Saw the Hobbit at the midnight showing.

[seawolf10]

Unsurprisingly, it was very good. Most of the changes are minor, and some of them -- such as giving Radagast, Dwalin, Balin, Fili, and Kili more characterization than they had in the book -- are actually very good. Mild spoilers under the cut:

Comments

[liddle_oldman]

One of my major problems with the movie (Hi! We met a while ago in Barbara Hambly's LJ. We talked about smallpox) was Jackson's frenzy to condense everything. Azog was better than a century dead at this point, and the conference of the White Council was a hundred years previous as well. Dol Guldur had been reoccupied for nearly two millenia; it was a fortress Galdalf had snuck into and had barely snuck back out of.

Still, it's apparent that Jackson cares, even when he lets Moviemaking overwhelm storytelling.