I also noticed that there's a distinct lack of reviews that talk about the Whole Hobbit Trilogy, as most people are still just focusing on the Battle of the Five Armies. I do think it's time to sum it all up and talk about the experience as a whole. All three of the movies we excitedly anticipated, but didn't really want... >.> ... so here goes.
WARNING, SPOILERS BELOW
The Hobbit is a beloved book about the journey of a Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, from his comfortable adventure-free home through the most dangerous parts of the wilderness and danger to the Lonely Mountain to help some Dwarves steal their gold back from a Dragon. Along the way this Hobbit discovers his courage and forms friendships with the dwarves and with many others along the way.
While it is set in the same universe as the Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, which Tolkien wrote first, differs in a few ways from the more famous Trilogy:
1) First of all, the book has a much more linear style: it's about the Hobbit and so it tells us the story of the Hobbit, from the Hobbit's point of view, with no insight into what other characters are doing unless they are being observed by the Hobbit. Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, spent considerable time with each member of the Fellowship of the Ring as their paths diverged.
2) The Hobbit is written as if it is being told by a storyteller. There's a very distinct storyteller style. For example at several points the narrator reassures the reader that the Hobbit will live a little longer by reminding us that he missed his handkerchief - not for the last time!... and so on.
3) The speed with which the book gets through key, large-scale events and dangers is unusual. There's a lot of walking and being lost and hungry and then when the real action happens it happens pretty quickly and the company is soon back on the road, walking again. This goes with the narrator style: we're being told this story, not shown it. If it had been written today I almost guarantee you it would be sent back to the author with tons of red ink comments to the effect of "Show, don't tell" and then the poor author would be forced to turn it into a ten-part series instead of just one 300-page book.
For all these reasons - and just the fact that LOTR was a masterpiece difficult to even come close to - the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are two very different tales on paper. They're set in the same world, however, so in making the movies Peter Jackson had a hard job to do. He had to take two very different stories in style and portray them visually in a way that the audience would believe they're set in the same world. He had to connect them in a way that J.R.R Tolkien himself hadn't done (although he did indicate that he wanted to do a Hobbit re-write for this purpose).
It was a hard task. Do I think Peter Jackson did as good a job with the Hobbit as he did with LOTR? Not really, but it was a much more difficult source material he was working with this time around and even with all that in mind the Hobbit Movies were still awesome!
The internet is full of negative reviews of the Hobbit slamming it for either being too different from LOTR or being too similar. Among all the whining about the HFR and 3D formats there are dozens of critics and fans complaining that it wasn't what they expected.
Let's be honest with ourselves. LOTR wasn't what I expected either. Despite the amazing spectacle and the loving detail put into it I was very annoyed back in the early 2000s when it was Arwen that found Frodo and Strider and the others and took them to Rivendell instead of the male elf in the book: Glorfindel. I was really annoyed by the whole unnecessary romance storyline between Aragorn and Arwen. Most of all, I to this day will not forgive them for changing Faramir's reaction to the One Ring. It still hurts.
There are also many aspects of LOTR that they changed for the good. The completely boring and tedious Tom Bombadil was thankfully removed, the racist "pukel-men" episode in the woods near Rohan was thankfully nonexistent, and while all the humans who joined Sauron still looked like a jumble of "eastern" and "southern" (read: non-white) peoples they added in a little monologue by Faramir in which he wondered what lies they had been told to bring them here and so on, which was supposed to ease the pain of the stereotypical imagery a little.
What I'm trying to say is that LOTR had it's fair share of changes made to the book and it was already in a format and writing style that could much more easily lend itself to the cinematic format.
The Hobbit, on the other hand, if filmed word for word in the way LOTR was basically done would have consisted of a lot of walking around and a bunch of random actiony save-points one after another. It would have also consisted of a lot of random unexplained disappearances by Gandalf and convenient re-appearances at just the right moment to save all their lives, it would have had to feature a five second battle in which the Hobbit is knocked out, fades to black, then wakes up after the battle to find some of his companions dead or dying and the war over. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this would not have gone down very well with modern audiences.
Can you imagine all the fans that loved LOTR but hadn't read the Hobbit being cheated out of their epic battle because the main character got knocked out and didn't see it so they can't see it either? Can you picture the reaction of people as the story randomly glosses over Gandalf's disappearances only to have him show up at the last possible second? Can you imagine your friend's reaction to a sudden appearance of a random army of orcs, goblins, and wargs just out of the blue without any explanation for why they were there?
Didn't think so.
Something had to be done to take the events of this book, the spirit of it, and make it fit better into a movie format. We would have needed to see some glimpses of what Gandalf was doing and the save-point tell rather than show style had to be changed. It's a big change. When a change as big as this is coming different people will have different opinions about how it should be done and just how to make it work best. Jackson gave us his interpretation and while it DID feel a little stretched and while I can't stand some of the changes I have to acknowledge that he gave us a well-told tale that does come very close to LOTR quality and that binds the two stories together marvelously well. I still would have done it differently if I was calling the shots, but I respect Peter Jackson and his team's decisions.
To get rid of the save-point feel they decided to take it slower and focus on characters (especially Bilbo and Thorin, Balin, and Kili) and their relationships and they decided to split the thing into three movies that each had their own focus and their own plot. Personally, I would have preferred to watch one movie, even a 4 or 5 hour one, to three, but in an age of almost nonexistent attention spans can you blame them for underestimating their fans and deciding to limit the run-time to 2 and a half hours each film? Some have talked about two movies being better, but after seeing Battle of the Five Armies I'm convinced that they made the right choice wen they decided that the battle needed its own movie...
