Why The Hobbit Sucks Part Five: Philosophy of Adaptation 

The fact we never got to know Gloin in all that time is criminal. Imagine what meeting Gimli would be like if we had.

I don't know if anyone has said this but the reason why Thorin sounds so different when talking to Bilbo at 9:50 with the line "I will not part with a single coin! Not one piece of it!" is because it's from Bilbo's perspective. He's seeing a parallel between Thorin and Smaug as Smaug says the exact same line in Desolation and Bilbo is seeing Smaug in Thorin at this point.

Tolkien straight up tells us what the most important events are. Bilbo returning to the company after they've been separated in the misty mountains, Bilbo killing the first spider and, most importantly, Bilbo battling with his own courage in the tunnels of the lonely mountain, before meeting Smaug. You could also make a case that there is a fourth moment when Bilbo returns to Bag End and reclaims his home.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the god-awful CGI-Characters and Armies. The shots where units of soldiers were involved looked like the total war series computer games and the mass battles looked scripted. The ride of the Rohirrim looked real because it WAS real. Lurtz was loved despite not being in the books because he was REAL (check out the picture where the actor holds up a little boy. It's hilarious.). Helm's deep was actually built, the orcs and the normal soldiers were real actors. It's baffling to me why the Hobbit cost so much more, yet has so much fewer actors in it.

I think that Thorin's slow-motion voice was in Bilbo's mind. It was supposed to be Thorin's voice mingling with SMAUG'S voice, as he repeated Smaug's "I will not part with a single piece of treasure" beat. It was supposed to be Thorin reminding Bilbo of Smaug.

peter jackson does get a lot of shit for this trilogy, bear in mind he was a last resort. they went through several directors before settling down with jackson and by then most of the trilogy was already in production. had peter been the main director from the start i reckon the overall focus would be more on point. on another note, i saw one of these fan edits where everything that wasn't at least somewhat related to the book was cut out, leaving it a roundabout 4 hours long adventure film about an epic treasure hunt (rather than revenge, war, foreboding sauron-sideplots and overall videogame-segments) and it was absolutely beautiful! it matched the more innocent tone of the book perfectly. just imagine what could've been.

3:27 I seriously thought he said "Dumbledore" XD

Thorin doesn't have Dragon Sickness. Peter Jackson has the George Lucas Sickness.

"Shouldn't all the Dwarves have dragon-sickness?" Yes, and in the book, all but 3 (Fíli, Kíli, and Bombur, each for specific reasons) do. Would've been cool to include that in the film.

"what is sauron promising the orcs that would make them so loyal" *sauron in dol guldor* "the age of elves is over. the age of the orc has come" well ruling the world sound nice.

Orcs follow Sauron because they have no real choice. They were first "made" by Melkor the Morgoth to be completely evil, and completely obedient to him. Since he is dead, that obedience fell to Sauron, his chief lieutenant. At least that's my understanding.

I felt like the dragon sickness was almost taking effect in Desolation. When Bilbo confronts Smaug and hears him roar, and Thorin said he was more focused on the mission than his friends, and Bawlin says Thorin isn’t being himself

I dont think that dragon sickness was ever meant to be literal.

Thought you might find this interesting, back in November of 2015 I got to meet Jed Brophy, an actor of one of the Dwarves and has a bit of a closer relationship with Peter, Fran etc through a bit of a quick convo he told me he thought himself that they went too far and the films separated too far from the books and just didn't work as movies. Also interestingly he said that Martin Freeman was disappointed with how the movies turned out and that they barely focused on Bilbo in comparison to the book.

About the Dragon sickness thing, I believe Tolkien was well versed in mythology and the Smaug/Thorin duality must be based on Fafnir from norse mythology. The dwarf that gets so greedy he turns into a evil dragon.

Funny that Stephen King hates Kubrick's version yet when he did the Shinning (the mini series) it was just boring.

I kind of got the sense that Jackson didn't want to be a part of these movies because he didn't want to be a part of these movies.

Thorin beginning to talk in slow-mo is Bilbo's perspective. Through Thorin's words he's hearing the voice of Smaug, the personification of greed. Not just a slowdown, but a metamorphosis.

“Why do we need to sit through the same thing twice?” “It’s boring to sit through the same thing twice.”

No one said to follow the book 100%, the point is don't change TOO MUCH. Lords of the rings is an example of a good adaptation of the source material, but those who red the book know how many changes were made. Arwen is not that courageous elf woman who helps Frodo, it was her brothers who did that. But we don't really care because Arwen helping Frodo and her lover Aragorn in the same time is as good as the book version of the things, or even better. The fight scenes are not that long in books especially when it comes to war, the Helm's Deep battle was 1 page long, we don't get to read about the comedic relief between Legolas and Gimli or the fact that Aragorn throws Gimli on bridge etc etc etc. Changes are good, but you have to be careful not to change the most important things in the book. That's why people are mad about Legolas being in Hobbit in the first place, that kind of change distracts from the dwarfs, just like the elf woman who wasn't in the book.

You should make another video called: Spectacle Instead of Subtle Remember in LOTR when you see the emotion of a character based off their expressions? That's subtle. It bothers me when every little thing has to be explained with words instead of camerawork or the soundtrack. The soundtrack is just THERE in the Hobbit. It doesn't make you connect to the characters the way it did in LOTR. In the Hobbit theres not enough emotion and more cgi action scenes.

