I believe this is relevant to all our interests.

[I did consider posting in Natter instead, but it seems not quite appropriate right now.]

AV Club asks about one of the most jarring scenes:

Simple question here: When Azog gets Thorin down and Bilbo comes to his rescue, what exactly are all the other dwarfs doing? (At least, the ones who aren’t dangling from a branch, about to fall to their deaths.) These are a group of honor-driven, exceedingly proud individuals who think of themselves as loyal-to-the-death warriors and are constantly out to prove it… and they just stand meekly by while a hobbit saves their leader? There’s some awfully unlikely stuff in Unexpected Journey, starting with 13 banging, oblivious loudmouths sneaking out of Bilbo’s house without waking him in the morning, and ending with that exceedingly videogame-y goblin-caves scene, which looks like it would have killed all involved 50 times over if they weren’t so obviously CGI constructs. But the moment where everybody just stands around with their dwarven-mailed thumbs up their dwarven-mailed asses while Bilbo saves the day is reaching too hard for uplift at the expense of logic.

Also, there will be a hella lot of sad fangirls at the end of the last movie, IJS.

True this.

I agree with just about all of that except the sneaking out of the house bit. There were definitely some characterization bits for me that didn't work, and how Bilbo chooses to go on the trip to begin with is one of them.

I thought Martin Freeman did a really excellent job, though.

Word, David.

I know why that scene was done that way, but it didn't do any justice to either Bilbo, the sneak-around-and-be-silent guy, or the honor-bound violent warrior guys.

Later in the book, when Bilbo does become violent, he still kills the spiders only when he's wearing the ring. Full frontal violence is very much NOT his thing, and it really bothered me to see that.

Yeah, and it's an important character point. In the book, the way the dwarves gradually gain respect for Bilbo is initially through him bumbling around. And you lose a good bit of that by making him be all determined warrior at this point.

It really seemed totally out of character, and also unlikely that he'd be able to knock that particular orc down or do any damage whatsoever.

Great line in this review:

so much of the film is filler that it amazes me to hear there will be an extended version for home video. Short of having the dwarfs sing the full version of the Lonely Mountain song (which is, admittedly, a terrific moment) or showing the fat dwarf wiping his arse, one wonders how a film that spends ten minutes showing a wizard trying to resuscitate a hedgehog left anything on the cutting room floor.

HEH.

But...

the hedgehog resurrection was one of the best bits! was it really 10 minutes? I felt like the movie needed even more Sylvester McCoy!

Oh, anyway, I have a more complete and spoilery post here: [link]

The Lonely Mountain song was really lovely.

And come on! Hedgehog! Although I agree about the camera shots lovingly framing Radagast's bird poop hairstyling.