The Hobbit ('77) vs The Hobbits ('12-'14)

[Balrog]

(Technically there was a Russian Hobbit released in 1985, but since it was made by dirty Commies we can safely ignore it)

So after having a chance to settle down from the trauma of the trilogy and rewatching the original animated adaptation, I strongly believe that the latter is clearly and unequivocally the better film experience, in large part because it is the best and most faithful adaptation of the original work.

That is not to say that the animated version is flawless. The style is not exactly for everyone and some of the artistic choices are questionable (short green Wood Elves). The movie itself is also rather short on running time, which resulted in corners being cut, a few plot points simplified or altogether cut (Beorn, the Arkenstone). But where it counted the plot was spot-on with the book, which meant it was able to capture the essence of the book and thus the vision the original author wished to express, which (I strongly believe) is the measure to which all adaptations must be held.

Nor will I not say that the trilogy doesn't have its own merits: it is visually spectacular in many places and stylistically more coherent with the LotR movies. It is however a bloated mess of a trilogy, which not only changed key plot points for no real discernable reason but added a whole lot of original and unwanted content: the Azog rivalry, the hackneyed romance, the Master's toady, Smaug running away from the dwarves, token PCisms, Dune Worms, dragonsickness, the god-damn never ending fights, etc. Whatever value they added to the movie was minimal if any, while (more importantly) most of the changes completely detracted from the fact that this is suppose to be the story of Bilbo Baggins and his adventure from the Shire to the Lonely Mountain and how that adventure changed him. Instead his story often gets lost amidst the various other plots and what we get is less a movie of The Hobbit and more a generic fantasy film trying to cash in on the popularity of its famous name.

[The Romulan Republic]

(Technically there was a Russian Hobbit released in 1985, but since it was made by dirty Commies we can safely ignore it)

But I had no idea this movie was even made, so I can't really comment on it.

Though the Hobbit might actually appeal to Soviet sensibilities in some ways, since there's definitely a theme about the corruption of wealth that could be spun as a blatantly anti-capitalism message with very little effort or alteration.

And I think everyone who knows Tolkien knows he wasn't a big fan of the industrial age.

So after having a chance to settle down from the trauma of the trilogy and rewatching the original animated adaptation, I strongly believe that the latter is clearly and unequivocally the better film experience, in large part because it is the best and most faithful adaptation of the original work.

Not having seen the animated film either, I can't really argue that one way or the other. And in any case, people are entitled to their own tastes.

However, I do take issue with some of your specific reasons for preferring it.

That is not to say that the animated version is flawless. The style is not exactly for everyone and some of the artistic choices are questionable (short green Wood Elves). The movie itself is also rather short on running time, which resulted in corners being cut, a few plot points simplified or altogether cut (Beorn, the Arkenstone). But where it counted the plot was spot-on with the book, which meant it was able to capture the essence of the book and thus the vision the original author wished to express, which (I strongly believe) is the measure to which all adaptations must be held.

While in theory I generally wish to respect the author's intentions, I object to using rigid adherence to the source material as the sole benchmark for quality in an adaptation, and I think its important to avoid being too rigid in the deviations from the source material that you will accept. It isn't possible to avoid making substantial changes at times, weather due to limits in time and budget or something simply not being doable in the medium you're working with, and their are a lot of other factors to weigh against such adherence, and frankly, if its taken too far, it comes off as just another iteration of the mindless "they changed it so its bad" obsessed fan attitude which so often hinders doing anything original and accepting good works on their own merits, even if they're different from the source material. I have seen a lot of good work spat on by "fans" because it didn't just rehash the same shit over again (or because it didn't adhere to what they interpreted the work as being about), and it never fails to annoy me.

To me, what is important is not adherence to the source material per say, but an ability to capture the spirit, the essence (as you yourself say) of the work (or do an appeal new take on the idea while acknowledging that it is different from the original).

Now, I would argue that the Peter Jackson Hobbit trilogy largely failed on both those points, but not simply because it was different.