With adaptations, I don't think it's as simple as saying that changing stuff from the books is good or bad. It can be either, depending on how it's handled. In the Harry Potter series for instance, some changes worked really well, while others diminished the characters. It's not the the fact that it's changed that bothers people, it's when the movie doesn't do the book justice that fans get upset.

Forever bitter that the studio stole this series from Guillermo del Toro. God, it would have been marvelous.

those gems ACTUALLY belong to the elves, they were stolen by the dwarves, and Thranduil wants his family heirlooms back.

Maybe I wouldn't CUT dwarves from the story, but DIVIDING them would be a good idea. Looking a LOTR, nine main characters is a lot to handle. Even Joss Whedon, who is known for handling big casts well, would only go as far as nine when writing Firefly. They fixed this in LOTR by splitting the fellowship into three distinct teams, each exploring different themes with their own problems. Frodo , Sam, and Gollum need to destroy the ring and learn about trust and friendship along the way. Merry and Pippin (in Return, Gandalf and Pippin) learn about what it really means to fight for something bigger than yourself. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli talk about leadership and respect through loyalty. Because we aren't following one story, but three, we feel like there is more time to know the characters because it's more organized. We never got that through the Hobbit trilogy because every dwarf besides Thorin and maybe Kili has the same problem and motivation: get the gold in the mountain. As such, they are always on the same path and say what amounts to the same things. If they were able to split the group into camps of sorts and limit the number you see on screen, then at the very least we could tell what dwarf has which name.

I think the honest trailer guy said it best: "From the man that isn't done picking over Tolkien's bones . . ."

"Dragon Sickness" is carried over from the Nordic mythology Tolkien was orginally inspired by. Most greedy characters (Dwarfs) in norse mythology literally metamorphize into Dragons from humans upon discovering and hording gold. That is Thorins character arc essentially in the book but he doesn't change form, unlike in the mythology, which the "dragon sickness" was inspired by.

3:26 I thought he said 'Gandalf and Dumbledore'. Hey Jackson, hands off MY fanfiction!

I disagree that fidelity to source material is bad for creativity, especially when most of the problems with hobbit movies came from bad invented stuff and it's poor insert into the canon story. But most of your points are spot on, this was really well done review from beginning to end :). Also despite the fact that book (even adding stuff from appendices of Lotr) is short, they cut out surprisingly lot of material (or did not use material from appendix A section Durin's Folk that would be relevant, not the info on White Council) whole sections and scenes from book are missing, some scenes that in book were longer, are shortened significantly or replaced by something different, also there a whole lot of alternative character interpretation that results in story problems. For example Elvenking Thranduil from book is totally different character than movie elvenking, they act in opposite ways. Book here showed much more nuanced character and people call The Hobbit a children's book! While movie made this character into almost supporting villain, Elvenking from book is actually the one who is reluctant to start a war over treasure: "But the Elvenking said: “Long will I tarry, ere I begin this war for gold. The dwarves cannot pass us, unless we will, or do anything that we cannot mark. Let us hope still for something that will bring reconciliation. Our advantage in numbers will be enough, if in the end it must come to unhappy blows." Not to mention he had justified reason and full right to imprison the dwarves who were in his realm under his law, trespassing on his territory, rousing spiders causing danger to his people, and from the perspective of witnesses, the party goers in woods, attacking the elves, also they were complete strangers who insulted and needlessly angered the king, refused to reveal any information about themselves or the goal of their journey when questioned and king had a full right to ask them what they're doing in his realm (Thranduil it appears did not recognize Thorin in book, they might have never met before), in a increasingly hostile world in a dark forest swarming with monsters, it is natural and even expected that the elves would be wary of strangers and suspicious of those who hide something. Other characters who were done disservice include Gandalf and rest of White Council who were made in to incompetent and foolish instead of the group of wisest and most knowledgable, mightiest people in Middle-earth), also in books both in Lotr and in The Hobbit Gandalf used much more magic than was shown in movies, which is suprising, this is ideal chance for some special effects, but for reasons entirely beyond me PJ seems to have aversion to showing magical powers and so he emphasized the weakness of Gandalf instead of his cleverness and great might (also the infiltration of Dol Guldur in source material was fully successful, Gandalf managed to enter find out everything he could and escape, NEVER being captured, this unfortunately is another call back to Lotr movies, it seems the hobbit films repeat the same schematics: one of the party seriously wounded and healed by athelas and glowy elf present-check, Gandalf imrpisoned and losing a staff-check). Also character of Tauriel, I think she does not work in the role she was given and would have been much better to be one of those spies Thranduil send: "He at any rate did not believe in dwarves fighting and killing dragons like Smaug, and he strongly suspected attempted burglary or something like it-which shows he was a wise elf and wiser than the men of the town, though not quite right, as we shall see in the end. He sent out his spies about the shores of the lake and as far northward towards the Mountain as they would go, and waited." Being one of those spies send by king Tauriel would have story reason to be there at all, she would be doing her job, keeping an eye, gather news for the safety of her people and from orders of her king, who would be also shown be deeply interested in goings on in the world and NOT as isolationistic as in film. Thranduil's elves are frequent guests in Esgaroth, they engage in trade and local policies retain friendly relations with neighbours. Also I think they should have killed Azog off, have him appear simply as very powerful badass orc commander in a flashback (maybe even showing his duel with Dain and this would be first introduction of that character) and from then on have Bolg of the North son of Azog as personal nemesis for Thorin, not to mention it gives wonderful villain motivation, the dwarves killed his father he wants revenge, while Thorin does not forget that Azog murdered Thrór. It's much better motivation that movie version Azog wishing to end line of Durin just...because I guess (though Orcs are known for random acts of cruelty they also have their own goals and dreams :) even the Orcs were eager to a portion of treasure and power they would get as they "resolved now to win the dominion of the North). The whole White Council sections were atrocious and even though there was enough info on it in source material they discarded all that in favor of the 'original' version of the final script. In short there was a massive number of poor storytelling decisions and very bad use of source material that could have made awesome stories. Also one note Bilbo character seems to fade into background in his own movies! He's the main star so to speak, and yet his accomplishments are overshadowed by other things.

