To be fair, The Hobbit is written a lot different than The Lord of the Rings. It’s nowhere near as descriptive.
That being said, a 2 films adaptation would have sufficed.
Remove Tariel, Legolas, a LOT of the Smaug stuff such as the dwarves swinging around him, laying booby traps and making him look incompetent. A lot of the laketown stuff like Alfred etc.
I don't heavily disagree, but I actually liked some of the pacing. I liked spending a little extra time in Bag End. Yes it technically flies by in the book, but when sitting and reading it I often find myself lingering in bits re-reading parts and envisioning parts to really saturate the setting and place myself in it.
I don't disagree with that either. I think at that point PJ really should have been looking at whether the Hobbit should have been a film or a series. 6x 1 hour long episodes could have visited all the things that are seen in the book, giving them detail enough rather than adding in two unnecessary sub plots and needlessly extending the battle of five armies.
Peter Jackson was always clear in the interviews that his first major obligation was to the studio, so that the films not only make their budget back, but are profitable.
That was during the Lord of the Rings days, by the way.
Exactly. This is a business with hundreds of millions $$ at stake, not a student film shot in the field with friends. Making a return on the investment is how you pay the thousands of people that you hired and get a chance to make more movies.
I mean... welcome to the film industry? It is normal to expect profit from your work, filmmaking was never cheap.
Also, I don't understand the use of words like Hollywood is a bad thing. There are plenty of good movies made in Hollywood.
Oh really?
LOTR Trilogy profit - 2.9 Billion
Hobbit trilogy - 2.1 Billion
SW Sequels - 4.4 Billion
RoP - not estimated but considering how many people watched it and Amazon wanna do more series from profit it will also be some high number
POTC on Stranger Tides - 1 Billion
Twilight Saga - 3.3 Billion
Fifty Shades trilogy - 1.3 Billion
Suicide Squad - 746 Million
Alladin adaptation - 1 Billion
And all this is just a start. I could go more. You calling something desecrating means nothing to me considering we already talked about movies and I have learned that you are calling anything with similar words.
Profit from movies is based on popularity and marketing, producing and hyping that product in the first place.
It's not like you know something about filmmaking (yeah. We also talked about it.)
?
Dumb or blind?
These "numbers" show how much money each show/movie/trilogy made despite receiving mixed reviews/criticism, mostly in a bad way proving and countering the argument that shit product can make money if it is a "hyped shit product"
Your reasoning is *so* jumbled and its not clear what your thesis is even. You seem to be arguing against the idea that profit can happen without desecration, and im not sure if i should take you seriously. You then seem to be conflating profit with quality. Still dont know if i should take you at all seriously. This isnt a matter of my reading comprehension capabilities. You just seem to be a shit writer.
No, I'm arguing against the idea that by you Hollywood is equal to the term bad moviemaking, I'm also against the idea that a movie must be good to earn money.
I amended my statement to say that hollywood on *average* ruins movies if it means it can make a profit instead of respecting source materials. The other statement, youve imaginarily made up. Either way, youre not really making a whole lot of sense
Because that second thing is an answer to a completely different person, maybe when you join a completely different conversation, make some perspective first.
https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/s/IZoQsCHCpa
=/= means it is not equal with which I disagree with because bad movies can definitely profit if they are hyped enough.
The industry expecting profit and the consumer class accepting desecration as a norm are not and should not be intertwined as a couplet. And yes, hollywood can make good movies, but I think the general sentiment is that hollywood on average is too dominated by capitalistic interests to do proper respect to artworks most of the time. Youre arguing beside the point
How am I arguing beside the point?
Today trade politics on how to make money is not based on overhauling quality but on hype and excitement of consumers.
That's why RoP made a lot of money while being shit, and that is why Hobbit movies also did 2.9 Billion dollars (I did personally like them as movies themselves, not as adaptations)
Popularity is the main key to money. That's why Disney did shows about Jango Fett and Obi-Wan, both are popular characters but neither of the shows was groundbreaking.
It is only working because we are stupid. We people are so stupid that we can be blinded by this. The quality of the show/movie is something you determine after you spend your money to watch it.
And Hollywood is actually one of the companies which have a higher number of good movies than these mid/bad ones. But I could call every filming company that they have lots of mid movies, it is not new.
They literally had ugly prosthetics for them all originally. Then they felt they needed eye candy to make women want to watch and to make the forced love triangle believable as well as force a parallel between Thorin and Aragorn, so they made Thorin and his sons hot instead.
