Party because of all the partially negative (or at least less-than-enthusiastic) reviews, I'm sure. But I'm an old and committed Tolkien geek, who tool Jackson's previous adaptions very seriously, even when I fully recognized all the ways they failed to work, even on their own terms as movies. Surely hang-ups with 48 fps cinematography isn't enough to dissuade me, is it?
Comments by other, certified fantasy geeks, like Alan Jacobs and Jacob T. Levy, cut closer to what is probably my main reluctance. Alan and Jacob expressing their criticisms (which are both reluctant, I should note; they both enjoyed themselves at the film) differently, but they ultimately point in the same direction: the transformation of the Thorin & Company into awesome, apparently unstoppable super-warriors or video-game characters, with the consequent diminishing of both the Gandalf-centric Important Stuff which Jackson has elected to lard these movies up with, and more importantly of Bilbo and his journey itself. That probably is the heart of it, there. Because, you see, I love Bilbo's story--and I mean its story, the way it's laid out in Tolkien's Hobbit, which I consider to be a tremendous children’s novel, really one of the very best of the genre. It's funny, exciting, surprising, dramatic, and filled with homespun wisdom--all of which is conveyed alongside hints of a deeper historical myth infecting the language and rhythm of the tale, but never stopping it from being what it is: one of the greatest works of youth fiction ever written.
I’m sure I’ll eventually see the film–all three of them, in all likelihood!–and maybe I’ll repent of this judgment entirely. Maybe Jackson and Company pulled off some wonderful alchemy in making this film adaption. But from the trailers I’ve seen, the reviews I’ve read, and really all the news going all the way back to the earliest development of the movie, I just can’t shake the feeling the Jackson's Hobbit is just doing it all wrong. Whereas this adaption, I'm sure, got it right:
(Update, via Facebook: Jacob Levy pithily comments that "The Hobbit pays homage to Tolkien the myth-maker at the expense of Tolkien the storyteller." Well said.)