I also think Jackson was pressured to perform for the economy of New Zealand. He employs so many people in the country, and the films have become such a tourist draw to the country. I wonder how much they influence New Zealand's annual GDP.

Anyone who reads the books replaces the names of half the dwarves with, "one of the dwarves" in their head. He couldve just treated it like that.

He didn't know Bilbo had the ring because Bilbo never told Gandalf until Lord Of The Rings.

In regard to Alfred: Why can't they cast ugly people to play ugly characters? Why get a handsome actor and them ugly him up? THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY UGLY. EVERYWHERE.

Whhhy the fuck did they rely on soo much CGI, I would of much rather of them use makeup and props; it makes the movie feel so much more real and makes it so much better. Felt like I was playing a video game the whole time, all the orcs had a weird ass texture that made them look flat. The CGI wasn't even that good, like Planet Of The Apes had better CGI.. and all the landscapes where CGI too, in the Lord of the Rings, the landscapes were real for the most part, the orcs were real, the props were real... And Gandalf was real the whole time, cuz I'm pretty sure even Gandalf was CGI a few times in the Hobbit movies. Overall the Hobbit movies didn't even come close to the Lord Of The Rings. The hobbit movies were still kinda enjoyable, but I don't really wanna re-watch them. The Lord of the Rings I can re-watch every few months and I fucking LOVE it! Hardcore! Not that often but iv seen the LOTR trilogy at least like 6-7 times. Anyone else agrees?

I think cutting dwarves from the movie would have been a bad idea. Cut the elves from the movie, cut the whole 'Necromancer' story-line with Gandalf, maybe tone it down a bit with Bard and definitely tone down the action sequences. Having 9 hours to tell a 287 page story is MORE than enough to time to build relationships between characters and audience while not losing anything from the story. But personally I'm the type of person who appreciates characters in a story (with or without dynamics between characters) more than either story, lessons or action.

I do love your series and I find your views and insights fascinating and instructive. However, I strongly disagree with your views on adaptations. I agree that a director can and should make changes. The absence of Tom Bombadil in the Lord of the Rings is an excellent example. I think Peter Jackson made quite a few tweaks in those movies that enhanced the story greatly for trimming the fat from Tolkien's work. However, where this worked in the Lord of the Rings is that Peter Jackson made changes, but stayed true to the characters and the theme. It all worked because the central framework of the story, with its message and character arcs, remained in tact. In The Hobbit, Peter Jackson brought in characters that had no place in the story, (Legolas, Galadriel, Radagast), or at least should not have had the prominent roles they did. Furthermore, he took a character who's true strengths were his resilience and his ability to think his way through problems, (in contrast to the Dwarves' blunder and bluster), and tried to turn Bilbo into an action hero. He is a thinker and, aside from his confrontation with the spiders, not a fighter! Once Bilbo starts fighting Orcs, like he is becoming another Dwarf, the theme is destroyed. The book had an underlying anti-war message, most likely based on the author's experience in two of them. The movie completely undermined that until the actual moral of the story is unrecognizable. Look, I understand directors wanting to be creative. But, if this is the case, don't do adaptations! Create something new! Or, if you really feel compelled to build from a literary work, CHANGE THE NAME, (i.e The 13th Warrior from The Eater's of the Dead). There were a million ways Peter Jackson could have tweaked the Hobbit, stayed true to the framework / characters, and made it work. Peter Jackson just made bad decisions and tried to pass it off as creative license. The reality of it is, he just should have done something else. Now, if we want to talk about a Tolkien novel that is just begging for a re-interpretation, there is always The Silmarillion...

This is the best review of the Hobbit trilogy I've ever seen/read. Congratulations! Subscribed :)

The background music was too loud in this video, but other than that I've thoroughly enjoyed this whole series of videos! ^-^

Thanduil appears in a different light when you know that the white gems had a special value for him. They are the Gems of Lasgalen, Thandruils wife had worn them, when she was tortured and murdered by the Orcs in Angmar. The Gems were the only thing left of his beloved wife and the dwarfs required Thranduil to pay for the gems even though they do not really belong to them. So now you can decide yourself, who the Baddies in this story are.

