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  Where I disagree with your article is your letting Jackson off the hook.  The Hobbit, like King Kong, like the LOTR trilogy are not the product of corporate film making, whether they foot the bill or not.  There is no influence, no choice, no direction that isn't pure Jackson.  His supervisors, producers, etc. are figure heads even.   He's making the films he wanted to make the way he wanted to make them.  Like Lucas.  Like Cameron.    With this in mind the problems with the action sequences and animated hordes are not the result of any deficiency in the armies of people it took to create them.  Or have we all forgotten all the boring, repetitive chase sequences in King Kong.  110% of this is Peter Jackson.  Just like the self-mutilation of the Star Wars saga by Lucas, this is an "auteur" with total control, no limits and no one telling them "no."     The artists that worked night and day, more often than not seven days a week, for months (or years, in the case of Cameron and Avatar) on end, are execution.  They're doing their job, often at the expense of their own health, their families and any regard for anything other than the film.  In the case of filmmakers like Peter Jackson and James Cameron or George Lucas there's also the masochistic reality of these people pushing themselves even further, allowing themselves to be exploited even more than usual, due to their futile idol worship.     I used to be one of them.   These filmmakers learned from the mistake of Francis Ford Copolla who was only compelled to return from the Philipines and eventually complete Apocalypse Now with the threat of the destruction of the negative he'd already shot.  With these guys,  there is no outside influence, no tampering, no limits and like Kurtz going off into Cambodia, no method, only madness.     edit: re-reading several posts I've made on this subject I'm gonna try to make this one my last.  I just hate the negativity it brings out of me.  You'd think I was talking about the GOP or whalers, lol.  I'm gonna try to concentrate on positive stuff and enjoy the anamorphic discussions which was what brought me to this forum in the first place.

  Totally agree, he might have felt some studio pressure in the first LOTS movies, but not after that, and then he just lost it. Like Zemeckis and Cameron before him, he got obsessed with the technical side of things, which didn't necessarily have to be a bad thing if done right. David Fincher can be extremely technical, but he's always done it in favor of the story he's telling, that's not the case with Zemeckis' mocap adventures or Peter Jackson's 48fps madness.

I agree with your conclusion. I'm happy to have seen it in 2D/24fps as i'm sure the 3D would have bugged me out after a short while. It isn't suited for the storytelling and i think storytelling is what they forgot about.. How to best tell the story of the hobbit. But perhaps 12 year old kids would love it, but 2:45 running time seems long for kids. Too bad, lost opportunity... where as perhaps the next TRON in 48fps 3D would be fantastic.. as long as it has a good story. Story Story Story. 

Thank you writing that Andrew. My past career was Projection and then Cinema managment. I've since left that completely having been deeply dissatisfied with how cinemas are now run. Everything is run for profit and nothing for love of Cinema. I think David Lynch said it best in an interview with the Hollyword Reporter: "....the world of cinema is changing so drastically, and in a weird way, feature films I think have become cheap. Everything is kind of throwaway.  It’s experienced and then forgotten. It goes really fast."   Sort of sums up the world for me too: everything done fast and on the cheap   http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/david-lynch-feature-films-have-395849

We live in a new world order driven by unthinking godless consumerism, where idiots consume massive amounts and vast industries produce shlock for them.   The idiot industries are incredibly powerful and our future cultural direction will mostly be defined by idiocy, mediocrity and stupidity on a grand scale.   If you look at social changes around the world, the big growth industries are related to serving idiots.

I haven't seen the Hobbit movie yet, but when I heard that Peter Jackson was planning to stretch it to two films (let alone three) I was dismayed - so I totally agree with you that it's too little material spread out too far.   Also The Hobbit as a book is a much lighter (some may say slighter) work than Lord of The Rings - it's a kid's book whereas LOTR does have a grander feel and a much more serious tone, which lends itself better to the epic stye of filmmaking.   3D I'm not keen on either, but it may be the way of the future in which case we're stuck with it.   Whether 48fps will catch on is an open question - from what has been said in various reviews it does seem as though in conjunction with HD digital filming it is possibly too revealing and too much like "reality TV" to work for the movies.   I know my clients appreciate the soft look I get with 25fps and shallow DOF - this may just be what we are all used to seeing over the last 90 years of watching films shot that way, but although 48fps may make action sequences look clearer I feel the trade-off of losing the slightly dreamlike quality of 24fps may not be worth it.   Perhaps the answer is for action movies to be shot in 48p and everything else in 24?