The Hobbit should have been 1 or 2 films?

[Ray McCarthy]

Is the final film a flop? Should it have been 15 minutes or 20 minutes max in the 2nd film?

So why didn’t Jackson just make one satisfying Hobbit film, as he initially planned? The reason, he says, is that he wanted all of his Middle Earth films to work together as a single, sprawling saga. Tolkien’s novel of The Hobbit was published 17 years before The Lord of the Rings, and it was a much shorter, sprightlier, more child-friendly yarn. But Jackson was keen that his Hobbit adaptation would serve as a prequel to his Rings trilogy, so he made sure that it had the same grave tone and grand scale, as well as introducing several of its key characters and conflicts. Looking at it that way, The Battle of the Five Armies is a success, because it stands as an ornate bridge between The Hobbit and the The Lord of the Rings. But as a stand-alone film, it’s not very compelling. And as an adaptation of Tolkien’s charming book, it’s a travesty.

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20141212-is-the-final-hobbit-film-a-flop

I'll watch it first on cheap DVD release before I decide.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

One film. Yes.

But we're going to see it - my 9 yo adores them and it's the highlight of her year. Maybe we just have a fixed idea of the story?...

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

OK, this is my personal opinion, and what would have pleased me:

I don't mind them slipping the White Council into the story and what Gandalf was doing when he wasn't with the dwarves and Bilbo ... in principle, it's a great idea ... but not the way they did it in the first two films, so in my opinion it would have been better without it. All the extra elf and Lake Town stuff they added to the second film, plus a lot of the fighting would have never been filmed if it were up to me. I have no idea what horrors await me in the third film, but at a guess, with the assault on the Necromancer, Smaug destroying Lake Town, and the Battle of Five Armies it must be battle after battle after battle. But the upside is that maybe they've invented something else I am going to hate, and that will at least have the virtue of creating some scenes between battles.

So, if they had developed the White Council/Necromancer storyline in what I would consider the right way, I think two films would have been about right. (Because with two films including a good version of the White Council storyline they would still have had to take out all the ridiculous filler if they were going to have room for the relevant parts that must now be in number three.)

Otherwise, without the White Council vs Sauron, one long film would have been sufficient.

For anyone who has seen the third film (it doesn't open here until Thursday), please, please tell me (using a spoiler tag) that Kili doesn't die defending Tauriel instead of Thorin. I think I see that being set up, but I hope I am wrong!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

It's a personal opinion that sounds sensible. Pity you aren't in charge of Halmi or Jackson.

 

[Zoe Mackay]

I think one film would either have been very long, or felt very compressed. Two was probably the sweet spot (the faithful BBC Radio adaptation ran four hours long, which sounds about right, and too long for one film). Three is right out.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

But there was no way, after LOTR, that Jackson and his collaborators were going to do a film that was only two hours long, let alone two of them. So it was either going to be two long films with lots of added material, or one very long film without quite so many battle sequences added (it would be too much to hope for that they wouldn't add any).

 

[Foxbat]

They're going deeper than the dwarves in Moriah as they mine the hell out of this franchise.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

When I watched the first LOTR film I was highly disappointed because so much had been left out. I still think that could have stretched beyond three films in order to include Tom Bombadil etc and it could have lost some of the smoochy Arwen/Aragorn moments too. Having said that I love the films now and re watch time and again.

In terms of the Hobbit I think Peter Jackson is laying it on far too thick with three films for a short book and two would have been better. If he'd stuck more faithfully to the story I'd have enjoyed them more. Romance between Kili and Tauriel ruins it for me, cute as Kili is, but Radegast is so brilliant I'd put up with almost anything to keep him in!

 

[svalbard]

I went to see The Battle of the Five Armies last night and thought it was the best of the three. The stand out scene for me was when the Dwarven army is forming the shield wall against the advance of the Orc army. A truly cinematic moment.

 

[HanaBi]

2 films at the very most - and that doesn't include any "extended versions" because its simply not warranted.

In addition, the Hobbit, is a book for young children; and as such the film(s) should never have been given a similar grandiose 3-film adaptation as LOTR.

Most of the criticism levelled at The Hobbit movies, is from older Tolkien/LOTR fans (myself included). The Hobbit movies will always draw comparisons, but despite what PJ said in terms of justifying turning into a trilogy, I rather think he is talking complete and utter bobbins - money talks, and creative integrity can go take a hike!

 

[Anne Spackman]

I think perhaps the Hobbit films could have been shorter, but maybe it would have been better if TLOR films had been longer.

 

[Ladymage]

Two was the sweet spot. One would've compressed it, three meant that they had to add a bunch of extra material.

 

[HanaBi]

Over a year on since my last post here and I have still to watch all three films of The Hobbit!

The first film was pretty average on the "wow!" stakes, and the second almost sucked the life-force out of me. So as a consequence never got round to watching the third. And unlike LOTR it doesn't have sufficient or compelling interest for me to re-watch the first two anyway!

 

[BAYLOR]

2 films

 

[Vince W]

I just finished watching all three films again, and it should have been pared down to two films.

 

[HanaBi]

Given the "extended" versions of LOTR, perhaps Jackson would have been better off with a "condensed" version for TH. Just throw in all the best bits into two films, or better still one big extended version of no more than about 3 hours.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Third film does seem kind of forced.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I was disappointed in in The Desolation Smaug. The Battle of Five Armies made me so thoroughly disgusted with Peter Jackson and the franchise that I can no longer contemplate the LOTR trilogy (which I adored) with any degree of comfort. I hope that one day that will wear off.

I have friends, friends whose opinions I generally respect very much, who think The Battle of Five Armies is the best of the films, but I don't think they ever cared a damn about the book in the first place, and they were thrilled and impressed by the spectacle. Maybe if I had never read the book I would have liked the movie well enough, though I am not a fan of battle scenes and I imagine that at times I would have been a bit bored with such lengthy ones.

The Lord of the Rings benefited from some spectacle in the battle scenes (although personally I think they were somewhat excessive). I don't see the same benefit for The Hobbit. After all, in the book almost the entire battle takes place while Bilbo is unconscious. I can see how most viewers would find that frustrating, especially since some of the characters die and having them do so off screen might leave even me feeling cheated, so a few battle scenes were necessary. But a movie that was virtually devoted to spectacular battles? It's an action movie masquerading as Tolkien's The Hobbit.

 

[EJDeBrun]

The Hobbit Trilogy was God-Awful and no doubt about it. This is what we call self-satisfying directing and it almost never works for the audiences. Besides the basic time lapse issues with it, it was way too long and barely had a thread of a story or theme to it, filled in with unnecessary filler after filler. The pacing was bad, the script was bad. Unnecessary romance in a book with ZERO romance written into it. About the only thing going for it was the visual design and even THAT got old. And don't even get me started on how LONG every scene was and how unnecessary more than 70% of them were.

The novel was a one movie book and that's all she wrote about it. How can you take 1000 pages and make 3 movies and then take a 250 page book and make into 3 movies and expect the same level of story depth? Ridiculous. Such a self-satisfied POC in my opinion.

 

[HanaBi]

Peter Jackson Explains All of the Hobbit Movie Problems

A couple of interesting links that goes someway as to explaining why The Hobbit was such a complete and utter bodge job!

Some say it was down to too much studio-interference, while the links here suggest that it was PJ himself that wanted to go the with 3 films rather than just 1, or perhaps 2 at most. And this is the end result!