I would not mind having that debate. On another forum, a poster was actually happy to see "wet stuff" referring to the Orc blood on Orkrist making it more realistic. I'm sitting there going, I don't need to see that in order to know that this is a rather violent film.

I agree with BDA in regards to the child-like tone of the film as to the physics, the over-the-top cartoonish actions that he listed. Unfortunately, PJ tried to blend such elements in to a progressively darker film, as Doc mentioned, with the grittier aspects of a war, and beheadings, and torture and madmen and the like. It is, in my opinion, a ridiculous blend that waters down both elements to the point that it is hard to take the film seriously.

Compare that to LotR, which was under $300 million, and it's rather abundantly clear where a lot of the problem came from.

Yes, I'm looking forward to a good fan edit once all the Extended Editions are out in November and you have about 8 hours of raw material to cull down to about 3-4 hours. The action sequences can be trimmed, a lot of the Kili love subplot, Stephen Fry's assistant in BOTFA, most of the stupid dwarf antics, etc. There might even be a decent movie there for a dedicated editor to extract. Whether it's worth anyone's time - probably several weeks' worth of work...

Ok, so Hobbit 3 EE is 'available'. It's definitely a lot more violent, and the battle scenes are the most expanded element of the film (understandable given the nature of this one).

There's no fix for the Ravenhill scenes (obviously), and these are still probably the weakest parts of the film (it's needlessly convoluted and the whole 'Kili and Fili are sent ahead to investigate' stuff makes no sense).

It's also filled with humour that's a whole lot funnier than 99% of the Alfrid stuff. I'm amazed at how out of place his scenes are. He's Jar Jar Binks level awful in this.

There are a couple of scenes, including a bit with Legolas, which are absurdly ridiculous.

I'm looking forward to getting the bluray and listening to the commentary.

Just ploughing through the 11 hours of extras on the blu-ray EE set. Amazing bonus features, as always. Peter Jackson's team does the best DVD extras by far, ever since LOTR. Must be 70 hours worth in total for the two trilogies. Some parts are warts 'n all. Some are just contrived "funny" events that happened on set, rather than a technical lecture on behind-the-scenes. Very watchable. The craft of Weta Workshop is extraordinary. They burned through more money that you didn't see on screen than the entire budgets of other tentpole movies.

The commentary is alright - but I get the sense both Jackson and Boyens are happy to see the last of Middle Earth. Jackson doesn't seen very knowledgeable on the Tolkien mythology despite being immersed in the universe for 15 years. It's not that informative and repeats material already in the extensive Appendices.

Now waiting for some fan commentaries of the EE Hobbit movies (wish it was a FIYH marathon) and a fan edit.