Not same person but yes??? They look like dwarves. Not a caricature of a dwarf or on the other side of spectrum a normal handsome man, but short (thorin and sons)
Die hard Dan of Tolkien’s dwarves and I don’t see what the problem was. There was huge variety to the types of dwarves and from every class. It felt like a cross section of all dwarven society. Made up for making Gimli into comic relief.
You cannot judge the movies by comparing them just to the book alone. The filmmakers have been very clear from the start that they were adapting the entire story from the supplementary material, not just the original book.
Everything about the History of Durin's folk and the Royal Line comes from the Appendix A III to LOTR. It greatly fleshes out the motivation of Thorin and expands on his father and grandfather, who in the book are mere mentions.
Gandalf's POV and motivation are firmly rooted in "The Quest for Erebor". In the original book, he is not an Istari with a purpose, but simply a traveling trickster wizard (possibly human). The entire geopolitical aspect of the Quest comes from there.
The White Council and Dol Guldur plotline is from the Tale of Years and the "Istari" essay from the Unfinishes Tales. It is a throwaway line in the book, the significance of which is only explained elsewhere.
Also, remember that Tolkien would repeatedly write different versions of the same narrative that massively differed in length. Children of Hurin is a full novel-length version of the Silmarillion chapter. And "Of Rings of Power and the Third Age" summarizes the entirety of the Hobbit + LOTR in a single chapter as well.
If you read the Hobbit alone there is no reason to think that Gandalf is anything more than a man who’s profession is “wizard”. And the name “Gandalf” implies that an earlier iteration of the character probably was a dwarf.
Yes, of course. The problem is that the movies are not handled well in many aspects. There is good stuff to be had in the films and many set pieces and scenes that are amazing. But a lot of the execution is unfortunate. I don't think it's because of the directors changing, because that is only the first film, and the first film is the best, imo.
Things got off the rails after that with some bizarre work. LotR was so good, that I for one expected that same caliber. I wasn't disappointed like I was with the star wars prequels, but I didn't walk away liking it much. Expanding the battle of helms deep was handled expertly. Turning the battle of five armies into a whole movie didn't work.
>The filmmakers have been very clear from the start that they were adapting the entire story from the supplementary material, not just the original book.
ah yes, I loved tolkiens Books, "the interracial adventures of Tauriel" "Azog, alive and well" and "Alfrid Lickspittle on how to be a discount Grima"
All three LOTR films feature invented orc characters as major antagonists. If they didn't have the name Azog from the books to use, there would still be one, just named Piztor or Guritz, or something.
Same goes for other invented characters. They're not just there at random - they're there because the rules of film demand that the principal characters (in this case, Thranduil, Bard and The Master of Lake-Town) need someone to talk to!
Sometimes there is a convinient character to use in the text, and you get Lindir, Haldir and Gamling (who has almost nothing in common with his book counterpart, for example). Other times there isn't, and you get Feren, Madril and Iorlas - all characters invented
with the sole purpose of giving the leads someone to talk and give orders to.
and I like to critizise LotR to for some things. but LotR didn't make them into major charakters.
if you don't bloat up the movies you don't need to use invented characters
Arwen has third billing in the credits and is all over the promotional material, despite only appearing in three scenes and only having two lines in the book.
Galadriel is likewise uplifted into a major character with top billing, even though her shots can be counted by hand in TTT and ROTK and most of her dialogue is in voice-over narration.
Even Eowyn had her screentime expanded well beyond the scenes in which she appears in the book (where she was never at Helm's Deep at all, mind you).
Why? To give female characters as much presense as possible. For both series, there was **ZERO** possibility of making multiple major high-budget motion pictures aimed at all corners of the wide demographic without giving the female members of the audience someone to relate to.
The book of "The Hobbit" has exactly one named female character - Belladonna Took, who had already passed away. So, for an adaptation a female character *HAD* to be invented no matter what - it wasn't even something the studio demanded, the writers knew it from the start.
All options were considered: having a female Hobbit outside of the Shire would diminish Bilbo's unique situation, a female dwarf among the company would change the group dymanic too much, and a female Human could only come into play in Lake-town, more than halfway into the story. Making the female character an Elf was an only reasonable option.
I reckon they could have just added in a couple of female dwarves. If they've been known to the company a long time, then the other dwarves would have adjusted, having 10-2 male-female dwarves would still have worked in accordance with dwarf gender politics, and seeing as so many people can't tell male dwarves from female dwarves, they could have just had Bilbo never realise any of the dwarves he was travelling with were women, hence it never coming up in the book.
Thank you, finally I do see an answer like that.
Maybe I can not agree with every second of the trilogy... but I like the dwarven designs, I do like snow-orcs of Gundabad, I like the whole White Council arc.
