10 Harsh Realities Of Rewatching The Hobbit Trilogy, 11 Years After It Ended

The Hobbit is Peter Jackson’s second Lord of the Rings trilogy and the second best as well – some elements of it aged better than others. Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies are widely lauded as some of the best fantasy movies ever made, but their follow-up baffled many fans. While Warner Bros. changed the fantasy landscape forever with its 2000s LotR movies, The Hobbit was received with acrimony by some due to its many changes to the source material, written by legendary British author J.R.R. Tolkien. As such, rewatching it comes with some harsh realities.

That said, The Hobbit is a solid set of fantasy movies in its own right. This trilogy was always going to face a hard time being compared to The Lord of the Rings movies, which each rank over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. Landing 60 years before Frodo’s adventures in The Lord of the Rings timeline, The Hobbit covered the journey of Frodo’s uncle, Bilbo Baggins, as he reluctantly set off to reclaim Erebor with Thorin and his company. But the movie trio didn’t always hit the nail on the head, as a rewatching makes evident.

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Legolas In LotR Looks Totally Different To Legolas In The Hobbit

Legolas’ Appearance In The Warner Bros. Movies Is Inconsistent

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Legolas looks like a totally different Elf in The Hobbit after watching The Lord of the Rings 10 years previous. Legolas is one of the strongest members of the Fellowship of the Ring, so his contribution to both of Peter Jackson’s movie trilogies can’t be understated. Orlando Bloom excelled in the role in Jackson’s original trilogy, and while he didn’t underperform in The Hobbit, his presence was jarring.

Warner Bros. is bringing out its next live-action LotR movie in 2026 – The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.

Bloom was 22 when he started filming LotR and 36 when he finished filming The Hobbit, and the 15 years or so difference was evident. While Legolas must appear with AI in the new Gollum movie, it was digital technology that was used to de-age Bloom for The Hobbit. It probably had some effect, but still resulted in an uncanny valley situation. What’s more, Legolas’ eye color kept changing. Peter Jackson advised that his contact lenses had indeed been forgotten in a few scenes in the director’s commentary of the movies.

9

Martin Freeman Was An Amazing Bilbo That Won’t Resurface

Martin Freeman Is One Of The Warner Bros. LotR Movies’ Best Actors

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It is a blessing and a curse that Martin Freeman will probably never resurface as Bilbo Baggins. Freeman was flawlessly cast as Bilbo, taking the role of a grumpy, aging Hobbit in a children’s book and making him into a self-contented, middle-class, British everyman with an Estuary English accent. Freeman perfectly captured the endlessly relatable, settled adult with too much to lose to drop it all and go traveling.

Tolkienian Age	Event Marking The Start	Years	Total Length In Solar Years
Before time	Indeterminate	Indeterminate	Indeterminate
Days before Days	Ainur entered Eä	1 – 3,500 Valian Years	33,537
Pre-First Age Years of the Trees (Y.T.)	Yavanna created the Two Trees	Y.T. 1 – 1050	10,061
First Age (F.A.)	Elves awoke in Cuiviénen	Y.T. 1050 – Y.T. 1500, F.A. 1 – 590	4,902
Second Age (S.A.)	War of Wrath ended	S.A. 1 – 3441	3,441
Third Age (T.A.)	Last Alliance defeated Sauron	T.A. 1 – 3021	3,021
See more : Ao No Orchestra Season 1 Episode 13 Release Date and Time, Countdown, When is it Coming Out? Fourth Age (Fo.A)	Elven-rings left Middle-earth	Fo.A 1 – unknown	Unknown

Undoubtedly one of the most distinguished treasures in the cast of Warner Bros.’ entire Lord of the Rings franchise, Freeman was a highlight of The Hobbit movies. But his Third Age role is unlikely to be repeated in any other movies since The Hobbit is a standalone story. Tolkien seldom touched on the younger Bilbo in the wider Lord of the Rings world of Middle-earth laid out across time in the legendarium, while future LotR movies have more material to adapt from other stories in LotR’s appendices.