Nor will I not say that the trilogy doesn't have its own merits: it is visually spectacular in many places and stylistically more coherent with the LotR movies. It is however a bloated mess of a trilogy, which not only changed key plot points for no real discernable reason but added a whole lot of original and unwanted content: the Azog rivalry, the hackneyed romance, the Master's toady, Smaug running away from the dwarves, token PCisms, Dune Worms, dragonsickness, the god-damn never ending fights, etc.

I actually somewhat liked the worms (which as I recall are based off something that got a one-line mention in the original book), and likewise dragon sickness has some basis in the book (although Tolkien portrayed it differently and, I dare say, less melodramatically).

I largely agree with the rest, but do object to one particular point, which is the use of the term "token PCisms". I presume you are referring to the addition of non-white male characters who weren't in the book. To that, I have two points in response.

1. Galadriel's presence is entirely reasonable and justified, as she is part of the Council which took on the Necromancer, a plot that was alluded to in the original book and had a significant impact on the story, even if it took place in the background. While I don't entirely like how she was portrayed in the film, I see no reason for even all but the most obsessive book purists to object to her presence. And it does save the film from being a complete, as I remember my brother calling the first one, "sausage fest".

2. The term "token PCisms" presumes that the only or primary reason a non-white male character who wasn't in the source material was added is for politically correct tokenism, which in turn implies that their could be no other reason a new non-white male character would be introduced, no contribution such a character could make to merit their existence other than political correctness. Now, I can understand your objecting to the addition of anything not in the book (though as I hope I made clear, I personally have my misgivings about that position), but I do have a problem with that implication. I often see this sort of thing about the inclusion of non-white male characters, and the implied assumption, to me, is that a woman or minority must be included only due to political correctness because they could not possibly contribute anything else to the film on their own merits. In other words, it is implicitly racist and sexist.

Unless, of course, you can provide behind the scenes information from credible sources showing that was Jackson and company's motivation.

My biggest problem with the lady elf warrior they added was not that she was an original character, nor that she was female, but that she was not terribly well-written. A sappy, predictable star-crossed lovers plot was not something I wanted or needed to see.

Whatever value they added to the movie was minimal if any, while (more importantly) most of the changes completely detracted from the fact that this is suppose to be the story of Bilbo Baggins and his adventure from the Shire to the Lonely Mountain and how that adventure changed him. Instead his story often gets lost amidst the various other plots and what we get is less a movie of The Hobbit and more a generic fantasy film trying to cash in on the popularity of its famous name.

I'm not sure that's entirely fair, but I do think that, for the later instalments at least, the focus shifted somewhat from Bilbo.

The first film, in my opinion, was probably the best.

[Tribble]

I chose the animated version as being superior for two reasons:

The first is that the animated version has far better pacing than the Jackon trilogy. While you can argue it was too fast, and skimmed over some essential details, at least it never got bogged down or boring. The Jackson trilogy's pace was glacial, even by LOTR standards. Obviously this was because they tried to milk three movies out of a single and relatively short children's book. While I'm sure most people think that the Hobbit should only be a single film, I think the two-parter that they originally planned for could have worked. The first film seemed decently paced, and it ended about where I expected it to. It was the other films which really slowed down. I don't like most of the material they added in which wasn't in the book; not because I'm a purist, but because I didn't feel it added anything to the story. I'll admit I did like the idea of showing Gandalf's side-quest (which was alluded to in the book,) but I'm not a fan of the execution. The rest of it is pretty much filler, and boy does it show.

The biggest problem for me is the lack of focus on Bilbo. While I don't mind having a movie focus on what other characters are up to from time to time (like the aforementioned Gandalf scenes,) after the first movie Bilbo is shoved off to the side and is pretty much a secondary character for the rest of the films. Even worse was that they undid several of Bilbo's feats in the book, just to make the dwarves look cooler (and have another fight scene to fill out the screen tine). Such as the defeat of the spiders (in the films the dwarves do most of the work via fighting), his success at the river (in the films his plan would have failed if the dwarves hadn't gotten involved and broken the gate, not to mention the random orc encounter), and most egregiously, his dealings with Smaug. Remember in the book where Bilbo braved going into the mountain twice on his own, and risking his life by continuing the conversation with Smaug in order to confirm Smaug's weakness. Obviously they couldn't put that in the film, could they? Because why show your supposedly main character playing a critical role in the defeat of Smaug, that's just being silly!