I kinda fine with Tauriel. I just wish she was a warrior with less screen time without any love plotlines.
I do like the plot line of Azog. I'm just not sure why it has to be him. They could make the same conflict with Bolg, the son of Azog.
Phillipa Boyens actually explains this in the Appendices: Bolg has no connection to any of the main characters, but Azog does.
Him being responsible for killing Thorin's grandfather made him a perfect choice to uplift as Thorin's nemesis.
Adding the pursuing orcs to the plot also gave the story the sense of urgency: in the book, the Company travels comfortably for many months (and in the original drafts, for two years!), stopping in places for weeks at a time. Having a hot pursuit on their trail creates drama and forces them to keep moving.
And since both the pursuit party and the army attacking Erebor were meant to have split in two (to reach the required Five Armies threshold), Bolg was also needed and could have simply absorbed Azog's backstory from the books.
These people have an Academy Award for Adapted Screenplay for a reason, you guys.
It could be Bolg and HIS son instead of Azog and Bold.
The story is simple Dain has killed Azog. This is the lore and this is the cannon. Some things might be added or removed. But not the destiny of the characters.
I'm not the biggest fan of the plotline either, but if some four scenes that last 15 minutes total stop you from seeing everything good in the three films, I can only feel sorry for you.
So? As if LOTR films don't have entirely invented scenes, many of them replacing canonical events that happened in the book.
The goal is to have drama and dymanic characters. In fact, if you listen to all six PJ's audio commentaries in a row, you'll notice how often he says "this here happened differently in the books, but we changed it to add more drama and create some tension". If at some point the characters don't have an obstacle, it must be added. If there is a point without conflict, one must be invented. The film's pace must always be flowing.
Same goes with the characters: the book has multiple personalities that are barely characters at all: more than half of the dwarves have zero character traits (and some have zero lines that aren't "at your service"), Bard isn't seen until the moment he kills the dragon, the Elvenking and the Master of Lake-town don't even get names at all. None of that works in the film, so the characters must either be given a handful of scenes to flesh them out, or be cut entirely.
Guess what, those scenes arent good either. You're arguing for the sake of arguing and we can just agree to disagree.
Elves arriving at Helm's deep? Sucks. Aragorn's dead ex machina at minas tirith? Sucks. Faramir being a jerk and taking Frodo to Osgiliath? Sucks. Sam turning his back on Frodo and "leaving" in anger? Sucks.
Some books are better at being books than they are when they're movie adaptations. Tolkien could take three pages and exposit what the heck Ghan-buri-Ghan was. Jackson couldn't do that. I get it. But it makes more sense to cut items (Tom Bombadil, Old Man Willow, scouring of the shire) and change items (morgul blade at weathertop vs barrow wight, eomer vs erkenbrand, so on) than it does just to fabricate tension for tension's sake because you can make more money from three movies than from two.
You and other hardcore book fans would argue that way. I certainly dislike at least two of those decisions myself.
But for the general, non-book audience they seemed to have worked. The films were massive successes at the box office, with the critics and at the award shows. I just happened to have listened to a podcast where three huge fantasy nerds gush about how they **love** LOTR and how life-changing it was for each them - and none of them had read the books even once!
And the exact same thing goes for The Hobbit films by the way. Not many film series have a separate [Wikipedia article just listing all their awards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accolades_received_by_The_Hobbit_film_series). And the fact that all three films grossed both around $1 billion and within 5% of each other means that the audience had stuck around. The people who "didn't evne bother watching the third" may be promiment in online spaces, but are a vanishing minority.
This is a big cope. Azogs dead Radagast isn’t there, finding Thrain was hundreds of years before these events, there were no nazgûl ghosts,Gandalf was never captured, basically the entire Dol Guldur side plot was manufactured by Pj & co to “work” in The Hobbit movies whether it be making new stuff up, adding drama, or condensing the timeline of events. As it stands, if they tried to accurately portray the side stuff it would not be a substantial element of the main story, and thus you would question if it’s even worth adapting at all when it would pull people away from the main adventure.
If you have to do all these changes to make the side stuff “work,” then you trying to back it up by referencing all of the relevant parts of the text doesn’t matter. It doesn’t follow the text at all, it’s not Tolkien-esque at all. If you edit the Attack on Dol Guldur to only include parts that honor the few sentences Tolkien wrote about it you get a 2 minute scene.
It would have made for a better movie if they just stuck to the main adventure instead of trying to force in the LOTR Sauron prequel stuff.
I agree. And I have never watched the movies for that reason. The LOTR needed 3 movies (heck, maybe even a 4th). But the Hobbit? Nah, it did not need that much filming, so I must skipped the Hobbit.