I mostly like Peter Jackson's adaptation of Tolkien's Middle Earth my favorite part of the Hobbit is the prologue and the introduction of Gandalf and the dwarves because it is directly adapted from the book. Therefore I disagree with you about not being faithful to the source material The Hobbit started strong but increasingly declined in narrative and tone as they changed it into a war epic, which it never was or should be !!

I agree that films shouldn't strive for fidelity but I don't think they should strive for infidelity either. I mean, why not just create your own story at that point? The Hobbit films are nothing more than fan fiction. BAD fan fiction.

If you watch something like The Dirty Dozen, they certainly didn't make every one of the Dirty Dozen a distinct and identifiable character, but certainly I think most people who've seen the movie can think of eight or nine right off the top of their heads -- because you got to know them through the whole "training" sequence of the movie. The point is, The Hobbit had that whole initial journey which could have served as the same thing -- exposing the various strengths and weaknesses of the characters as they faced various trials during that initial journey, revealing the strengths and weaknesses that they'd then have to take into that final battle. It was easier in Lord of the Rings because we met many of the "Fellowship" characters one at a time, first Frodo, then Gandalf, then Sam, and Merry, and Pippin and Aragorn -- and so by the time we get to the Council of Elrond, you only have three left and it becomes relatively easy, with one being an elf, one a dwarf, and one a surly human, to distinguish them. But again, just because all of the dwarves arrive at Bilbo's house at one time doesn't mean that they all have to arrive at one time in the movie -- they could arrive one or two at a time, so that we get more of a chance to meet them as individuals (and it might actually have made for a funnier scene -- with an endless number of Dwarves continually showing up).

Jackson couldn't have cut the number of dwarves. The entire reason Bilbo was involved in the story was twofold: Thorin's Company needed a thief. They also needed every hand they could get, but ended up with 13 dwarves, a very unlucky number. As suspicious folk, the dwarves needed to cut two dwarves and replace one with a thief, or hire a 14th person to be the thief, thus changing the number away from the unlucky number 13. And before someone counters with "but hey Gandalf was there, so it wasn't 13", I want to point out that at least in the book, Gandalf doesn't count as part of the number because he tells the dwarves at the start that he will only intermittently be travelling with them, which means they need another person to be Number 14. The exact number of dwarves in the group was incredibly important to the plot of the story. Changing that number would make it so Bilbo would have no reason to be involved.

The dwarves actually stole thranduils gems so theyre kinda in the wrong there

They could have "cut out" some of the dwarves without cut them out but rather keep most in the background and focus more on a few and develop their character more.

The problem is when the directors substantially deviate from the plot and the movie doesn't make any sense as a result. It's easy to loose the soul of a book by doing that--that's why fans worry.

Homeboy, Laketown was built there before the dragon showed up...

To be fair, the problem is not the *amount* of dwarves in the films, but how they are *used* . The group of 13 should have been treated like a microcosm of the film's characters: 1 or 2 main one, a few secondary ones, and those that are always in the background. This way, you can focus more on developing characters while still knowing that they are part of a larger group. The storytelling choice now becomes which ones are more important and which ones are less, and to which attribute which archetype. In the Hobbit, this was very poorly executed.

I haven't seen the Hobbit yet, but what you said about adaptions is so true. Part of why the third Harry Potter is so good- a great leap from the previous two- is because it can stand on its own as just a good movie. It doesn't follow the book religiously, but because of Cauron's phenomenal sense of movement and background detail, out of all the movies it not only captures the feeling of magic of the book better than any of the others, but even surpasses the book in its atmosphere at times.

Kubrick didn't change the ending of clockwork orange. It was just that the version he was working on didn't include that last chapter where alex is rehabillited. It was just a mistake of the american publisher, not a concious choice. Besides that it's a terrible example since a clockwork orange is propably the most faithfull adaptation ever done. Even Kubrick said that he didn't want to change much because everything that could be said about the story was in the book...

This is why people should be more accepting of fanfiction. Once you start viewing movies as well done fanfic, a good retelling doesn't step on the toes of the fandom, it's just an alternate.

Bilbo sees Thorin saying the same thing that Smaug said

I agree with most of what you say, but I'd like to add something to your argument about how adaptations don't have to be 100% faithful: It's okay for me that movies don't follow the book. As long as it works for the movie, and the general theme and tone remains the same, it's all good. However, the Hobbit book is just one part of a giant mythology encompassing several novels and a spectacular amount of lore; almost everything in the book is weaved into the Middle Earth Universe perfectly. The changes Jackson makes to the Hobbit doesn't just change the story, it changes how the entire Universe works. It's the same with the LOTR movies; I get that the Hobbit is smaller in scale and not as dark and brooding, but the two become so vastly different that it's hard to see how they're part of the same mythology.

Instead of cutting the numbers of dwarves in the company, they should have made less emphasis on them. Give the screen time to developing Bilbo and Thorin's relationship instead.

1:19 Woah, I had the exact same idea for how to structure the triology if it was divide in just two parts, that way you have all the things related to Smaug in just one movie.

