But Peter Jackson had to go for overkill. Tell me that you didn't have a hard time believing that none of the dwarves were killed when they were caught in between the rock giants. They clung to the cliff better than Spiderman did.

Speaking of which, none of the dwarves were killed by the end of the movie even though they battled 3 trolls, a goblin army numbering in the thousands and crossed paths with an orc company on Wargs twice. Why? Because this is essentially a children's book and Jackson's movie only made it about halfway through the book while trying to be epic.

If you did a little research you would know that Tolkien meant 'The Hobbit : There & Back Again' book to be a one-off. When he wrote this, he had no inkling that it would become the prequel to LOTR. Thus all the characters in there were in no way developed as part of an epic sweeping tale like LOTR was.

The tone of the book was very much lighter and being a children's tale, there is not much killing and vengeance underscoring the characters' motivation.

It was a pretty straight forward adventure tale with Bilbo being the central character through which the reader is being shown the story. As such it made sense that none of the dwarves were killed.

When LOTR came about, Tolkien had expanded the universe of Middle Earth to such an extent that 'The Hobbit' came as a bit jarring in comparison. LOTR had a much darker tone. Doom and gloom all around. The simple gold magic ring that made its wearer invisible had become The One Ring. If Tolkien had written The Hobbit as part of the LOTR lore from the beginning, it would have been a very different story.

That's the problem I think Peter Jackson had. He was making 'The Hobbit' but he wanted it to tie in to his LOTR trilogy. He wanted to make it seem like it was part of the same lore right from the beginning. It just didn't come off very well.

If you remember by the end of the Fellowship in LOTR, Gandalf had fallen, Boromir was dead. The fellowship was broken. Everything was going to hell. The threat was real. You could feel the doom, the sense of despair.

Peter sought to bring the same sense of doom and threat to The Hobbit. It just did not come off right. All of them survived the ordeal with little more than a bruise at the end of the movie. He could not kill off any of them because they did not die in the book but he made the battles seem so desperate. He made the threats so big like giant rock monsters as big as the mountains themselves battling it out. Like facing thousands upon thousands of goblins and being pursued relentlessly by Azog, the Orc that was not even in the book in the first place.

That is why I say Peter Jackson was trying to make it epic. I don't know. I was not expecting that. Perhaps most of the fans of the LOTR trilogy were.

If Peter had just made the movie more like the original story - a straight forward adventure tale that so happens to have the One Ring in it, I would have been quite all right with it. I could tolerate 2 movies but 3 is really overdoing it judging by this first movie.

1. Opening - could have dropped all the Frodo and old Bilbo scenes. Suffice to just show us old Bilbo writing his journal for a few seconds.

2. The dwarves at dinner scene - could have been shorter and less with the dish tossing. What's it all mean? Tossing dish is not an essential skill that they use later on in the movie.

3. The scene of the battle near Moria where Thror got killed. Could have been shorter and I think would be much better placed if the dwarves had related this tale during the dinner scene to replace much of the dish tossing.

4. The scene where Radagast run around the forest and found the hedgehog to where the spiders left his hut. Is this scene even necessary? What does it actually tell you apart from being filler to make up the 2 hours 46 minutes slot?

5. The prolonged chase with Radagast on his silly rabbit sleigh. I know Christmas is near but this is ridiculous. Could have been shorter.

6. The really mind boggling stone giants scene. What does that actually do to the story except to confuse you? Suddenly the cliff becomes part of a giant and they battle amongst themselves. Why start the battle then? Did the company of dwarves trigger it by chance or what? Not explained in the least. Not referred to before by anyone and not ever mentioned again after that.

If they cut out or shorten the above, you could easily save about 45 minutes to a hour of film time. Now tell me again that this isn't padding.