LotR revisited – what Peter Jackson got right and what he didn't

[wolfie65Participant 1240xp 1]

The problem with The Hobbit is that it sucks rocks sideways.

The first film is vaguely acceptable IF -and that’s a BIG ‘if’ – you can see it as totally separate from the book original and just watch it as an entertaining fantasy action flick that just so happens to borrow – smash & grab seems like a more appropriate term – some elements from Tolkien’s story, but without any real commitment to actually telling said story.

The Hobbit as written by Tolkien is a children’s story, sort of a fairy tale, intended for intelligent children with a good attention span. It wasn’t intended as a prequel to LotR , as I’m sure everyone here knows. What PJ & Co. attempted to do, very obviously, was to basically re-shoot LotR, including, of course, the success of LotR. Which flopped ginormously. They could not have screwed this up any more if they tried.

Parts 2 & 3…..(hand me the bucket…thanks….guuaaarghh….sorry…better now….I think….no, wait……)

Since you mentioned the ‘love story’, whoever came up with the idea that an Elf girl could possibly ever be interested in a Dwarf guy quite obviously does not understand basic female nature at all. She’s constantly surrounded by handsome tall Elf guys and picks a Dwarf ? In no universe would she ever even have a nightmare about doing that .This is so blatantly an attempt to pander to a (largely non-existent) type of audience and most likely driven by someone at Warner Bros, part of an evil agenda better discussed somewhere other than this forum.

For those who want to watch The Hobbit on a screen, get a copy of the Rankin Bass cartoon version. It’s actually not bad, sticks pretty closely to the book and features the creepiest Gollum ever. The ‘riddles in the dark’ sequence could give even adults nightmares.

[grantinvanman 2205xp 0]

My favourite cringeworthy part of The Hobbit is the lava-shield-surfing! Like, hang ten, gnarly dwarf dudes!

[limburger 21744xp 0]

The Hobbit does have a ton material, but I’d argue that with a better focus on what it had to be they would not have over stretched some parts while reducing other key scenes to a fraction of the run time they needed.

And with that much material that silly romance angle only added more wasted runtime on things that didn’t move the plot along.

There’s a good reason why Tolkien only ever wrote the additional stuff as an appendix instead of making it part of the main story. Whoever wrote the scripts should have understood that part before even attempting to plug bits of that into the movies.

 

[bvandewalkerParticipant 2079xp 0]

Actually the Dwarf/Elf romance thing made sense. I mean all the handsome elf dudes would  probably reminded her  of her brother and she would not be the first girl to have a thing for short hairy men.

[onlyonepinman 18067xp 0]

@wolfie65 whilst it us true that the Hobbit wasn’t written as a prequel to the Lord of the Rings, the Lord of the Rings WAS written as a sequel to the Hobbit with the appendices really going to some detail of expanding the history of the world and linking the two together in the process.  So I do not think that it was entirely unreasonable to take that approach when making the Hobbit films.  Also, the certainly didn’t “flop”;  They made just under $3b combined on a total budget of around $750m.  Hardley what you would call a flop.

You haven’t really explained why the Hobbit “sucked rocks sideways” though.  Sure, you have given things you dislike about it, although again,  I completely disagree with your assessment of female “logic” dictating that an Elf would not find a Dwarf attractive.  If we assume female elves find the same things attractive as female humans, well you will find that to be a far more complicated (and, IMO interesting) subject than male attraction.  I recommend going talking to one perhaps.   However if we assume that the female elven attraction is based on different criteria to humans, then potentially anything goes.  But also, let’s not beat around the bush. Out of all of Dwarfs, only two of them were designed to look “attractive” our standards;  Kili and Thorin.  So Tauriel and her love interest were intentionally designed to be attractive by human standards in order to make that love story believable.  From my personal perspective,  it adds nothing to the overall story, but I also don’t think it takes anything away.  Then again I also accept that maybe that story arc wasn’t included for my benefit.

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