What's important to me is if it has the spirit of the source material. If it just followed it directly, then I'd just go to the source material instead.

the fact that stephen colbert went on set and beat the entire hobbit film team in a trivia competition, shows how doomed this stupid ass trilogy was, no credit taken from colbert and his hobbit headedness

These videos all had brilliant criticism man, especially the second one where you talk about the lack of tension in the action scenes. I first saw the LOTR when i was 8 and those films not only turned me into a huge tolkien fanatic but also made me fall in love with cinema. What made me more angry and disappointed than actually watching the hobbit was seeing how everyone just seemed to accept them as fun, or even good films. I guess it says a lot about how little people expect from blockbusters in this age of Avengers style superhero films. I mean back when the fellowship came out, Gladiator won best picture the year before and titanic won 11 oscars a few years before that. These were epic blockbusters that were so big in scope that they required an epic amount of love and dedication to pull off beautifully. Anyway, would love to have a massive LOTR geek session with you dude, you seem like a real fan :)

Wait, why would we have to have a better movie OR a faithful adaption? Why can't we have a better faithful adaption?

Directors shouldn't strive for complete fidelity to the source material if it is a hindrance to the creation of a good film but completely changing the source material isn't an adaptation, it is a fan-fiction. If you want to create something wildly different, use your own creativity, write yourself a new story and then do it, but don't do it under the guise of an adaptation of an existing story, because it isn't. The Lord of the Rings was done well. A fantastic film with some changes from the source material, but it wasn't a complete bastardisation of the Tolkien's books.

Thank you so much for making this. I've been a LOTR fan for almost 15 years, and The Hobbit movies disappointed me on so many levels. I never wanted a 3 movie epic adaptation, I wanted a character driven fantasy/adventure movie (yes just one movie, granted it would probably still need to be 3 hours). The tone of the Hobbit book is so different than the tone of the Lotrs books, that it's baffling to me to try and frame the hobbit in the way that they did (except of course because the studio wanted $$$) smh

do you think that instead of treating each hobbit as their own character and giving scenes to each specific hobbit, they could have grouped them up and made scenes for specifc pairs or trios of the group? a lot of the hobbits are family or have their own pairings in the book so they could have condensed them down to that treating 1 pair as 1 character as such and gave a few scenes to each pair

Just a note about A Clockwork Orange: In the book, Alex is not 'rehabilitated'. The book, like the film, heavily criticizes the treatment he underwent, they just do so in similar ways. Kubrick didn't really change the ending; the ending of the film is the original one presented in the USA, where the last chapter was omitted. The book ends on a very similar note if the last chapter is omitted. What you're referring to as the book's ending is the omitted final chapter where Alex simply grows out of his tendencies. Rather than Kubrick's movie (and original ending) which shows the treatment failing and Alex returning to his hedonistic ways, the book goes further to show him growing out of them naturally, thus exposing the horrible treatment as entirely unnecessary.

Adaptations are like a game of Jenga. If you take out the parts that have little to no point to the story (or just don't go anywhere), then it holds up fine, but if you take out the wrong ones, then the story falls apart.

I think the reason fans are often so insistent that movie adaptations stick with the book is because for a lot of people, the appeal of seeing a film adaptation of a book is just getting to see something you had previously only pictured in your head brought to life on the screen. There's something about seeing something in live action that makes it seem more "real." It's why Disney is making tons of money by turning it's classic animated films into live action films. We're seeing the same story, and it's not even a matter of taking something non-visual and making it visual - the appeal is just getting to see something you love done in a bigger and more "realistic" way. Hence, when movies deviate too much, fans get annoyed because that's not what we paid to see. There's nothing at all rational about it, of course; it's just a strange yearning people have that doesn't make much sense. The problem is that obviously with something like The Hobbit, simply translating it from page to screen without any changes wouldn't have worked. The book is too episodic and is written more like a fairytale, which would have seemed strange in comparison to Jackson's LOTR films. Also, much as some fans may not want to admit it, the books themselves are not perfect. For example, if the Fellowship of the Ring movie was precisely faithful to the book, the movie would have taken quite a long time to get Frodo out of the Shire, which would have totally killed the pacing at the beginning of the movie. Speeding things up a bit there was a good call on Jackson's part, as was having Merry & Pippin run into Frodo & Sam together instead of Merry meeting them at the Brandywine Bridge like he does in the book (which would have killed the tension from them being chased by the Nazgul). Little changes are often important to get the movie to flow well, and I think most fans are aware of that and can accept it. What bothered me most in the Hobbit films was that they had so much room to expand on the characters from the book, and instead they chose to pad it out with overly long action scenes that put me to sleep. Also, the movies all had a weird tone problem that's a little hard to pinpoint, but it's stuff like Kili's dumb "I could have anything down my trousers" line, which was an attempt at humor but was just so... non-Tolkienish, that it threw off the whole scene. The movies were full of odd little moments like that. There's nothing wrong with adding dialogue, but if that dialogue doesn't mesh well with the spirit of the book, it just leaves a bad taste.

dragon sickness is like mediclorians in the star wars prequels

Another option might have been to keep 13 dwarves OVERALL, but maybe drip-feed their introduction. Start with 3 or 4, and have the company grow throughout the quest. Maybe have some leave the company to do other things at some point. (They did eventually do this at the end of Desolation, of course) Definitely needed more development on all of them though.