8

Lee Pace Was Underappreciated As Thranduil In The Hobbit

Thranduil Was A Highlight Of The Hobbit

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Lee Pace’s Thranduil didn’t get enough credit for The Hobbit, despite dominating the screen entirely whenever he appeared. Pace was the perfect Thranduil, icy and haughty without slipping into villain territory. He was the ideal actor to portray the Sindarin Elf, and his work in the trilogy was lauded by fans and viewers. However, his great work got lost in The Hobbit trilogy’s somewhat mixed reception.

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While The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug earned a healthy 74% on Rotten Tomatoes, its predecessor, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey got 64%. Meanwhile, the final Hobbit movie achieved just 59%. These are decent scores for fantasy movies, but the inevitable comparison to the LotR trilogy left a bad taste in critics’ mouths when it came to reviewing The Hobbit. Readers questioned the trilogy’s faithfulness to the book. Overall, Pace’s outstanding performance wasn’t really recognized in the response to the trilogy.

7

Romance Felt Like An Unneeded Addition To The Hobbit

The Hobbit Invented A Romance With Questionable Value

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The Hobbit movies invented a romance to center around, and it didn’t always seem valuable. The movies used a lot of original material, which definitely seemed superfluous to the plot. Tolkien’s children’s book was about the spirit of adventure and teamwork, but making the movies more suited to adults didn’t require the typical Hollywood formula of a quest and a romance for the sake of it. This took away from the morals of the story.

The first LotR movie since The Hobbit was The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.

Making The Hobbit movies romantic made them more formulaic and closer to genre fiction than the groundbreaking story they came from. Tolkien practically invented fantasy, so there was no need to update the story for a modern audience by adding in a love interest. The Hobbit could have conveyed a real sense of history and importance, teaching viewers about the origins of fantasy by expressing the book’s real themes.

6

The Hobbit Felt More Like A Prequel Than Its Own Story

The Hobbit Didn’t Feel Like A Standalone Trilogy

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The Hobbit was a beautiful story in and of itself, and the movie trilogy failed to communicate this. The Hobbit was the first work Tolkien published about Middle-earth, and it stood perfectly on its own and did very well. The story had a circularity all its own and resolved its adventure with the kind of happy ending that is rare in the contemporary landscape of fantasy, so prone to dark stories. It should have made for a bright, cheery standalone trilogy.

However, Peter Jackson wanted to tie The Hobbit in with his previous LotR trilogy. In many ways, this made total sense. Tolkien himself retconned continuity into his Hobbit story during rewrites. Jackson faced a bigger challenge than Tolkien, making this continuity present itself on-screen. Overall, it was wise to make the two trilogies fit together so well. However, the final Hobbit movie’s parting message about Bilbo keeping the ring diminished the power and potential of the whole trilogy somewhat, as if its heroes’ actions weren’t enough somehow.

5

It Was A Total Mystery How Tauriel & Kili Fell In Love So Fast

Tauriel & Kili’s Relationship Seemed Very Rushed

Peter Jackson added in a lot of content about Kili the Dwarf and his love for Tauriel, but it seemed rushed. Kili was a character from The Hobbit book, but Tauriel was a Warner Bros. invention. This Elf was created to provide a romantic subplot, which was enlivened by roping Legolas in to create a love triangle with even bigger stakes in Middle-earth. Although dubious due to its commercial origins alone, this subplot wasn’t done very well.

Tauriel and Kili appeared to fall in love after just a few conversations, amounting to a simplistic, superficial Hollywood fling.

Kili and Tauriel were an intriguing match in Middle-earth. It was highly Tolkienian to fall in love across species, but it was so special and sacred that it would have been completely earth-shattering had Tolkien written it. Tauriel and Kili appeared to fall in love after just a few conversations, amounting to a simplistic, superficial Hollywood fling. Their union already risked devaluing the phenomenon that was Aragorn and Arwen’s relationship in Lord of the Rings, but its poor execution made the whole trilogy look worse.

