A half an hour into this almost three hour movie and I'm already annoyed. It's beyond ridiculous that this adaption takes three movies to tell a story, and it's even worse when this second one starts out with a retcon (that Tolkien himself wrote to make the Hobbit fit in better with the Lord of the Rings) stating how Gandalf came to meet Thorin. I liked it better when it was more of a mystery to the reader, which is was until I got my excellent annotated version of
The Hobbit.
Anyway, the meeting with Beorn is ridiculously short. It's such a fun part of the book, and yet it's cut down to about five minutes.
There is really is no sense of fun in this film now. All the added bits are just distractions. If someone could edit a shorter two movie set from this series it would probably work a lot better. I hear the DVD sets contain even longer versions. It's gonna take me three days to get through this one... if I'm lucky.
And the trip through Mirkwood is changed, for the worse. It's scary enough the way it's written, why add illusions to it? The spiders are well done, though we only get to hear them talk while Bilbo wears the ring. Except when the ring is off and he gets the name "Sting" for his blade. Oops.
And all the stuff about the ring. In the book, the ring is just a magic ring. Bilbo doesn't hear whispers, the world doesn't look different, he just uses it. Ugh. It's gonna take forever to get out of the Elf King's prison, since I already know they have to introduce Legolas to us. I'm kind of glad I didn't pay for this, though if I was with the same company I had for the first movie I'm sure my attitude would be better.
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