Well, considering the Hobbit was written after Lord of the Rings and was essentially written to tell the back story of how the Ring came to the Shire, it really isn't supposed to have the same feeling.

The problem with the movie, so far, is it's too long. They added too much to the story to extend it. However, there are some additions to the story that really do a good job of setting the stage for the LoTR movies.

And well, I guess personally I like that all the Dwarves are Scottish in this movie.

What I never really liked about The Hobbit and then the Lord of the Rings is the disconnect between the two movies. In The Hobbit the Dwarves, Elves, and Man come together to defeat the foe and it seems the three are at peace with each other and willing to work together. In Lord of the Rings, not so much. They are, essentially, reluctant allies.

The other problem is in Lord of the Rings it shows the older Bilbo obtaining the Ring and in The Hobbit, obviously the younger one is.

That said, I'm interested in seeing the characters run around the screen a lot more in "The Hobbit 2: Really? Is this a Marathon or a Movie?"

Considering the source material and the fact they're stretching it all out over 3 films, I thought the Hobbit was darn good. My only gripe with it was its heavy reliance on CGI.

I really dislike the argument of one book versus three.

Have you read the books?  There is a HUGE difference in writing style.  

The Hobbit fits a lot of stuff in one book, because it is mostly spend on dialogue and thoughts of characters.  Little is given to the world of MIddle Earth, whether history or landscape.

Meanwhile the Lord of the rings spends so much time talking about history and what a place looks like and how it came to be ect that it moves at a snails pace.  If both books were made 100% no cut material at all, they really wouldn't be that different in length.  The Lord of teh Rings could spend 2-3 pages describing what a building looked like, while teh hobbit wouldn't explain it at al.  Translate that to movie and its like the Hobbit.  you don't have to explain the scenery, you just see it.  

Book spoilers.

[spoiler]

I mean look at whats all left in the Hobbit book to film.  Going to Beorns house, going through the murkwood forest, involving the battle with the spiders and then the imprisonment with the elves.  Then the barrel escape, followed by the town on the lake.  Then going to the mountain and finding the door and how to open it.  Then the first encounter with the dragon, followed by another encounter with the dragon. Then you have the battle with the dragon at the lake town.  Then all the armies start to gather to decide what to do with the money.  THe dwarfs fortify the place and negotiations start.  Then more dwarves arrive and the goblins and a huge battle begins.  Then Bilbo goes home and finds his house up for auction.   

Meanwhile during all this before the big battle, Gandolf is off with the other wizards dealing with the Necromancer.[/spoiler]That is a lot of stuff to fit into one movie.  Now imagine putting that stuff also with what NEEDED to be shown in the first movie.  

Compare that with what was cut in the Lord of the Rings, and you can see waht I talked about up above.  The Hobbit while short was written quite differently than the lord of the rings, and thus had a lot more content packed into less pages.  

What? ... No.. The Hobbit was written way before The Lord of the Rings and it was meant to be a single book. On topic, I think most of the people disliked the movie because they were expecting a LOTR film, and the books are completely different. As a matter of fact I sincerely think The Hobbit is a better read than LOTR.. but that´s just my way of thinking.

Three movies. Yeah. Let that sink in. 

Less than 300 pages of original material in what was a very entertaining and engaging children's book as well as a fantastic pre-quel to an epic. Doesn't exactly translate well into a 6 hour saga, which is presumably how long all three movies will add up to, possibly even longer with the invevitable Director's Cut. 

Lord of the Rings clocks in at about 1500 pages by comparison and yet The Hobbit somehow gets translated into the same amount of screen time.

So yes; money.

WB/MGM would probably be a lot more hesitant to put forth the investment for a single film Hobbit that could have effectively been done in one 150-180 minute film. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey alone is 169 minutes.

But, all LoTR/Tolkien fans have undoubtedly seen all the sets and pre-production materials and work that was done prior to production; no expense was spared. Very elaborate and expensive method of film making.

Given that the original LoTR trilogy was shot all at once, it sort of (from a logistical and cost to earnings perspective) makes sense to essentially sell movie goers three parts of a single story. Unfortunately, that meant dragging a relatively short story out excessively.

Other than a lot of the Middle Earth backstory, it really didn't feel like much happened in An Unexpected Journey. Even less so than The Fellowship of the Ring, which really just felt like a set up story for the upcoming greater story arc. 

My personal thoughts on An Unexpected Journey.

I bought it on the BD combo pack, which meant I expected I'd watch it over and over. Generally I don't buy BD movies these days unless that's the case. I managed to miss it in theaters, which I regret.

But, I didn't. I watched it once on BD, and I did it with quite a few breaks and I actually kind of struggled to get through it, and I really should have just watched in an IMAX theater once, after which I would have been fine with never seeing it again until the next chapter came out.

For the record, I loved the novel; it was one of my favorite children's books as a boy, so it's not the material or the characters, or the plot or anything else. I still enjoy the Rankin animated film from 1977. It clocked in at 78 minutes. It just felt so drawn out that I think the main people who would enjoy the 169 minute film would be the super Tolkien fans who would literally live in Middle Earth if they could and simply can't get enough of LoTR.

And of course, as it was mentioned, with all the huge build up over the new cinematic version of Smaug (teasers were literally out there for years), all we got were more teasers. Granted, Smaug doesn't show up until the final third of the novel, but it is annoying to presumably have to wait until the third film for everyone to see what they really want to see.

So much this. Its ridicilous that this is a trilogy, the book is a mere 300 pages.

Also OP the reason you feel this way is because they made a trilogy out of a 300 pages book. Imagine having a trilogy/quadrology per LOTR book as they were much longer.

Three? I watched the slow pace of the first movie and I was "well there aren't a lot left for the second movie"... yeah I read the book... a friend asked me if there are anything big in the next movie and I said "they already told like 70% of the story in this movie" lol.

How they will do two more movies if they already are ahead half of the book? They plan to use some tale from Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales?

More fitting with the Hobbit's tone, really. If anything, Jackson is trying to inject *too* much heavy shit in there, whereas the original novel really only got sentimental right at the end with the death of Thorin, Fili, and Kili. The matter of dividing the treasure was also handled as a serious matter, but for the most part the Hobbit was something of a lighthearted romp through middle earth, which Jackson is now weighing down by throwing in too much of the fight against the Necromancer (along with bringing the rise of the Necromancer, and the turning of Greenwood into Mirkwood, ahead by over 1900 *years*, and by making the Witch King actually dead in order to justify the name Necromancer, which totally beats the whole point of having Eowyn kill him in Return).

The problem with The Hobbit is that Jackson is simultaneously making it into a big LotR fan-wank project, and yet making far more egregious changes to the mythology than any of the minor, understandable tweaks brought into the LotR trilogy