Verdict: No focus, too much shadow of LoTR made this unnecessarily long movie far from being the greatest movie of the year 

It's been 9 years after we started following the great LoTR trilogy. It really is one of the greatest epic films that were made this century, yet.

So no wonder Peter Jackson et al were ambitious to make another trilogy: The Hobbit

I have to be frank: the film productions' screenplay and film editing departments need to be fired from attempting the next installment. In this film, the first 45 minutes should have been replaced by a few minutes summary that tells how Bilbo met the thirteen dwarfs and started the unexpected journey.

For the rest of the film, I felt that they over explained a lot of other things, too many cliché (of LoTR), nice scenes a la LoTR, no climax and in the end, no significant death to mark the end of first episode: the head of orcs was still there, the dragon was just awaken.

As a matter of fact, there's nothing much to tell in this film, which should have been 90 minutes instead of 180 minutes. As a person who appreciates LoTR, I'll definitely watch this and the next two episodes.

Even Snow White & Seven Dwarfs did better by having character development with each and every dwarf - but this Hobbit's 13 dwarfs - I can't remember any of them having special ability or any of them being unique.

They really need to re-look at their film editing: a film is supposed to be entertaining, instead of making the audience questioning why did they make it unnecessarily long.

Rating: 6/10