First and foremost, I will say that I really enjoyed The Hobbit. I have been aching for another visit to Middle Earth and this expansion of the universe was the answer to my prayers. It is because of how much I love the story and how much anticipation I had leading up to this film that I feel the need to write about it now.
Now for the critique. I saw the movie in IMAX 3D. I made the mistake of thinking that the new 48 frames per second version was standard to the IMAX, and I was wrong. So I cannot comment on that, though I really would like to experience it. My main complaint is with the 3D. I just do not see the appeal of 3D, especially in life-action movies. The only movie I saw where the 3D really added to the experience was Toy Story 3. And since then, whenever I see an animated movie, I go for the 3D. But in live-action, it just seems like the 3D distorts and ruins the action. There were some well-choreographed and entertaining action sequences here that I just couldn't make out on the screen because the images became dark and blurry. Maybe this is not the case in the 48 fps version. The Hobbit features a lot of panoramic landscapes and sweeping CG environments, and this is where the 3D really adds to the story, but for close-up action it just does not work.
Even optimistically, The Hobbit is at least an hour too long. It seems that Peter Jackson had three main goals: 1) to be very faithful to the source material, 2) to parallel the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and 3) to personally revisit the excitement of Middle Earth. Because of 2) and 3), we are getting three long movies from a single book that, alone, is shorter than any one of the three Lord of the Rings novels. And so, despite being very loyal to the novel, Jackson and his team have written in an entirely separate story about the emergence Sauron that is meant to connect the Hobbit trilogy to the Lord of the Rings. This is my main complaint about the movie. The story is meant to be about thirteen dwarves, Bilbo, and Gandalf going on a quest to destroy a dragon and reclaim the dwarves' kingdom. But their story keeps getting halted to talk about Sauron and a greater evil. Well, if there's a greater evil, then why am I following these uninteresting dwarves, whose are fairly forgettable compared to the fellowship, which is what they are clearly being compared to.
And that brings me to my other comment on Jackson's third goal. He obviously loves Middle Earth and his own experiences on the set of the movies. The man permanently build a town in a hillside to film the Shire scenes, which is now a tourist attraction in New Zealand. And because of this, he goes to extra lengths to showcase landscapes and characters that sort of conflict with the story as we know it. Frodo, Galadriel, Radagast, and Saruman really have no reason to be in this movie except to remind us that they exist and to talk about Sauron (except for Frodo, who essentially just walks around Bilbo's home for a few minutes). Even the actors seem like they are playfully parodying themselves from the other films. There's no question Jackson and co. got a kick out of donning the same costumes and flying helicopters all over New Zealand, but the movie sidetracks from the storytelling and becomes more of a video blog of production. There are even times when a voice over essentially reads the book verbatim while the camera sweeps over empty hills and fields.
I will stop there, because, while I do have other comments, it isn't really fair to talk about them unless it is with someone who has also seen the movie already. I hope that with the next two movies, we get an idea of what the movie is actually supposed to be about. This movie tried too hard to remind us that a better version of the movie already exists, at the expense of the main plot. While I enjoyed it, I think the sequel needs to raise the bar - maybe by actually cutting some of the extra material - in order to compete with the original trilogy.
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