I only had 2 issues with the movie, The fact that the orcs can speak dwarvish bothers me, since dwarfs do not teach their language to anyone, and the comedy moments in the middle of the movie, granted I did get a chuckle out of them but at the same time it felt out of place and forced. As for stretching things out Tolkien left a lot of material in other books that can be tieds into The Hobbit so Im not worried there.

I still would give the movie 10/10

I really liked the movie. I don't remember the book at all, or the animated movie very much. I liked how Gandalf had a pretty large amount of tricks that he used. It also helped that I read the wikipedia page for Gandalf before watching so I knew more about who/what he was.

I found the 3D to be distracting in a few scenes, mostly because of foreground objects that were purposely out of focus... it looked TERRIBLE. It totally broke the immersion for me. Most of the time it wasn't noticeable or didn't bother me.

The Imax projector at 48 FPS looked really really good. The colors were so vivid, even with the tinted glasses, that it looked almost real. If watching in 2D means you lose some of the color quality (i'm assuming they are cheaper projectors or at least several years older), then I would say its worth watching in 3D, unless 3D really bothers you.

Its hard to say how much 48 FPS matters but I think it added to the enjoyment though it did feel less "stylistic" than LOTR. I think this mostly has to do with better lighting, so you are seeing things as they are instead of smoke & mirrors to give a dark contemplative atmosphere. Maybe that was intentional since the hobbit is more of a grand adventure. 

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Is that rating of movies or books?

I am yet to see the Hobbit and frankly, the  lenghth of the movie is already puttng me off. What i dont understand, how they could turn the book into 3 movies...i have heard they mixed silmarillion in, is that right?

Does it bring back the obsessive...

"Taaa dada daaaa dada daaaaaaa  ......  tadadaaaaa dadadaaa dadadaaaa.... taaaa daaaaaaaa"

?

Movies

Mostly they put in Unfinished Tales into the mix. 

So you get several minutes of background on what Sauron was up to at this point and what happened to the dwarves after Smaug had taken Erebor and so on.

The main problem is that when Tolkien wrote hobbit, it was just a plain fairy tale. In a fairy tale, there is no centuries-spanning background for the characters, no uberscheme of eternal good fighting eternal evil.

The trolls are not twisted servants of Darkness, attracted by the whispering of the One Ring, but just a bunch of stupid monsters that crave human flesh, and that turn into stone when touched by sunlight - and that's that, end of scene, cheap little thrill, and let's move on. Gandalf is not an incarnation of a demigod, but rather an old-fashioned wizard with a few spells under the hat, an aging fellow who enjoys a good laugh. And when he is done providing hints and help during the tutorial, he "suddenly remembers he has something important to do elsewhere", because the author has realized he is stealing all the EXP and robbing the story of the sense of danger ("Gendolf will save us, right?"). And the ring is just a magical trinket, like the purse of eternal gold, or a horse that can speak - they are found in every old fashioned fairy tale.

The whole X-files style epos of the struggle of good versus evil with complete mythology including gods, demons and history spanning thousands of years was written later, to seamlessly wrap around the simple tale the Hobbit originally was. 

The problem with Jackson's (and every Tolkien nerd) approach is that by constantly showing "look, this simple detail have far reaching context, and I am clever enough to know it", and inserting those references into the story, you are destroying what the Hobbit originally was - a simple tale for children, similar to those of Grimm brothers. 

Agree.

Much better put than what I wrote, totally agree. It is not Lord of the Rings, so it annoyed me that they kept inserting all these tidbits (and sometimes a whole meet) just to connect the two together. This only makes sense if you make LoTR movies first then the Hobbit later. In the future, people will not have seen LoTR before the Hobbit. And then the Hobbit will appear much poorer than what we judge it for today.

So i have seen it. It was not bad, neither was it brilliant. I would describe it as "expected". Pretty much in the mould of the LotR, perhaps bit less serious with all the singing and stuff.

To me, it felt like it was sort of missing the point in a lot of places. Of course there was little things the added action and the increased emphasis on the homeland compared to the gold, but the cut songs hurt it (although the songs they kept were great) and I felt that the changed scenes were pretty much all for the worse. The entrance into Rivendell in particular made no real sense to me.
Why have the dwarves showing such great animosity to the elves? Why did the elves show animosity to the dwarves, instead of singing as they did in the book? And why no meat, when elves are skilled hunters and bowmen? It's inane changes that break the setting and cause things to make less sense.
Why were the mountains literally big giants throwing rocks around? Taking figurative language overly literally robs the story of a lot of its charm.
The addition of Radagast was good, but the bird shit in his hair went too far and turned him into more of a caricature.

Overall, I felt like there was too much effort to make the story serious when in the book it's more of a lighthearted fairytale. There were some nods to the book's tone, but as Polistes notes they're so rare they seem to be a deviation from the movie's actual tone.

I did still enjoy it though.

I saw it last week in 3D HFR....... loved it!!! I think 3D is brilliant!

Finally saw the movie too. 

The beginning is nice enough, but once the story leaves the Shire with Bilbo, it takes a sharp turn downhill. Erebor was beautiful. The piles of gold did not look real at all. 

Mr. Jackson shows a disturbing trend of "Tolkien did not know how to write a good story, but don't worry, I will fix it."

Almost all his "fixes" are bad.

Radagast adaptation is a criminal act alone. Galadriel offering psychoanalysis and "maybe something more" to Gandalf is ridiculous. Stone giants depicted as whole mountains moving are silly.

All the action scenes are over-the top, opulent, and frankly distracting - all the silly Disney-esque jumping, swinging and falling to bottomless pits seriously break the immersion.

Arbitrary mini-bossfight at the end of the movie (because every Hollywood action movie needs a bossfight, right?) with Bilbo charging to battle with his little sword is absurd.

The acting is mostly OK, with Gandalf, Galadriel and many of the dwarves being very good. Ian McKellen has aged quite visibly, poor guy, but is still strong in the role. The guy playing Bilbo, on the other hand, seemed to be quite poor, I don't like the overly expressive, wooden, neurotic style of acting full of forced grimaces that are supposed to be funny.  

Similar to LOTR, I expect the trend to worsen in the next two movies.

Oh come on, Bryan....since when could you even count to 3?....

Terry and I saw it today....in 'glorious' 2D .... was fun.  It's been about 40 years since I last read The Hobbit .... but it all came flooding back...

Might not be that long (but then it might as it has been a long time).  I think I am going to read it again just so I know how much junk they put in the movie.

Um.... The hobbit doesn't have anywhere near the coherence of LotR. It's really quite a different tale as others have said. More of a children's fairy-tale is right on the money. I thought the escape from the goblin mountain scene was so far over the top that it broke suspension of disbelief as it veered into the ridiculous. Also I thought the level of violence was creepy combined with the near complete lack of blood and gore like when Gandalf opens up the Goblin king's belly and nothing comes out. Not that I'm into gore it just was creepy like they're cutting up claymation characters  (I'm sure this was in an effort to preserve their PG-13 rating) Overall the movie was fun and the CG was incredible but it doesn't seem to have the magic of the originals.