Lol!!! In the book azog is long dead and bolg just leads the goblins/orcs in the battle of the five armies

To be fair to Jackson, the decision to do three movies was mostly the studio's and they meddled in many other aspects as well. Jackson didn't even want to direct the films and came in late in pre-production after Guillermo del Toro backed out. The studio then cut the production time table to the point that Jackson almost had a nervous trying to get the films finished on time. Jackson has been very frank in interviews about how he was unhappy with many aspects of the finished product.

What is even worse than what Jackson did to the material himself (especially after doing it so well with LOTR) is that we were robbed of a Del Toro Hobbit. Just imagine how dark some of this material could be in his hands. Missed opportunity on top of an immense disappointment.

I really appreciate the comprehensive detailing of all the weaknesses of this video series. I'm glad I stumbled on this.

"Thorin earned it". Thorin took a long hike. Bard (assisted by Bilbo) is the one who killed the dragon and won the mountain back. The people of lakedown suffered the losses. Thorin earned shit.

Very good rant. About the final conclusion, I agree they could had cut some of the dwarves, however the main problem was not the things they not cut, but the stuff they add. The Hobbit is a simple story, the book have only 320 pages and they stretch it into three long movies, they bloated the story with A LOT of pointless filler: All Azog plot is filler, much scenes in Laketown is filler, so is all Alfryd scenes. If they had put all in two movies all this would be unnecessary, the pacing would be much better (that was the main problem in the first movie) and th tone would be much more consistent.

I disagree on your arguments in regards to adapting books to the screen. Typically, book fans look forward to watching on the screen what they have read on paper (which is why I'm confused about why you say "people don't want to watch the same thing twice", because that's not the way it works- you read it once and perhaps envision it in your head, and then literally watch it). For myself in particular, I'm not great at imagining spacial proportions and scenery, so seeing that kind of thing translated to the screen is one of the reasons why I watch movie adaptations of books. I also disagree because while I agree that a movie adaptation can never be completely loyal to the book (and in most cases, the source material *can* be improved upon in some way, which is where I disagree with say, most Harry Potter fans who regard any changes from the books as for the worst), the thing that tends to bother me most is what you describe as major thematic changes. When you change the point of something that completely, you're basically taking the name of something and its characters (to some extent) and writing your own story over it, which seems not only in bad faith but to be a strange choice. If I go to see a film of the book, I want to be able to see the heart of the book within it. Not whatever the people working on the movie think would be a "better" core of the book if only the author had done x differently.

You have to admit, Thranduils voice was badass

2:12 Honestly, I can't believe that hasn't been done yet. All I could think about during that entire scene was how easy it would be to make a water ride based on it... and with some theme park's dedication to building zones based on popular movies (like Harry Potter world) it would just seem like a slam dunk for a ride. And its not like Peter Jackson wouldn't have cooperated since he helped design the 4D King Kong part of the Hollywood Train at Universal Studios. You could make a decent river rafting ride out of this, with one of those circular rafts that holds like 8 people!

Great points once again, Sage! I regret being akin to a PJ apologist a few years ago. It's just... oh fuck it, the dude lied his ass off, and I'd say the fans have every right to be pissed off. Told us there's plenty of material for three movies because of the appendices, then turning around and adding TONS of filler and additional crap of which only 5% was ever even mentioned in the LOTR appendices in relation to The Hobbit. Also told us there would be no romance between Tauriel and Kili, yet there ended up being one and it completely ruined parts of DOS and BOTFA with unneeded crap that seemingly managed to take the place of character moments for the characters these movies are actually about! Told us that the third film was really gonna tie things up, that it was going to be where everything would come together, then turning around and sacrificing that for ridiculous action sequences, leaving us with too many unresolved plotlines. I just can't respect PJ anymore after all of this nonsense. The Lord of the Rings films were an instant hit for me - watched all three of them, boom, my new favorite films. Watched all three The Hobbit films. Boom, gonna have to pretend they don't exist or else I'll despise PJ and co for what they've done to Middle-Earth quite a bit too much..

But they didn't follow the book... The worst part of the Hobbit was Peter Jackson's made up filler.

You can't remove any of the dwarves because the only reason for a 'hobbit' is that 13 is an unlucky number. Since Gandalf knew he wasn't going to to be with them the whole time, Bilbo was the one who kept their number from being unlucky.

"what is sauron promising the orcs that would make them so loyal" You see the Orcs do not follow Sauron excpecting to be rewarded for their loyalty, they follow him simply out of fear and because they are bound to his will. That's why at the end of the Return of the King, after Sauron is defeated, the Orcs come back to their senses and do not know what to do. It seems that they were driven on by Sauron's immense power and malice. "But the Nazgul turned and fled, and vanished into Mordor's shadows, hearing a sudden terrible call out of the Dark Tower; and even at that moment all the hosts of Mordor trembled, doubt clutched their hearts, their laughter failed, their hands shook and their limbs were loosed. *The Power that drove them on and filled them with hate and fury was wavering, its will was removed from them* ; and now looking in the eyes of their enemies they saw a deadly light and were afraid."

Thorin: Let's make laketown great again.

