We loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy and had some really high hopes for The Hobbit. But what we got seemed a little thin. Like butter scraped over too much bread. Did this story really need to be stretched over three long films? We don’t think so and here is why the Hobbit should have been made into one movie, not a trilogy.
The Hobbit is one book
Unlike The Lord of the Rings which was a series of books, The Hobbit is only one book. Not only is it just one book, it also only has about 300 pages. It can barely be called more than a short story. Knowing this, it seems pretty insane to stretch something of this size into three full feature-length films. What was Peter Jackson thinking? How was this achieved? By adding in a lot of unnecessary scenes, creating extra stories that weren’t part of the original tale, and even extending some new characters that receive only brief mentions in the book.
Radagast the Brown was only mentioned in passing as Galdalf’s cousin, but in The Hobbit films, he plays a very significant role with a whole other storyline that virtually didn’t exist in the book. Azog the Defiler, an Orc general was mentioned in the book as being deceased for years already, but we see him in full force during the film. Some other character additions were Legolas, who was only ever meant to be in The Lord of the Rings and never in The Hobbit, and Tauriel, who was completely fabricated by the writers of the film. That’s right, she doesn’t exist in any of Tolkien’s works.
It was written for children
The Hobbit was written by J. R. R. Tolkien and published in 1937 as a children’s book. This story came before The Lord of the Rings books, which were meant to be a continuation of the children’s Hobbit story. Tolkien saw what was possible for the story and wrote for 17 years to create the epic world of Middle Earth and all of its glorious characters. The Hobbit has a beautiful feeling of fantasy about it and a lovely somewhat comedic view at times. It was everything we would expect a child’s book to be. There are no gory fight scenes in the book. Nor were there any romantic happenings. Remove all the war, fighting, and mushy bits of the films and what would we be left with?ֳTolkien tried to bring
The Hobbit up to The Lord of the Rings standards
While he never wanted to fiddle with the actual book and do a re-release, Tolkien did want to bring The Hobbit more in line with The Lord of the Rings. He wanted them to tie in together and he, therefore, released appendices with The Lord of the Rings books to bind the two stories. Peter Jackson and his team most definitely made use of these to create the trilogy.
So why then was this short book stretched so far? Well, more than likely because it had to live up to the standards of The Lord of the Rings films which were insanely epic and clearly not made for children. The fans were expecting the same fantasy world, the same action and they got what they wanted.