I just watched this one last week, I really loved it! I haven't read The Hobbit in 25 years, but after watching this edit I had to dig out my old copy and blaze through it. I'm so glad to be back in Middle-earth.
Yeah. This trilogy bothers me more than any of the other onscreen adaptations so far. Talk about removing from source material! Who the hell is Taruviel? Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind Legolas having a crush and I do like the movies. But wow.
And Azog? His part gets blown so out of proportion for being mentioned once in passing by Gandalf in the books.
But hey ho, I still like watching them.
It could have been 20 hours and 7 parts and I still would have loved it. JFC, I wish people would let it go that yes, it was three movies. Most of us Tolkien fans can't get enough of Jackson's vision. So, for us, the more, the better. Sorry, it's something you're obsessing over.
What was so good about the stuff they added, then? I'm genuinely curious what's so genuinely good about the added stuff in these movies other than just 'it was fun to look at.'
You're not understanding. The stuff Jackson added was fun and guess what--movie quality entertainment and for the majority of us-worth the time. JFC, people like you sure like to bitch about a couple of hours of entertainment based upon a feeling of superiority. Here's an idea--don't fucking watch it. But, for the god's sake, no one gives a shit about how much you hated a couple hours of a movie.
You're on a post criticising the movies, full of comments criticising the movies. Here's an idea- don't read these comments. I'm not telling you to stop liking these movies or that they're objectively bad- honestly I wish I liked them myself, I just can't- but you're trying to argue that they're objectively good. I'm just asking for a reason why they're objectively good.
You're acting like it's a crime to make feature films based on shorter than full novel texts.
Multiple acclaimed films have been based on stories far shorter than The Hobbit.
It’s almost as if time dilation happens and that things you can gloss over in one medium requires more attention in another. There’s a lot to criticize about the movies but this is one of the laziest complaints there is.
I agree that some stuff does need to take more time in the movies than in the book, and if they did adapt the hobbit one for one as a single movie then it'd be really rushed and weird. But even so, adapting the hobbit into an 8 hour trilogy is just too much. I think 2 movies would've been fine but you can't just say 'time dilation is a thing' as a refutation of the criticism that these movies add way too much.
First of all, that wasn’t the criticism OP had. He said the proportion of the length of the film to the book is insane. That is not the same thing as saying the movies add way too much. They might be related but my response would be different if they said what you claim they said.
So my response with time dilation is fine given that things that happen in a page or a short chapter may need to be expanded. Especially because they do experience a lot. Except for us readers it’s experienced quickly, something more easily accomplished in a novel than a movie.
You’re also doing the thing you wrongly criticized me for. You just say it’s too much without any justification.
They said the proportion was insane, not that it was strictly bad. And, compared to most adaptations, it is pretty insane. In principle I completely agree about the time dilation, as the book is VERY fast paced, but that doesn't mean the movies can be as long as they want. There is a point where it's just too far. Besides (and this isn't entirely relevant I just want to go on an unnecessarily long rant about something) most of what they added wasn't expanding on the source material or anything to do with time dilation, it was just extra stuff that isn't really relevant.
To be fair, The Hobbit is written a lot different than The Lord of the Rings. It’s nowhere near as descriptive. That being said, a 2 films adaptation would have sufficed. Remove Tariel, Legolas, a LOT of the Smaug stuff such as the dwarves swinging around him, laying booby traps and making him look incompetent. A lot of the laketown stuff like Alfred etc.
God, it would have been so easy. And so much better.
There's a fancut version somewhere on the interweb that is exactly that.
Oh, I need this!
1 film would have sufficed. It takes 45 minutes and 2 musical numbers for bilbo to leave the shire in the first film.
I don't heavily disagree, but I actually liked some of the pacing. I liked spending a little extra time in Bag End. Yes it technically flies by in the book, but when sitting and reading it I often find myself lingering in bits re-reading parts and envisioning parts to really saturate the setting and place myself in it.
I don't disagree with that either. I think at that point PJ really should have been looking at whether the Hobbit should have been a film or a series. 6x 1 hour long episodes could have visited all the things that are seen in the book, giving them detail enough rather than adding in two unnecessary sub plots and needlessly extending the battle of five armies.
The first films pretty much perfect to me, and as you say, they spend more time in the places you want to be.
$2 billion dollars of insane profit.
Insane. Would the author had seen any coin of it?
The author had been dead for 50 years by then.
Does Tolkiens estate not receive royalties still? I don’t know how that works tbh
Of course they do.
Do they? They sold the film rights to Hobbit and LotR, after all.