4

The Hobbit Spent Too Long On Grand-Scale Battle Scenes

The Hobbit Felt Different In Tone From The Book

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Peter Jackson had a very hard task adapting a children’s book released in 1937, but The Hobbit’s protracted fight scenes may have been where it stumbled the most. The movie struck a strange chord with many critics and fans who felt insulted by the trilogy’s many diversions from its source material. As such, it received vastly differing critiques from different angles. Some felt that the movie’s childlike dialogue downplayed the characters’ intelligence.

But the dialogue that was whimsical and fun was actually far closer, in tone, to the source material than the more serious lines. Gandalf and Bilbo’s funny exchange about a good morning could have been pulled straight from the pages of an early Tolkien creation, capturing the light-hearted joy of the book. But The Battle of the Five Armies’ battle scenes were incredibly drawn out, making a fantasy heist story into an action war flick.

3

The Hobbit Confuses People About J.R.R. Tolkien’s Original Story

The Trilogy Dilutes The Power Of Tolkien’s Work

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The Hobbit trilogy is made up of three good fantasy movies, but they do occasionally risk confusing Tolkien’s message. Unquestionably, the movies do dilute the power of Tolkien’s 1937 book. But they also bring their own flair to proceedings, offering unique and engaging additions to the cinematic world of Middle-earth. They certainly have value as movies in their own right, but they do confuse the key themes of the legendarium slightly.

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The movies are to be enjoyed as the movies, separate from the world-changing literature they spring from. The literature is to be judged on its own merit as well. But many people have seen the movies and not read the books, creating preconceptions about the books that may put them off reading. It is easy for casual fans to get Tolkien’s brilliant overall story, including that of LotR, confused, when watching The Hobbit. The Hobbit trilogy distorts the roles of Galadriel, Gandalf, and Radagast, as well as those of its canonical characters.

2

Peter Jackson Came On Board To The Hobbit Too Late

The Hobbit’s Confused Development Inhibited Final Results

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Guillermo del Toro was going to direct The Hobbit for a long time, but the switch to Peter Jackson hindered the trilogy. Del Toro and Jackson are both fantastic directors and either would have worked, although Jackson was probably the wiser selection, given the success of his first LotR trilogy. However, the disorganized and complicated development process that saw the direction of the movies change left Jackson with little time to plan his trilogy.

From the sounds of it, Warner Bros. put Peter Jackson under huge contractual pressure to start shooting the movies by a certain time and stick to a certain timeline. Jackson said, “I spent most of The Hobbit feeling like I was not on top of it,” and said that the scripts weren’t finalized to his team’s satisfaction before shooting (The Guardian). Jackson was also shooting without storyboards and was “winging it” a lot of the time to stick to the deal’s timing. This resulted in The Hobbit having less thematic resonance than LotR.

1

The Hobbit Didn’t Need Three Whole Movies To Tell Its Story

The Hobbit Needed Just One Or Two Movies

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The Hobbit probably needed just one or two movies to tell its story, but it ended up dragged out into three movies due to its rushed process. Peter Jackson nailed The Lord of the Rings trilogy and probably would have made a Hobbit production of a far higher quality if he had been given the time. With more time to perfect his script and the story he wanted to tell, Jackson probably could have avoided filler material like Tauriel.

It was understandable for the trilogy to connect to the previous LotR movies, and adding in more scenes was needed for this. Focusing on the Necromancer was a fair choice, to a certain extent, and helped bridge The Hobbit to LotR. However, this material had to be bulked out with other material to make three feature-length movies worthwhile. Naturally, this material was guided by what was popular at the box office at the time and didn’t always add to the story. The harsh reality is that The Hobbit needed just one or two movies to lay out its plot, with proper planning.

Source: The Guardian

The Hobbit

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The Hobbit film series is a fantasy adventure trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit. Set 60 years before The Lord of the Rings, the films follow Bilbo Baggins’ quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain from the dragon Smaug. The series grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide and is known for its elaborate visuals and epic storytelling.

Created by

Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Guillermo del Toro

First Film

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Latest Film

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Cast

Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Evangeline Lilly, Luke Evans, Lee Pace, Orlando Bloom

Source: https://truongnguyenbinhkhiem.edu.vn
Category: Entertainment