[Tribble]

Sorry, timer ran out.

To clarify my previous post, yes Bilbo went into the mountain, and yes he saw Smaug's weakness. But there are a couple of key differences from the book (and the animated film) which I think is detrimental:

A) In the Jackson trilogy, Bard the Bowman told Bilbo the story of Smaug getting hit by the arrow and being weakened. All Bilbo did was confirm Bard's claim. In the book, when Bilbo sees Smaug he notices that Smaug appears to be missing a scale, and convinces Smaug to show off his underside in order to confirm it. The discovery of Smaug weakness was entirely due to Bilbo's initiative.

B) In the Jackson trilogy Bilbo's confirmation is completely moot because that info is never conveyed to Bard via the raven, and Bard figures things out entirely on his own. Apart from waking up the dragon, Bilbo doesn't actually accomplish anything.

[Tsyroc]

I like the animated movie much better.

If you watch it on video without commercials it does move a bit fast, but in general it flows much better than the Jackson movies. It is also about Bilbo, "There and Back Again". The Jackson movies are about a whole lot more and Bilbo tends to get lost at times. If anything, the animated movie shows that they probably could have done a single live action movie and covered the book pretty well.

I did like some of the added stuff in the Jackson movie. Radagast, Thorin as more of a clear hero type, Evangeline Lilly's elf character, and the stuff with the "necromancer", especially Galadriel "kicking ass" were good. I could have done without the dwarf/elf love story, stretching Thorin's battle with Azog out quite so long, but most of all some of the overly extended action sequences. The worst of which was the one with the dwarves in the goblin city, but the barrel run was a bit much too.

When it comes to The Hobbit, whichever version, I'm in it because of the dragon. Given what Peter Jackson had said previously about the best dragons in film, (Disney's Sleeping Beauty and Vermithrax Pejorative from Dragonslayer being the best ever) I was a little disappointed in Smaug. He was still cool, and I like that his fire was almost lava like in that it had some mass, but I think they made a mistake in diverging from the book to go with what they did, at least in one sense. From what I've read, and I could be wrong, Smaug was supposed to have 4 legs plus wings, which would make him different from the dragon in Dragonslayer and most of the dragons derived from that version (Reign of Fire, Harry Potter) that have come out since. I thought it was odd that Jackson would have them skew from what the books said to go with this version when he has tended to try to stay visually consistent with what Tolkien described. I also wasn't crazy about Smaug's chest/belly glowing prior to his breathing fire. It was kind of cool but I'll stick with Godzilla for my "oh damn, that glowy thing on that dragon means he is about to fuck me up" fix.

I did like that Smaug was a bad ass. He was huge, and even without a scale or an armored suit of gems he wasn't going to be taken down by just any arrow. It had to be specially made, and probably magic, to deal with him. I thought it seemed like Smaug might have been a little too vulnerable in the animated movie or as described in the books. I mean, if it was relatively easy to take down a flying dragon then they wouldn't be as big a deal as Smaug seemed to be.

As for voicing Smaug. I give a slight edge to Richard Boone who voiced the animated version, but both versions are fine.

[Elheru Aran]

I would have to vote for the live action version, mostly because the Rankin-Bass adaption was IMO horribly done and extremely cheesy. It gets major points for sticking to the plot much better though. Honestly, given the drawbacks of the live action trilogy, it's frankly something like a 51-49% split.

[Purple]

As far as I am concerned the new movies got the entire feel of the books wrong. Bilbo was turned into a side character in his own story (as others have already explained), the most entertaining and comedic parts (bard, spiders...) were cut out or short to make room for slapstick comedy and the travesty of the golden dwarf and they threw in a pointless romance sub plot which serves only to take time away so that they can't film the things that they should have.

So anything, absolutely anything has to be a better version than that.

[TheFeniX]

Smaug in the live adaption was a huge let down. The Animated versions boasting is what taught me there's certain dialog us lowly mortal can't speak out loud without sounding like huge dorks. But when delivered by the right person, makes for something awesome. Maybe I was set to be disappointed by the boast in the remake. That said, I was not impressed. My wife, who never saw the original, was also not impressed.