Ok ok ok, you had me up until this video. 1) Not even die hard book fans, expect movies to be faithful word for word to the books. case in point. Tolkien fanatics, of which I am one, ADORED the LOTR Trillogy movie adaptation. There is no question what so ever that licence was taken with the book version in the adaptation. Elves at Helms deep anyone? The point is, the movies stayed faithful to the core of the books, even while cutting out bits, and adding in new bits. The LOTR movies were, are, revered by Tolkien fanatics and random movie goers alike. For good reason. Reasons you pointed out in videos 1-4. 2) The best part of the entire Hobbit train wreck, from a Tolkien purest point of view, was the first half of movie #1. Why? Because that portion of the movie was FAITHFUL to the core of the book. Perhaps un-ironically, the first half of movie #1 was derided by random movie goers as being "To Slow and Boring". Apparently either straight up not knowing, or maybe simply not giving a flying fuck, that the Hobbit is an adventure story set in a High Fantasy setting. NOT the fucking fast and the furious part 20. (Though that's exactly what it felt like by the end of movie 3). I particularly like one criticism about the first hobbit movie, where one know it all critic derided the "Golf Joke", which "Took the reviewer out of his head space" . Fucking wanker, the Golf Joke was ACTUALLY PART OF THE ORIGINAL STORY, unlike the whole train wreck that was fabricated from whole cloth which ran as a 3 movie long chase scene between an orc that actually was slain like two got damn ages prior, and the Dwarvers. The golf joke this ass hat has an issue with, but not the egregious things that Peter Jackson did? FFS!!!! In the begining, nobody wanted 3 hobbit movies more than me. MORE MIDDLE EARTH? SIGN ME UP PLEASE!! There were SO MANY THINGS that could have been done. SOOO MUCH LORE that they could have included. 3 Hobbit movies? I want a 30 season long Game Of thrones style telling of ALLLLLLL Tolkien lore. This is what I was hoping for in the Hobbit movies. What did we actually get though? What ever it was, it was not 'The Hobbit". Am I the only one to have noticed, that the central character of the fucking book, essentially was relegated to a second string supporting character role? WTF??If Peter Jackson wanted to make his own movie, set in the Tolkien universe, he could have done anything he liked, good bad or indifferent. I would have went to see it. I would have cheered. Maybe. And that's what he SHOULD have done here, made his own fucking move, and left Bilbo "The Hobbit", out of it. You get ONE CHANCE, to make the hobbit. Should a reboot ever be made, it won't be in MY LIFETIME. I am saddled with this POS for the rest of my days. I didn't want a new story in place of the god damn Hobbit. I wanted to see The Hobbit, brought to life in the big screen, like they did for The LOTR. My false hope, was that maybe we would see in 3 fucking movies, more about the hobbits back story, they have one you know. Fucking interesting as hell too. Or maybe more background on the Numenoreans, or the Elves, or the Dwarves. The brought bejorne into this. FUCK YEA, tell me bout Bejorne. But what did we actually get? A WASTE OF TIME!!. Tropes up the ass hole. Shitty action scenes, one after a fucking nother. SO MANY FLASHBACKS TO THE LOTR MOVIES!! WTF? Peter, you know the LOTR happened AFTER The Hobbit right? The fuck you flashing back to it for 150+ times for? Smaug, was awesome in the war of words with Bilbo, THANK YOU CUMBERBATCH!. Then they FUCKED his character into the ground. WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED? I haven't thought about this in a long time. I watched these videos and I am going into meltdown again. God Damn It!

While I agree with you that making changes from book to movie is necessary (due to the medium transfer) and great if it improves the story, I respectfully disagree with the idea that directors should be able to change whatever they want, with the implication that we shouldn't criticize them for such changes. When books become popular, it's because something about them struck a chord with their audiences. So when a director makes a film adaptation and then disregards that something, it shows a lack of respect for and/or understanding of why the original was so loved in the first place. This is why an adaptation like Netflix's Death Note movie infuriated the fan base, while the Japanese Death Note movies are largely respected by the fans. Netflix's version ignored the core of why Death Note is so loved--the cat and mouse game between Light and L--and instead focused on a romance. They disregarded a key element of what made Death Note special. On the other hand, the Japanese version changed a lot of things: it gave Light a girlfriend, had Light kill said girlfriend in a completely new ending, and then significantly altered how the story concluded. However, they kept that core intact: Light and L. To wrap up this far too long post, I'll just say this: if a story is beloved for one specific reason above all others, directors should probably include that in their movie adaptation. If they don't, then why were they interested in adapting this material in the first place? (other than the obvious: $$$)

The dwarves have a weird level of development. We get a nugget here or there of certain traits, but not nearly enough to go off of. The dwarves either needed slower scenes to sit down and develop them, or just to be a collective of background characters on the adventure. They should be like a band of minstrels following the main characters; we never really remember their names but they bring some colour to the film and make us cheerful when they’re on screen.

All you say is so true. I found the book didn't give any insight on the character's personalities really and was disappointed that the movie didn't do better in that regard. One of the biggest issues I had with the movies, besides the unresolved plots and useless scenes.