Again, if it was my choice I would have to stuck to one really, really, really long movie, but that probably would have flopped if I'm completely honest with myself. The other thing I would have done differently would have been to try and preserve the narrator style a bit more somehow, perhaps by having old Bilbo narrate a little at the beginning and end of the adventure or something as a kind of frame (which they ALMOST did), but then again that might not have worked out in the end.
In the end, the Hobbit was a trilogy of great movies to add to our Middle Earth collection. Not as spectacular and awe-inspiring as Lord of the Rings, but neither was the source material. The trilogy had its flaws, some really big ones, but I find that most reviewers are focusing more on the "it shouldn't have been three movies" and "bohooo, I don't like HFR or 3D" and ignoring the real downsides of the movies!
Things that were NOT wrong with the Hobbit movies:
1) HFR & 3D - it's really not as gimmicky as the 3D in other movies and it actually does add depth to the lovely sets. And no, I don't care how many frames per second Peter Jackson is trying to make me watch it in, that's not a real issue with the movie. Other formats were still available. If HFR makes you want to throw up just go to the 2D version and spare us the endless circular discussion!
2) The three movie split. Yes, we would all have preferred to do it in 1 movie, but unless you and millions of your friends and millions of little children are willing to sit in the theater for 4 or 5 hours, which is how long it would have taken to do it well, then just accept their decision to make 3 movies.
3) Adding one female character to the all-male story. There's nothing inherently wrong with the leader of the Elven guard to be a female elf.
4) Legolas being in the movie. He was actually Thranduil's son. Lord of the Rings tells us he was sent by his father the Elvenking of Mirkwood to Elrond's council. It actually makes no sense for him to NOT have been there and the only reason he wasn't mentioned in the book is that a) Tolkien hadn't thought him up yet when he wrote it and b) in a book you aren't required to SHOW all the background elves that actually live in a place but don't have major roles. In a movie, you absolutely have to show them.
5) Showing Gandalf's side-trips/separate adventures. As explained above, we're not stuck with one point of view in a movie in this day and age and his goings and comings needed to be explained or else his just at the right moment reappearances would not have been remotely believable.
6) They're saved by the eagles again. That's what happened in the book. Yes, it's kind of ridiculous, but no, they couldn't have changed it without compromising the source material they are supposed to be faithfully interpreting.
7) The singing. We could not have wished for a better way to integrate Tolkien's constant breaking into song. Seriously, it was amazing how well they did it.
Things that WERE wrong with the Hobbit movies:
1) Tauriel and Kili falling in love. The one female warrior character did not need to become a love interest. It was possible for her to just be an awesome elf warrior. I don't need mushy romance in my fantasy, thank you. Especially the healing scene *barf*
2) Too much Azog before the final battle. I like that they included the back-story, but there was way too much interaction and actual fighting with Azog's orcs before the final battle. Way, way too much. Especially the part that ruined the barrel escape by turning it into a Bombur video-game.
3) A little too much Dol Guldur.
4) Radagast the Brown as an insane person. He's a powerful wizard who happens to like nature and animals and so on, that doesn't make him insane. Why oh why did he have to be insane? I remember once, long ago, when reading his name mentioned randomly in the books I was excited and intrigued by this character... *sigh*
5) The rabbit sled.
6) The mine-fight between the dwarves and Smaug. I will never forgive this one. It was just so wrong on too many levels. It messed up the characterizations. Was completely unbelievable (a huge melty gold statue that stays up for a second before melting again? Are you serious? Sledding on molten gold? Trying to kill a DRAGON with something hot?) It's just so painful to think about.
7) The weird Thorin hallucination that woke him up.
8) Legolas leaping on those falling rocks. I didn't even mind all the other crazy stuff he did, but this was way too much.
Final Words:
Difficult as it is to believe, some people are still kept away from Middle Earth because of the sheer length and slow style of the Lord of the Rings books. While we obsess over every detail others just can't get into Middle Earth. As fans we do, of course, recommend the movies to them as an easier, but almost identical experience, but some people still have a hard time with that many hours of film. I used to recommend the Hobbit book to those people. Unfortunately, I can't in the same way recommend the Hobbit movies because they're almost just as long, but actually a little more boring than the LOTR movies.
So that's why, for the sake of all the potential fans out there who are still being kept away, I would really like to see a fan-cut that combines all three awesome Hobbit movies into one much faster-paced one. If you braved through my above lists you'll be able to imagine what I would like to see deleted (hint: molten gold sequence, Radagast, Thorin hallucination, love story, etc). Such a cut, if it does manage to be under 5 hours, could do wonders for getting disinterested people to check it out and become fans of Middle Earth. It would also make it easier for fans like me to do marathons of the entire experience (Hobbit + LOTR). It has potential to be awesome. I can almost imagine Peter Jackson releasing his own short version with the Battle of the Five armies DVD extras or something.
Meanwhile, if you still haven't seen Battle of the Five armies, please ignore the critics and go see it. It's my favorite of the three and an excellent movie. It comes closest to the LOTR style. It ties everything together so well. A wonderful conclusion to an awe-inspiring six-movie experience.
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