But hey, Elf - Dorf love triangle. Good stuff, right?

[Darth Holbytlan]

I'm not voting because I have still not gotten around to watching any of the Hobbit trilogy. I'm still not sure why—I own the first movie, but have never watched it.

The biggest problem for me is the lack of focus on Bilbo. While I don't mind having a movie focus on what other characters are up to from time to time (like the aforementioned Gandalf scenes,) after the first movie Bilbo is shoved off to the side and is pretty much a secondary character for the rest of the films. Even worse was that they undid several of Bilbo's feats in the book, just to make the dwarves look cooler (and have another fight scene to fill out the screen tine). Such as the defeat of the spiders (in the films the dwarves do most of the work via fighting), his success at the river (in the films his plan would have failed if the dwarves hadn't gotten involved and broken the gate, not to mention the random orc encounter), and most egregiously, his dealings with Smaug. Remember in the book where Bilbo braved going into the mountain twice on his own, and risking his life by continuing the conversation with Smaug in order to confirm Smaug's weakness. Obviously they couldn't put that in the film, could they? Because why show your supposedly main character playing a critical role in the defeat of Smaug, that's just being silly!

I liked the LotR movies a lot, but one of the bigger weaknesses they had was their tendency to undermine the character's best moments. They stole Frodo's sole escape from the Black Riders, had Faramir succumb to the Ring's temptation for a while, and pretty much turning Gimli into a comic relief. It sounds like the Hobbit trilogy was more of the same, only harder.

[Civil War Man]

I'm not voting because I have still not gotten around to watching any of the Hobbit trilogy. I'm still not sure why—I own the first movie, but have never watched it.

The first one was, in my opinion, decent. It had some pretty awkward parts and changes I wasn't 100% on board with, but it did try to keep the same tone as the book and many of the changes, if anything, actually reinforced Bilbo's role in the story and his characterization as an unconventional fantasy hero.

The other two were badly written and poorly edited dumpster fires, though.

<snip both posts about undermining Bilbo as a character>

I don't have much to add to your posts other than that I agree with them 100%. The second two movies really undercut Bilbo as a character by effectively removing his biggest contributions to the success of the party, instead choosing to focus more on a Thorin-as-a-shorter-Aragorn story, which turned the whole thing into another generic quasi-medieval fantasy.

(As a side note, I find it interesting that while The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings effectively created the generic quasi-medieval fantasy genre, they are actually good examples of unique departures from the genre since their main protagonists aren't strong warriors or powerful wizards. All of the hobbits in the books are just ordinary everyday people who succeed based on their luck, bravery, and wits.)

My biggest problem with the lady elf warrior they added was not that she was an original character, nor that she was female, but that she was not terribly well-written. A sappy, predictable star-crossed lovers plot was not something I wanted or needed to see.

She was pretty much a badly written fanfiction character written into the movie. Galadriel was not a token, but I'd argue that Tauriel definitely was. She had no meaningful contribution to the story, the tone and narrative of the story had to be warped almost beyond recognition to even include her, and she had pretty much zero characterization beyond being a love interest to two minor characters. It probably would have been less sexist to have had no women in the movies at all than to have Tauriel as the most prominent female character.

Nor will I not say that the trilogy doesn't have its own merits: it is visually spectacular in many places and stylistically more coherent with the LotR movies. It is however a bloated mess of a trilogy, which not only changed key plot points for no real discernable reason but added a whole lot of original and unwanted content: the Azog rivalry, the hackneyed romance, the Master's toady, Smaug running away from the dwarves, token PCisms, Dune Worms, dragonsickness, the god-damn never ending fights, etc. Whatever value they added to the movie was minimal if any, while (more importantly) most of the changes completely detracted from the fact that this is suppose to be the story of Bilbo Baggins and his adventure from the Shire to the Lonely Mountain and how that adventure changed him. Instead his story often gets lost amidst the various other plots and what we get is less a movie of The Hobbit and more a generic fantasy film trying to cash in on the popularity of its famous name.

