[Mister Underhill]

Well well well, hello to friends old and new(ish)!

I've very much enjoyed the thoughts and insights discussed so far. I miss me some good Tolkien discussion! I'll toss a few thoughts into the pot, while trying not to be too redundant:

FIRST IMPRESSION

I enjoyed the movie. Seeing it with my son, who was mesmerized, helped me see the film in a kindly light. Add in a resigned acceptance of PJ's flaws as a director and the fact that, as davem and others have noted, The Hobbit has a little less going on under the hood than LotR, and thus less to screw up, and I ended up being rather pleasantly surprised overall. AUJ is a good time at the movies. Still, any grizzled old Tolkien nut is bound to have a few nitpicks...

CAST

Martin Freeman is very good as Bilbo, but he wasn't the casting perfection I thought he would be. I missed Bilbo's eccentricity, his moods, his devilish sense of humor, his sometimes absurd ridiculousness. I like Freeman as much as anybody, but his specialty is the put-upon, befuddled, deadpan straight-man. It's what makes his Watson such a perfect foil for Cumberbatch's highly eccentric Holmes. Being the eccentric one himself, not so much. Interestingly, Ian Holm kind of specializes in that sort of character. See, for example, his turn as Polonious in Hamlet or his role as the priest in The Fifth Element. I missed that in Bilbo, who comes off more "everyman" here than he should, methinks.

Armitage as Thorin. Okay. Let's just stipulate up front that, like many of us, I'm not a fan of the look of some of the dwarves, and Thorin perhaps above all doesn't resemble the Thorin in my head. And like Bilbo, I miss the sense of humor in the characterization -- Thorin's pompous ridiculousness, his tendency to be a windbag at times, etc. I guess mostly I'm okay with this grittier, more kingly Thorin, but still.

Ian McKellan's Gandalf was one of the best things about the original LotR films, and I still love him in the role. Having said that, I'm not sure who's responsible for some of these choices with the character in AUJ, but there were some that I really didn't approve. I don't like a Gandalf who lacks confidence and the sharp tongue that can put anybody in Middle-earth in their place. See the excerpt posted by Boro -- or really anything in Tolkien involving Gandalf. Hated his cringing, servile demeanor towards Saruman, though I guess it's of a piece with some scenes in the LotR films.

I really didn't care for Hugo Weaving as Elrond in LotR, like, at all. But I liked him much better here. He seemed relaxed in the role, less hammy and broad, more the Elrond who is "kind as summer".

TONE

Not far off from predictions of "LotR: The Prequel", yet still there was more Hobbity whimsy in there than I think most of us expected -- the rabbit-drawn sled, an elvish elk mount, birds nesting in Radgast's hair. I often sensed Guillermo del Toro's fingerprints on the film. It would be interesting to know which ideas were his. Anyway, most of it worked surprisingly well for me (bird poo notwithstanding).

On the other hand, I thought there were a few real misses. The whole theme about mercy and Bilbo's big moment when he spares Gollum might have been a lot more powerful if they weren't sandwiched in with the wanton slaughter of the escape from Goblin-town, which climaxes with the gruesome slapstick of Gandalf killing the Great Goblin. But at this point I guess I've just accepted Jackson's hamfistedness, and it landed more as a missed opportunity than anything else.

DESIGN AND ART DIRECTION

I liked Dale, and Bag End is just so deliciously perfect that I wish I could be there right now and live there always.

I have to note this in passing, though it's a real nitpick -- the wide open, cavernous interiors of both Erebor and the lair of the goblins of the Misty Mountains were all wrong for me.

Back to the dwarves -- it was distracting that some looked cartoonish and made up, while some others were just normal.

THAT SCENE WHERE...

"Far over Misty Mountains cold..." was great, a real high point of the film for me.

Am I the only one who thought the way "Riddles in the Dark" was staged was just okay? The whole scene had a frantic quality, and I thought shoe-horning in the split-personality thing with Gollum was very distracting. Also, why needlessly mess with the words? The charming musicality of "This thing all things devours" becomes the flat "All things it devours". Why?

While we're at it, why bungle "burrahobbit"?

I liked the idea conceptually of dramatizing the meeting of the White Council, but in execution there were so many things wrong for me. The Gandalf choices, as mentioned. I don't like that it's just, oh hey, coincidence, we're all here! Might as well convene a White Council meeting! Also, I always pictured the White Council being more than just these four. Don't remember what canon has to say, if anything, about that.

Radagast and the pipeweed. Well, it wouldn't be a Peter Jackson movie without somebody's eyes rolling up into their head, now would it?

Loved Smaug descending on the mountain. You really felt him as a force of nature.

Liked the Battle of Azinulbizar stuff. Appropriately grim and bloody. You are not going to go wrong with me putting in obscure bits of Middle-earth history.

CALL-BACKS TO LOTR

I agree that there are too many. Great insight about the music, Esty! There did come a point where I found myself thinking, wow, there's a lot of LotR music in here. Most egregiously illogical call-back? Gandalf and the moth.

HEAD-SCRATCHERS

Bag End has plumbing?