The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien

Unpopular opinion? I wasn’t a huge fan. I’ve grown up with Lord of the Rings, the movies entertained me on trips, and The Hobbit was my bedtime story. I was super excited to see the movies and while at first I loved them, with each movie that came out, my excitement waivered. The animation and special effects quality was mediocre- The Battle of Five Armies was horrendous-, and the writing was frustrating. Usually when movies are multiple parts you can expect the majority of the original content to be there, so the money grabbing is acceptable, but when you stretch a story out so much that content must be added, there’s a problem. The added story arcs were confusing, I still don’t understand why orcs were running around, and it just made the story complicated and boring. The writers obviously were trying to make the movies more ‘adult’, because the book was very fairy tale, children’s book like, and the movies tried to have a darker quality, while keeping the more innocent humor, and it didn’t work very well. I missed the scene in Mirkwood Forest with the elves. It was always one of my favorite parts, having the dwarves chasing the elves off into the forest, and had the traditional fairy tale themes of ignoring a warning, and having an event occur three times. I did like the added female characters however, though the weird love triangle was, well, weird.

 The foreshadowing was confusing and interrupted the stories flow, especially one of the last scenes in The Battle of Five Armies, when Thranduil told Legolas to find Aragorn, about 30 years before Aragorn was born. Who thought that made sense? Additionally, I have no problem with unrealistic fight scenes as long as what’s going on is remotely probable and not completely predictable however, during the fight scenes, there was always something wrong; Either someone coming from nowhere and saving the day, someone not dying even though anyone else would have in real life, or the physics and the continuity of the fight scene was so messed up that everything was just ridiculous. Often all of the above would occur. I missed the scene in Mirkwood Forest with the elves. It was always one of my favorite parts, having the dwarves chasing the elves off into the forest, and had the traditional fairy tale themes of ignoring a warning, and having an event occur three times.

         So overall, the movies lacked most of the fun of the book, and the whimsy of the story. The actors worked well with what they were provided, however. Martin Freeman’s humor and Ian McKellen’s composure pulled the movies out of the reject pile and into the ‘Good for watching once or twice with friends’ pile.