It's actually amazing when you look at some of the scenes that were deleted to make room for stuff like the Adventures of the Master's Toady. One of the deleted scenes from the second movie included Gandalf finding Thrain in the Necromancer's stronghold and discovering that Sauron had recovered one of the Dwarven rings of power, and the third movie cut Thorin's funeral and the crowning of Dain as King Under the Mountain.

And while some of the visuals looked decent, I'd actually say that, particularly as the movies progressed, they actually became more mediocre and disjointed, culminating in Legolas running up falling masonry like he's fucking Wile E. Coyote.

[Balrog]

(Technically there was a Russian Hobbit released in 1985, but since it was made by dirty Commies we can safely ignore it)

Oh pull the stick out of your ass TRR

However, I do take issue with some of your specific reasons for preferring it.

Surprise

While in theory I generally wish to respect the author's intentions, I object to using rigid adherence to the source material as the sole benchmark for quality in an adaptation, and I think its important to avoid being too rigid in the deviations from the source material that you will accept.

If you can't adhere to the source material to the best of your abilities, then frankly you have no business making an adaptation; or rather, the only reason you're making an "adaptation" is for business, to cash in on name recognition because your original idea couldn't cut it on it's own merits. We're not talking about some authorless thousand-year-old fairy tale which has already been retold and changed in the telling countless times or a Shakespeare play of which tons of faithful adaptations have already done so, hey, let's get all experimental and shit. For the majority of the public, to whom a given work of art is either entirely unknown or elicits only vague familiarity, an adaptation will be their first exposure to this work, and it behooves a filmmaker to give an accurate representation of someone else's art. It'd be no different then trying to convince your friend to read Mary Shelly's Frankenstein because there's this sweet car chase after the monster escapes, then he hooks up with this smoking babe and has to save her from an army of ninjas hired by Van Helsing...

It isn't possible to avoid making substantial changes at times, weather due to limits in time and budget or something simply not being doable in the medium you're working with, and their are a lot of other factors to weigh against such adherence

This isn't remotely close to what is being discussed though. For example, the first LotR movie sped through the first few chapters after Bilbo's party, and it completely cut out Tom Bombadil, but not only were these necessary changes due to pacing and time constraints necessary for the film format, their omissions or contractions didn't detract from the overall story. And for some works, certain formats are simply incompatible; if you tried to make a single movie out of each of the Song of Ice and Fire books, it'd be a bigger massacre than anything GRR Martin could concoct. The changes in the trilogy though completely altered the entire tone of the story until it is just barely recognizable as one people originally read in the book.

frankly, if its taken too far, it comes off as just another iteration of the mindless "they changed it so its bad" obsessed fan attitude which so often hinders doing anything original and accepting good works on their own merits, even if they're different from the source material.

Then here's a thought: if you have an original work which is good on it's own merits, then publish it like an original work. By all means tell people which previous stories served as your inspiration, but don't hijack someone else's work to get your own words published.

To me, what is important is not adherence to the source material per say, but an ability to capture the spirit, the essence (as you yourself say) of the work (or do an appeal new take on the idea while acknowledging that it is different from the original).

Except when your "adaptation" takes that essence and distills it to its most basic components in order to accommodate your changes, you lose exactly what made that story unique and different. There are a million Hero's Quest stories out there, what makes Bilbo's unique is his very stature and lack of traditional heroic qualities. He isn't an Olympian blessed by the gods, he is literally the little man, the everyman, going on a dangerous quest and overcoming terrible challenges through perfectly normal qualities including wit, intelligence, and bravery. If you took his story and changed his character into Wonder Woman, even if you kept all other characters and events exactly the same, you would fundamentally alter the type of story you're telling, in which case you are no longer telling the story of a small hobbit somehow overcoming adversity but of an incredible Amazonian goddess being formulaically heroic.

Now, I would argue that the Peter Jackson Hobbit trilogy largely failed on both those points, but not simply because it was different.

It was by the very act of being different that the films failed to capture the spirit of the book.

I actually somewhat liked the worms (which as I recall are based off something that got a one-line mention in the original book), and likewise dragon sickness has some basis in the book (although Tolkien portrayed it differently and, I dare say, less melodramatically).