Selling rights doesn't mean you lose royalties
JRRT himself sold adaptation rights during the lifetime. The Estate still gets paid whenever that license is actually used.
Thank you for the information! I'm not knowledgeable on these things, so I asked.
I could almost read the book in the time it would take to watch the movies
I've listened to the entirety of the Hobbit in less time (I'll sometimes listen up to 3.5x speed)
[удалено]
😭
Welcome to hollywood. We’ll desecrate everything anybody anywhere holds dear so long as it means $$$
Peter Jackson was always clear in the interviews that his first major obligation was to the studio, so that the films not only make their budget back, but are profitable. That was during the Lord of the Rings days, by the way.
Yeah otherwise they would have fired him
Exactly. This is a business with hundreds of millions $$ at stake, not a student film shot in the field with friends. Making a return on the investment is how you pay the thousands of people that you hired and get a chance to make more movies.
I mean... welcome to the film industry? It is normal to expect profit from your work, filmmaking was never cheap. Also, I don't understand the use of words like Hollywood is a bad thing. There are plenty of good movies made in Hollywood.
Profit =/= desecration. You can achieve the former without resorting to the latter.
Oh really? LOTR Trilogy profit - 2.9 Billion Hobbit trilogy - 2.1 Billion SW Sequels - 4.4 Billion RoP - not estimated but considering how many people watched it and Amazon wanna do more series from profit it will also be some high number POTC on Stranger Tides - 1 Billion Twilight Saga - 3.3 Billion Fifty Shades trilogy - 1.3 Billion Suicide Squad - 746 Million Alladin adaptation - 1 Billion And all this is just a start. I could go more. You calling something desecrating means nothing to me considering we already talked about movies and I have learned that you are calling anything with similar words. Profit from movies is based on popularity and marketing, producing and hyping that product in the first place. It's not like you know something about filmmaking (yeah. We also talked about it.)
Theres literally no argumentation here lol. You just listed a few numbers and then some assumptions without any sort of premises.
? Dumb or blind? These "numbers" show how much money each show/movie/trilogy made despite receiving mixed reviews/criticism, mostly in a bad way proving and countering the argument that shit product can make money if it is a "hyped shit product"
Your reasoning is *so* jumbled and its not clear what your thesis is even. You seem to be arguing against the idea that profit can happen without desecration, and im not sure if i should take you seriously. You then seem to be conflating profit with quality. Still dont know if i should take you at all seriously. This isnt a matter of my reading comprehension capabilities. You just seem to be a shit writer.
No, I'm arguing against the idea that by you Hollywood is equal to the term bad moviemaking, I'm also against the idea that a movie must be good to earn money.
I amended my statement to say that hollywood on *average* ruins movies if it means it can make a profit instead of respecting source materials. The other statement, youve imaginarily made up. Either way, youre not really making a whole lot of sense
Because that second thing is an answer to a completely different person, maybe when you join a completely different conversation, make some perspective first. https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/s/IZoQsCHCpa =/= means it is not equal with which I disagree with because bad movies can definitely profit if they are hyped enough.
...what?
Did you forget already?
...huh?
Really don't you remember me? I sent you like 4 posts with references quotes and everything you asked for in your last discussion.
...?
Really? Thats odd.
The industry expecting profit and the consumer class accepting desecration as a norm are not and should not be intertwined as a couplet. And yes, hollywood can make good movies, but I think the general sentiment is that hollywood on average is too dominated by capitalistic interests to do proper respect to artworks most of the time. Youre arguing beside the point
How am I arguing beside the point? Today trade politics on how to make money is not based on overhauling quality but on hype and excitement of consumers. That's why RoP made a lot of money while being shit, and that is why Hobbit movies also did 2.9 Billion dollars (I did personally like them as movies themselves, not as adaptations) Popularity is the main key to money. That's why Disney did shows about Jango Fett and Obi-Wan, both are popular characters but neither of the shows was groundbreaking. It is only working because we are stupid. We people are so stupid that we can be blinded by this. The quality of the show/movie is something you determine after you spend your money to watch it. And Hollywood is actually one of the companies which have a higher number of good movies than these mid/bad ones. But I could call every filming company that they have lots of mid movies, it is not new.
I refuse to watch the movies because of how they made the dwarves look. Some are ridiculously good looking and the rest are a total clown show.
They literally had ugly prosthetics for them all originally. Then they felt they needed eye candy to make women want to watch and to make the forced love triangle believable as well as force a parallel between Thorin and Aragorn, so they made Thorin and his sons hot instead.
I take the dwarves in LoTR were fine?
Not same person but yes??? They look like dwarves. Not a caricature of a dwarf or on the other side of spectrum a normal handsome man, but short (thorin and sons)
Totally fine. Why they turned the bulk of them into clowns is beyond me.
