constantly shifting from “this is a kid’s movie, nice” to “this is extremely inappropriate for children.” the first scene with bilbo and gandalf for example is classic kid’s stuff–extremely goofy, simple. the whole thing in the hobbit house with the dwarves–kids love that shift, presumably. but then you go to fucking terrifying hi-res orcs chopping off the heads of dwarves and screaming to their wargs to drink their blood and whatnot–not to mention the elf council scenes–i wish this movie had just followed the book in being directed PRIMARILY at children.
the songs, too, lmao, are definitely for kids. and the gollum scene–which was incredible–was also terrifying. gollum looks incredible in this film, but he is unquestionably terrifying. the goblin-king is terrifying, etc.
i found that the visuals looked weird maybe 45% of the time, being generous. i thought they looked cool during the large battle scene with the orcs and the dwarves, for example; but the elves all looked really weird. some of the scenes look like videogame cutscenes, especially the escape from the dungeon.
overall the action sequences, which are far more plentiful, are also a lot more cartoonish and action-movie-like. the scene with the dwarves jumping and flipping off of each other? ridiculous.
having just watched the LOTR trilogy, there are definitely sequences in those films, some of the special effects, that look bad, no doubt (gollum for eg, and all of the big fantasy locations). but the real-ness of the orcs in particular, and the groundedness of the battles, are absolutely incredible. wish they had just made this using the exact same techniques, but used SFX sparingly in order to improve what was lacking from that trilogy.
i also hated how many deus ex machinas were used in this film, extremely lazy writing. the movie dragged painfully, and not just because of the length: it simply wasn’t compellingly written. the LOTR films could have gone on forever. disappoint!