Anyone going to see this on the 13th? I also see something about a world premiere on the 2nd... Is the rest of the world getting this before those of us in the states?

I plan on going to see it, but... as much praise as I gave AUJ when it first came out, I really had very mixed feelings about that movie. It felt very stretched out, and Peter Jackson added a lot of melodrama, a few action sequences and a few characters that weren't in the books. I don't mind that he tried to give the dwarves individual personalities and I don't mind that he was adding Quest for Erebor stuff, but I really didn't like Azog. I don't think they needed a villain chasing them around, and even if they did, why didn't they use his son Bolg, seeing as he's still alive? He would even have more of a motive; dwarves killed his father (not specifically Thorin, as someone pointed out to me because I'd misremembered.) I could've also done without Bilbo's decision to leave and Thorin's antagonism and then turnaround of Bilbo; those just weren't developed enough or well written to me. They were total Forced PJ Conflicts! (...the internet is going to act like that's not a thing, but oh well; watch NChick's reviews of the LotR movies and you'll get it.) Also, friggen' Radagast... I don't hate his portrayal like a lot of people did, but I was also not thrilled with him. Especially since now there is no explanation for how Gandalf found the key and the map to the Lonely Mountain (not to mention what happened to Thrain. I suppose they could still cover that in the next movie! Or did they cover that in the extended edition? I'm not getting the damned extended editions of these films though.)

There was enough in the first movie that I liked-Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, the dude who plays Balin, the settings, the score, whenever Jackson directly used the source material-and promises of other things from the books-Beorn, the spiders, Smaug-to get me to go see this next one, but I have a foreboding feeling about it. Especially how heavily they're using Legolas and Fanfic Evangeline Lilly Elf Character in the previews. Speaking of fanfics, a lot of Peter Jackson's original material feels like fanfic writing to me (in case I didn't make that clear in the previous paragraph.) I get a feeling like this movie is not going to focus enough on Bilbo Baggins' journey for my tastes. We'll see though.