Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy could be forgiven if it felt overly long and drawn out in places - after all, this was a truly epic quest in which dozens of characters set over a sprawling universe played their part in a gargantuan plot. The same can't be said for The Hobbit, where the pacing is reduced to a langorous meander more often than it should have. Peter Jackson might be going for epic here but when all is said and done the storyline is on a much smaller scale than with The Lord of the Rings, and at times it feels as if his desire to pad things out makes it suffer when it shouldn't. More judicious editing in a number of scenes could have livened up the pacing and kept the audience more engrossed in the story and action - just one example would be the opening segment to An Unexpected Journey, in which it takes nearly an hour before the team set off on their quest. A few snips here and there throughout the films would have made the experience more snappy and less snore-inducing.
