3. It Shouldn't Be An Epic
As critics have already started having their way with The Hobbit, the initial fan reaction has been a lack of surprise that the critical reception is considerably lower than that of the Lord of the Rings films; after all, critics were always going to compare it to Lord of the Rings, when in fact, the Hobbit - at least in terms of its source material - is a very different tale to Rings. It's a far brisker, lighter adventure story, whereas Rings is pitched an epic that actually befits the three-film treatment. While the claim that we shouldn't compare it to Lord of the Rings might be true, Peter Jackson has done himself absolutely no favours whatsoever with the way that he has presented this first entry into the Hobbit trilogy. The problem is that The Hobbit has clearly been buffed out at the edges to give it a more "epic" feel; it's got the long run-time, it's got the lengthy prologue, the set-pieces, and the massive cast, but as Jackson has said himself, he's attempting to basically extend the bounds of the material and fashion it into something that doesn't really suit the material all that well. How this will affect the latter two films, which will hopefully have a bit more incident and feel less fatty, is anyone's guess.