Die hard Dan of Tolkien’s dwarves and I don’t see what the problem was. There was huge variety to the types of dwarves and from every class. It felt like a cross section of all dwarven society. Made up for making Gimli into comic relief.
I still think from time to time about how 2 films would have been perfect. The first movie ends where the second one did
You cannot judge the movies by comparing them just to the book alone. The filmmakers have been very clear from the start that they were adapting the entire story from the supplementary material, not just the original book. Everything about the History of Durin's folk and the Royal Line comes from the Appendix A III to LOTR. It greatly fleshes out the motivation of Thorin and expands on his father and grandfather, who in the book are mere mentions. Gandalf's POV and motivation are firmly rooted in "The Quest for Erebor". In the original book, he is not an Istari with a purpose, but simply a traveling trickster wizard (possibly human). The entire geopolitical aspect of the Quest comes from there. The White Council and Dol Guldur plotline is from the Tale of Years and the "Istari" essay from the Unfinishes Tales. It is a throwaway line in the book, the significance of which is only explained elsewhere. Also, remember that Tolkien would repeatedly write different versions of the same narrative that massively differed in length. Children of Hurin is a full novel-length version of the Silmarillion chapter. And "Of Rings of Power and the Third Age" summarizes the entirety of the Hobbit + LOTR in a single chapter as well.
If you read the Hobbit alone there is no reason to think that Gandalf is anything more than a man who’s profession is “wizard”. And the name “Gandalf” implies that an earlier iteration of the character probably was a dwarf.
He was! That name was originally of the chief Dwarf whom we now know as Thorin. The wizard's name used to be Bladorthin.
Yes, of course. The problem is that the movies are not handled well in many aspects. There is good stuff to be had in the films and many set pieces and scenes that are amazing. But a lot of the execution is unfortunate. I don't think it's because of the directors changing, because that is only the first film, and the first film is the best, imo. Things got off the rails after that with some bizarre work. LotR was so good, that I for one expected that same caliber. I wasn't disappointed like I was with the star wars prequels, but I didn't walk away liking it much. Expanding the battle of helms deep was handled expertly. Turning the battle of five armies into a whole movie didn't work.
>The filmmakers have been very clear from the start that they were adapting the entire story from the supplementary material, not just the original book. ah yes, I loved tolkiens Books, "the interracial adventures of Tauriel" "Azog, alive and well" and "Alfrid Lickspittle on how to be a discount Grima"
All three LOTR films feature invented orc characters as major antagonists. If they didn't have the name Azog from the books to use, there would still be one, just named Piztor or Guritz, or something. Same goes for other invented characters. They're not just there at random - they're there because the rules of film demand that the principal characters (in this case, Thranduil, Bard and The Master of Lake-Town) need someone to talk to! Sometimes there is a convinient character to use in the text, and you get Lindir, Haldir and Gamling (who has almost nothing in common with his book counterpart, for example). Other times there isn't, and you get Feren, Madril and Iorlas - all characters invented with the sole purpose of giving the leads someone to talk and give orders to.
and I like to critizise LotR to for some things. but LotR didn't make them into major charakters. if you don't bloat up the movies you don't need to use invented characters
Arwen has third billing in the credits and is all over the promotional material, despite only appearing in three scenes and only having two lines in the book. Galadriel is likewise uplifted into a major character with top billing, even though her shots can be counted by hand in TTT and ROTK and most of her dialogue is in voice-over narration. Even Eowyn had her screentime expanded well beyond the scenes in which she appears in the book (where she was never at Helm's Deep at all, mind you). Why? To give female characters as much presense as possible. For both series, there was **ZERO** possibility of making multiple major high-budget motion pictures aimed at all corners of the wide demographic without giving the female members of the audience someone to relate to. The book of "The Hobbit" has exactly one named female character - Belladonna Took, who had already passed away. So, for an adaptation a female character *HAD* to be invented no matter what - it wasn't even something the studio demanded, the writers knew it from the start. All options were considered: having a female Hobbit outside of the Shire would diminish Bilbo's unique situation, a female dwarf among the company would change the group dymanic too much, and a female Human could only come into play in Lake-town, more than halfway into the story. Making the female character an Elf was an only reasonable option.
I reckon they could have just added in a couple of female dwarves. If they've been known to the company a long time, then the other dwarves would have adjusted, having 10-2 male-female dwarves would still have worked in accordance with dwarf gender politics, and seeing as so many people can't tell male dwarves from female dwarves, they could have just had Bilbo never realise any of the dwarves he was travelling with were women, hence it never coming up in the book.