Fun rant series all the way. One point you do make that is interesting and a major flaw on Jackson and Co is their use of "dragon-sickness" as the driving force for Thorin's mental degradation. As it turns out dragon-sickness is not and has been a thing (like a disease or mental condition) in Tolkien EVER, so for them to inflate what is essentially a descriptive term in the book for a particular character developing an insatiable lust for gold (similar to a Dragon, hence the term) is right fudge out of nowhere and ultimately devalues Thorin's actual struggle with, not a magical sickness, but with himself. Also something of note is the argument you make against absolute fidelity when adapting books, i agree to some extent with your position but see that with this film series there in fact were many elements and entire subplots that were left out or significantly reduced (detrimentally so).

Just an idea, but I think they should have modeled these as heist films rather than action/adventure. Gandalf needed a burglar (even though bilbo had never burgled anything), and in the book they are mostly trying to avoid confrontation and steal their home back. Bilbo has to steal the dwarves from the elves and spiders, steal the ring from Gollum, and they are all trying to steal the mountain from the dragon. Heist films are usually ensambles with each team member bringing a different skill to the table. This could have been a way of further developing characters than what we got in the source material. It could have been a story of Bilbo learning to be a burglar from a band of dwarves, being accepted into their brotherhood, learning skills from each and using his own innate skills (riddles, etc.) to improve upon what they taught him step by step through their trials till he’s ready to get Smaug out of the mountain. They tried to make these too much like lord of the rings, which the hobbit has little in common with other than setting.

This was great - enjoyable and really insightful. Thanks for taking the time to make it!

The book vs film debate is endless. Francis Ford Coppola didn't want Mario Puzo to write the film adaptation for Godfather, he only changed his mind when they were at lunch and Puzo tossed the book on the floor and said "What book?" To me its more important to portray the spirit of the books and not literally recreate every thing line by line. Also lets face it some books are popular but not that good (looking at you Hunger Games) and will always be bad movies. Films like Harry Potter are the exception and not the rule when it comes to strict translation. Where I disagree (director change and assorted problems aside) is that they did change the book, they added so much filler and created the forced ties to LOTR that it's really unrecognizable from the source material. In doing so they sucked the heart right out of whats really a simple children's fantasy/fairy tale that loosely sets up the much darker and thematically richer LOTR trilogy.

Cheap writing, cheap action, cheap CGI, that's the problem. Jackson jumped on the bandwagon of "modern technology" blockbuster bullshit, totally forgetting that he already had the perfect formula. He held no respect for the source material, not meaning the book, but the world he himself created on the screen in LOTR. It's just shameful.

Adaptations by their nature will absolutely have differences. I'm good with that. What frustrating is that a lot of adaptations just seem to miss the point. They take a lot of the trimmings, but frequently neglect the heart, the core appeal of an original work. As an invested fan, that can be heartbreaking.

The problem with adaptations isn't if they follow the source material or not, it's if the people in charge care or not. Pretty obvious Peter Jackson did not care for the Hobbit series and just went through the motions. There is also a threshold of changes you can accept. At some point you just gotta say "This isn't Star Trek" if they change so much you get something like Star Trek Discovery. At that point it's just some director who wanted to do an original work but lacked the funding or guts to do so and slapped an established franchises name onto the work.

4:52 That Ned Stark comment hurt me on the inside.

Nice review. I absolutely agree with your negativ points but I don't want to agree with your positiv ones because I'm too disappointed by the Hobbit trilogy. Even though Jackson used the newest technologies to make the movies, I absolutely hated their look and atmosphere. In the Hobbit everything looks so clean, shiny...and not real. I guess, in 10 years these movies will look a lot more awful than the LOTR movies look now (which they absolutely don't). Because cgi doesn't age very well. As you said in the resume, it was probably not Jackson's or the studio's goal to make a second masterpiece but more to create a product that makes profit.

Changes that are made to book plots for movie adaptation are usually not made to make a 'better' movie, they are usually made to make a more simple movie. This is often not an improvement, imo. Removing or combining characters, removing side plot, removing ambiguity in characters morality, removing character development. The examples brought up in this video, like The Shining, feel like exceptions to this rule. The Hobbit is also kind of an exception. What made this movie so dumb isnt what Jackson left out but what he added.

Bro, I'm still waiting for Del Toros At the Mountains of Madness!

- Thorin promised Dale enough gold to rebuild Esgaroth ten times over (quote), there was a specific sum - The white gems belonged to Thranduil, he sent them to dwarves to forge a jewelry for his wife, but dwarves stolen them. Thorin selling the gems to the elves is exactly the same as Bard selling the arkinstone to Thorin. - Thranduil didnt betrayed the dwarves, 1st they robbed him, 2nd they lured in the dragon, 3rd their king went insane, 4th elves didnt have the Windlance, only weapon capable of killing the dragon, so If he wouldnt retreat they would all die - Thranduil was a good guy and Thorin was a prick all along

Maybe Jackson had a different view about this adaptation. I don't know. This trilogy just reeks of studio interference to me. Like a lot. Like grabbing everyone by their throats kind of interference. Too bad it actually worked moneywise. Lots of people actually found it great, the plot, the visuals, the characters, everything.

Dude your videos are so good! Thank you for your passionate work 💓

12:04 That was a joke! That guy is a brazilian comedian called Léo Lins, he works in a TV Show going to these events and interviewing the stars