I think one thing that concerns many people around here is that people had expectations with the LotR -movie, that it would be something great - not just one more blockbuster action movie with some comic relief added. In retrospect it is easy to see that you just should have guessed it: there is no high art coming from Hollywood, even if the screenwriters use a masterpiece as a basis (of deviation) for their storyboard.
I know many people differ on how they see the LotR-trilogy here. But many of even those who kind of liked the LotR by PJ are now facing a new situation when the Hobbit seems to be nothing more than yet one more "Avengers" or "Spider Man" or "Star Trek": an exploitation of older popular material built to maximise the income of the studios by following the lowest common denominators of their marketing department's imagined teen-age audiences.
Which doesn't mean it can't be quite an eye-candy.
I'm taking the optimist's route then. It maybe Hollywood doesn't know any more how to tell a story or to build interesting and deep characters (or they are not interested in those things any more) but they sure know how to make things look breath-takingly good and epic.
Kind of a larger image of our world today: we may have nothing inside, but darn we look good!
