VolkStudio Blog

Summary: don’t waste your time or your patience.

Casting: very poor. Certain characters, such as Thorin, were mis-cast.
Screenplay: terrible. Even having read the book, I found the plot disjointed and nonsensical. Logical connections between events were lost. The spirit of the book was lost. Lots of details and events switched around or added to the original story, none to good effect.
Pacing was atrocious, far too slow in most parts. It was like the arcade version of a Shakespeare play, with pointless and drawn-out swashbuckling at the expense of he plot.
3D effects: barely perceptible most of the time, distracting and ostentatious the rest. High frame rate looked no different from the regular 24fps version.
Music: OK, too much heroic orchestral soundtrack. Sound effects fake and mis-timed.
Visuals: spectacular to the point of becoming boring and repetitive quickly. The movie was more of a “visit beautiful New Zealand” tourist ad than a feature film.
Camera work: luckluster, with little use of closeups for detail.

Some people in the theater were fighting sleep rather visibly. I won’t bother seeing the second part of it as no part of the experience was compelling enough to put up with the overall bad impression this production made. With the huge budget and big name actors, I expected a much better film. Lame.