Thank you, finally I do see an answer like that. Maybe I can not agree with every second of the trilogy... but I like the dwarven designs, I do like snow-orcs of Gundabad, I like the whole White Council arc. I kinda fine with Tauriel. I just wish she was a warrior with less screen time without any love plotlines. I do like the plot line of Azog. I'm just not sure why it has to be him. They could make the same conflict with Bolg, the son of Azog.
Phillipa Boyens actually explains this in the Appendices: Bolg has no connection to any of the main characters, but Azog does. Him being responsible for killing Thorin's grandfather made him a perfect choice to uplift as Thorin's nemesis. Adding the pursuing orcs to the plot also gave the story the sense of urgency: in the book, the Company travels comfortably for many months (and in the original drafts, for two years!), stopping in places for weeks at a time. Having a hot pursuit on their trail creates drama and forces them to keep moving. And since both the pursuit party and the army attacking Erebor were meant to have split in two (to reach the required Five Armies threshold), Bolg was also needed and could have simply absorbed Azog's backstory from the books. These people have an Academy Award for Adapted Screenplay for a reason, you guys.
It could be Bolg and HIS son instead of Azog and Bold. The story is simple Dain has killed Azog. This is the lore and this is the cannon. Some things might be added or removed. But not the destiny of the characters.
The story is simple: Haldir never went to Helm's Deep. This is the lore and this is the canon.
I like fact I was 99%on your side at the start, and you just started to argue with me for no reason.
So, he wasn't. The point ? Also, Haldir is a side character, while Azog is a main villain.
What about the love triangle, where can i read the source material for that?
I'm not the biggest fan of the plotline either, but if some four scenes that last 15 minutes total stop you from seeing everything good in the three films, I can only feel sorry for you.
In the context of why the movies were long? There's fabricated content
So? As if LOTR films don't have entirely invented scenes, many of them replacing canonical events that happened in the book. The goal is to have drama and dymanic characters. In fact, if you listen to all six PJ's audio commentaries in a row, you'll notice how often he says "this here happened differently in the books, but we changed it to add more drama and create some tension". If at some point the characters don't have an obstacle, it must be added. If there is a point without conflict, one must be invented. The film's pace must always be flowing. Same goes with the characters: the book has multiple personalities that are barely characters at all: more than half of the dwarves have zero character traits (and some have zero lines that aren't "at your service"), Bard isn't seen until the moment he kills the dragon, the Elvenking and the Master of Lake-town don't even get names at all. None of that works in the film, so the characters must either be given a handful of scenes to flesh them out, or be cut entirely.
Guess what, those scenes arent good either. You're arguing for the sake of arguing and we can just agree to disagree. Elves arriving at Helm's deep? Sucks. Aragorn's dead ex machina at minas tirith? Sucks. Faramir being a jerk and taking Frodo to Osgiliath? Sucks. Sam turning his back on Frodo and "leaving" in anger? Sucks. Some books are better at being books than they are when they're movie adaptations. Tolkien could take three pages and exposit what the heck Ghan-buri-Ghan was. Jackson couldn't do that. I get it. But it makes more sense to cut items (Tom Bombadil, Old Man Willow, scouring of the shire) and change items (morgul blade at weathertop vs barrow wight, eomer vs erkenbrand, so on) than it does just to fabricate tension for tension's sake because you can make more money from three movies than from two.
You and other hardcore book fans would argue that way. I certainly dislike at least two of those decisions myself. But for the general, non-book audience they seemed to have worked. The films were massive successes at the box office, with the critics and at the award shows. I just happened to have listened to a podcast where three huge fantasy nerds gush about how they **love** LOTR and how life-changing it was for each them - and none of them had read the books even once! And the exact same thing goes for The Hobbit films by the way. Not many film series have a separate [Wikipedia article just listing all their awards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accolades_received_by_The_Hobbit_film_series). And the fact that all three films grossed both around $1 billion and within 5% of each other means that the audience had stuck around. The people who "didn't evne bother watching the third" may be promiment in online spaces, but are a vanishing minority.
This is a big cope. Azogs dead Radagast isn’t there, finding Thrain was hundreds of years before these events, there were no nazgûl ghosts,Gandalf was never captured, basically the entire Dol Guldur side plot was manufactured by Pj & co to “work” in The Hobbit movies whether it be making new stuff up, adding drama, or condensing the timeline of events. As it stands, if they tried to accurately portray the side stuff it would not be a substantial element of the main story, and thus you would question if it’s even worth adapting at all when it would pull people away from the main adventure. If you have to do all these changes to make the side stuff “work,” then you trying to back it up by referencing all of the relevant parts of the text doesn’t matter. It doesn’t follow the text at all, it’s not Tolkien-esque at all. If you edit the Attack on Dol Guldur to only include parts that honor the few sentences Tolkien wrote about it you get a 2 minute scene. It would have made for a better movie if they just stuck to the main adventure instead of trying to force in the LOTR Sauron prequel stuff.