They were a throw-away reference from a single line in the book about creatures which may or may not actually exists and who certainly had no known association with orcs or really anyone else. Even going with the idea they did work for the orcs, their introduction raises even more issues than the Eagles historically did (like why not tunnel directly into the mountain or into Dale or make more use of them besides their explosive entrance).

And the dragonsickness completely took away an important part of Thorin's character, which was simply that he could be a greedy asshole. To appropriate a popular phrase, he lost some of his agency with the unnecessary introduction of this outside influence. It smacked too much of trying to replicate the problem of the Ring when by all accounts that too should be Bilbo's story since he's carrying the actual Ring!

I largely agree with the rest, but do object to one particular point, which is the use of the term "token PCisms". I presume you are referring to the addition of non-white male characters who weren't in the book.

As well as the "C'mon girls, let's go fight!" scene, which just smacks of compensation for previous movies where the women and children head for the hills. I'm on the fence about whether the Tauriel would count as well.

1. Galadriel's presence is entirely reasonable and justified, as she is part of the Council which took on the Necromancer, a plot that was alluded to in the original book and had a significant impact on the story, even if it took place in the background. While I don't entirely like how she was portrayed in the film, I see no reason for even all but the most obsessive book purists to object to her presence. And it does save the film from being a complete, as I remember my brother calling the first one, "sausage fest".

There was absolutely nothing wrong about Galadriel being in the movie or even demonstrating her powers in a fight. Her confrontation with Sauron could have been better but being this was an event which actually happened concurrently with The Hobbit (even if not described in the same source but another from the same author) but which was only vaguely detailed, this was a perfect case of maintaining the spirit of the scene while allowing the adapter to add some personal touches.

2. The term "token PCisms" presumes that the only or primary reason a non-white male character who wasn't in the source material was added is for politically correct tokenism, which in turn implies that their could be no other reason a new non-white male character would be introduced, no contribution such a character could make to merit their existence other than political correctness.

So when the committee which wrote this trilogy got to the scene, which do you think was honestly going through their mind?

A)That several people from Harad and the lands further south decided to travel thousands of miles through uncivilized and sometimes hostile territory to go live in a place which, for many decades now, has been a frozen shantytown in the ass-end of nowhere with a dangerous dragon last known to have taken residence in a rather conspicuous place within sight of said settlement, and just happened to be there when our protagonists made their entrance.

or

B)Enough people complained about there not being enough PoCs in the films but all the main characters had been cast already, so some black background extras were hired in order to up the diversity quotient.

I know you've expressed before the approval of diversity purely for the sake of it, but there comes a point where tokenism is not a good policy and it can be a dealbreaker story-wise. It'd be no different then watching a movie set in Scandinavia during the Viking Age and our hero is traveling through a desolate region close to the Arctic Sea when he happens upon a small fishing village where he meets a Sub-Saharan African living with her Han Chinese wife. Technically, there is nothing about that situation which would be physically impossible, but it'd have a strong potential to be a very SoD-breaking event, so its inclusion would have to have a damn good reason if you didn't want to lose your audience.

I often see this sort of thing about the inclusion of non-white male characters, and the implied assumption, to me, is that a woman or minority must be included only due to political correctness because they could not possibly contribute anything else to the film on their own merits. In other words, it is implicitly racist and sexist.

You are right, including a character solely for being non-white or a woman would be racist and sexist. But I'm sure you could tell me the vital plot point which was served by having random black townsfolk show up in the crowd looking on at the dwarves...

Unless, of course, you can provide behind the scenes information from credible sources showing that was Jackson and company's motivation.

It's right over by the pile of behind-the-scenes information showing the Academy didn't nominate any black actors because racism

But being serious now, tell me what purpose was fulfilled by the token PCisms we saw in the movie? What exactly did those changes contribute to the story?

The first film, in my opinion, was probably the best.

Of the three it was the closest which held true to the book, though that's not saying much.

[Balrog]

The one original thing which I did like about the movies was the inclusion of Radagast, who doesn't appear or is specifically mentioned in any of the relevant material, and even the eccentricities of his character they created were interesting and helped to differentiate him from Gandalf and Saruman. The jackrabbit sled was a bit much, but otherwise if the movies had been more true to the books but they kept him in, I would have been content.