbit trilogy, making it into one coherent movie.

@ Ricardo:

Right, that it did. Bilbo definitely had his own little character arc that took him from a guy who wants nothing to do with adventures to a hero who jumps into combat without thinking to save a friend.

@ Andrew:

Oh man, you missed a perfect opportunity to use Arrested Development catch phrase. You should have said:

And I knew as soon as I saw the creation of Moby Azog at the start that I have made a terrible mistake by coming to a midnight showing…

:P

No magic on my part, I’m just lucky to have a girlfriend who realized last week she wants to watch the whole series.

Glad to hear I was right, though. And I knew as soon as I saw the creation of Moby Azog at the start that I had misjudged by coming to a midnight showing…

I think The Hobbit is a story about, well, one particular hobbit. And in being so, it is a story of a peaceful, reclusive being being forced out of his habits and routines. That was the point of the chases to me: To put Bilbo in difficult and unexpected situations and show how he learns afterwards and improves over time. This movie was supposed to show the transformations of Bilbo and I think it did a fairly good job at that.

@ Andrew:

Hahahahaha! Yes indeed it was. This guy knows his arrested development! :) But yeah, I fixed the post. Grrr… Stupid WordPress bug.

@ kaotik4266:

Yea, I saw Les Miz on Broadway once years ago. All I remember was that they had a cool spinning stage thing. Other than that I’m not even sure if there was plot or was it just bunch of people singing about all their feels all the time. Also we were like way up front so when they started shooting I missed like the next four song because of the ringing in the ears.

I kinda had no interest seeing a movie based on that. Especially since the reviews were like “it’s just like the play but with Russel Crowe” – I was like, NOPE.

This is probably the best breakdown of the film that I’ve read. I did enjoy it in spite of all of its problems, though. Certainly I liked it a lot more than Les Mis which I found really disappointing.

Please tell me the Arrested development clip that didn’t make it in is “Dead Dove Do Not Eat.”

If so, I’ll agree with this review even more than I already do.