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.

One of the things I liked least about LotR was the dwarf-tossing Gimli humor bits. Just puerile and stupid. And this movie had a lot of fart-jokey stuff.

Hedgehog Resurrection would make a great band name.

Reading Suela's post, and I agree with pretty much every word.

I think what's missing is the tone of innocence, which I think couldn't have been there when shot in this order. Bilbo's innocence (I missed the line where he sees his first mountain and assumes it's The Mountain and everyone kinda chuckles, because it's such a good way of exhibiting how little he knows about the outside world, and it's a great metaphor for us and how we live our lives.) and the innocence of the story as a whole. It's a journey, but it's just not a grand scale epic like LotR is, but because we're getting it after the fact, I don't think Peter Jackson could have made a sweet film about self-discovery when people were expecting ott cgi.

But because the action got shoehorned in, they lacked the emotional hook that Tolkien would have given them. And stuff like the trolls becomes much more disturbing when they personify them so much, and then there's violence against them. I much preferred the bit where they get tricked into bickering with each other until dawn.

Those are parts of a much younger story, which LotR was not, book or movie, and which now the Hobbit movie cannot be.

I have no significant investment in Tolkien. I watched the LotR trilogy and enjoyed them all (for excellent acting and scenery and general grandeur and ambition of it all), tried to read the books and got stuck in book 2. Never read the Hobbit. Would I enjoy this movie? Does it have narrative cohesion and flow well enough to appeal to those who only know the vague outline of the story?