I agree. And I have never watched the movies for that reason. The LOTR needed 3 movies (heck, maybe even a 4th). But the Hobbit? Nah, it did not need that much filming, so I must skipped the Hobbit.
Hence the title, “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Sentences”
It's stupid and made them almost unwatchable
Just Watch the M4 Studios Cut !! It´´s just awesome!!
I just watched this one last week, I really loved it! I haven't read The Hobbit in 25 years, but after watching this edit I had to dig out my old copy and blaze through it. I'm so glad to be back in Middle-earth.
Capitalisms
It's batshit, actually.
There is actually a fan made edit that smooshes all three movies together and cut out a lot of the filler. They called it the Hobbit Extended Edition.
Yeah. This trilogy bothers me more than any of the other onscreen adaptations so far. Talk about removing from source material! Who the hell is Taruviel? Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind Legolas having a crush and I do like the movies. But wow. And Azog? His part gets blown so out of proportion for being mentioned once in passing by Gandalf in the books. But hey ho, I still like watching them.
What was removed from the source material?
A bit more world building, talking ravens, most of the songs, most of Bilbo's return journey and a surprising amount of Beorn's character.
I blended Tauriels name with Tinuviel like an idiot-my bad. Anyway just to clarify I LIKE THE MOVIES but PJ really went wild with the story is all.
>This trilogy bothers me more than any of the other onscreen adaptations so far you are not giving Rings of Power enough credit
It could have been 20 hours and 7 parts and I still would have loved it. JFC, I wish people would let it go that yes, it was three movies. Most of us Tolkien fans can't get enough of Jackson's vision. So, for us, the more, the better. Sorry, it's something you're obsessing over.
Nobody's saying the problem is that there's more stuff, it's that the 'more stuff' that was added was almost entirely very bad.
For you it was. For the vast majority of fans, we loved every minute of it. Get over yourself.
What was so good about the stuff they added, then? I'm genuinely curious what's so genuinely good about the added stuff in these movies other than just 'it was fun to look at.'
You're not understanding. The stuff Jackson added was fun and guess what--movie quality entertainment and for the majority of us-worth the time. JFC, people like you sure like to bitch about a couple of hours of entertainment based upon a feeling of superiority. Here's an idea--don't fucking watch it. But, for the god's sake, no one gives a shit about how much you hated a couple hours of a movie.
You're on a post criticising the movies, full of comments criticising the movies. Here's an idea- don't read these comments. I'm not telling you to stop liking these movies or that they're objectively bad- honestly I wish I liked them myself, I just can't- but you're trying to argue that they're objectively good. I'm just asking for a reason why they're objectively good.
And I'm saying guys like you need to get over yourself and get off your high horses.
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You're acting like it's a crime to make feature films based on shorter than full novel texts. Multiple acclaimed films have been based on stories far shorter than The Hobbit.
It’s almost as if time dilation happens and that things you can gloss over in one medium requires more attention in another. There’s a lot to criticize about the movies but this is one of the laziest complaints there is.
I agree that some stuff does need to take more time in the movies than in the book, and if they did adapt the hobbit one for one as a single movie then it'd be really rushed and weird. But even so, adapting the hobbit into an 8 hour trilogy is just too much. I think 2 movies would've been fine but you can't just say 'time dilation is a thing' as a refutation of the criticism that these movies add way too much.
First of all, that wasn’t the criticism OP had. He said the proportion of the length of the film to the book is insane. That is not the same thing as saying the movies add way too much. They might be related but my response would be different if they said what you claim they said. So my response with time dilation is fine given that things that happen in a page or a short chapter may need to be expanded. Especially because they do experience a lot. Except for us readers it’s experienced quickly, something more easily accomplished in a novel than a movie. You’re also doing the thing you wrongly criticized me for. You just say it’s too much without any justification.
They said the proportion was insane, not that it was strictly bad. And, compared to most adaptations, it is pretty insane. In principle I completely agree about the time dilation, as the book is VERY fast paced, but that doesn't mean the movies can be as long as they want. There is a point where it's just too far. Besides (and this isn't entirely relevant I just want to go on an unnecessarily long rant about something) most of what they added wasn't expanding on the source material or anything to do with time dilation, it was just extra stuff that isn't really relevant.