Why I Saw It: Like a Galaxy Far, Far Away, I will always visit Middle Earth when given a chance.
Cast: It's a suicide mission to go too deeply into this. The cast is too big. Ian McKellen as Gandalf spends almost the entire time in his own little movie. To be fair, he is the only character in the movie who can get away with that. It felt like filler though. I won't go into the Dwarfs too deeply because I couldn't identify more than two of them. They were individually a lot more distinctive this time around. I don't remember this much Legolas in the book but I'll always welcome back Orlando Bloom. For being the titular Hobbit, there wasn't a ton of Martin Freeman. It's weird how quickly I accepted Evangeline Lilly as an Elf even though I never for an instance thought of her as anything other than Evangeline Lilly. Then, there's Luke Evans playing Bard who, let's been honest, is a watered down Aragorn the way he's written.
Plot: I will preface this with saying that I haven't read the book in a decade so I don't remember the story too well, but damn this took some liberties with the story, didn't it? Or did it. I never understood how this warranted 3 movies and the first installment supported this. Part 2 does a much better job of having a story, throwing in some action sequences, and limiting character overload. Like the first movie, the nature of the action is a lot more childish, such as the over-the-top sequence with the dwarfs in the barrels (one in particular which defies the laws of gravity, inertia, and all that other smart people stuff). It has the PG-13 rating, but, like the book, this is Lord of the Rings for kids. Really, too much filler though. I'm bother by how neither of the first two movies have actual endings. Fellowship and Two Towers at least felt like the end of a chapter in a larger story. Both Hobbit films have the feel of "oh, we should stop here before we hit 3 hours".
Oliphaunt in the Room: Is it ever going to be possible to look at The Hobbit movies on their own merit? Nope. Simply impossible. It has both the direct comparison to the Lord of the Rings trilogy which has the stakes that this never will and enough material to warrant the run time and the unfortunate comparison to the Star Wars prequel trilogy, which was also something that people asked for and quickly realized the mistake of the approach. There's really no way for the third movie to blow my mind the way all of the Lord of the Rings movies did.
To Sum Things Up:
I'm sounding negative about the movie simply due to the company it keeps, which isn't fair but it is the hand it was dealt. I found this to be a big improvement over the completely expositional An Unexpected Journey. Just by being part of Peter Jackson's Middle Earth film universe, I'm going to like this better than most movies because I take the things it does right as a given. I have a hard time seeing if you enjoyed the original Trilogy how you could not find plenty to enjoy about this.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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