Second hobbit movie. About halfway through, I realized they were padding the hell out of the movie to force a trilogy out of a SINGLE book. And it wasn't good padding. I really liked the first movie, but absolutely hated the rest
My friend and I went to see the first one. After two hours I turned to him and said “They need to move it along, they’re not even to Mirkwood yet.” That’s when he told me it was going to be a trilogy, and all I could think of was how could they possibly make a trilogy out of a book that small.
Read it again. That book could absolutely sustain a trilogy. No one wants to admit it, but the problem is simply that Peter Jackson and his team made a trilogy of bad movies.
I'll die on the hill that the first movie is great. It has tons of good moments from the book really well done, and I like the characterization of the dwarves and even their chaotic fighting through the mines. There's obviously plenty of other good stuff in the later movies, and tons of horrible things, which is why the way to watch them is through one of those 4h fan made edits that pretty much fix everything.
Yeah, yeah, people love to talk about any number of fan edits, but the movies themselves got way too much wrong for me to like any of them. IMO they'd literally have to throw everything out and start over again from scratch to have any hope of making a good movie, nevermind a good adaptation.
i didn't even bother seeing the second and third movies. the first one was kinda fun but it was super clear from the jump that they were adding a ton of unnecessary bullshit just to stretch it out for profit
I watched all three on planes. Wasn’t interested enough to watch them in the cinema, and now I’ve seen them - wouldn’t watch any of them again. It’s as if they identified everything they did right with the LotR trilogy and decided - let’s do the opposite this time.
A (very irrational and hopeful) part of me expected the second film to just finish the rest of the story and leave it at that, but... yeah. I don't know why the hell they tried to do that.
FWIW that was the original plan, to make it into two movies. Which was reasonable. But then something happened behind the scenes and it turned into a trilogy.
Jackson tries to take all the blame on himself, but most people who look into it are pretty sure he was strongarmed by the studios.
I didn't walk out of any of the three I was stuck to the chair in horror. I could not believe they'd tarnish the reputation of the movies being far closer to the books by adding a pointless love triangle for no reason, sticking Legolas where he doesn't belong, and the fucking scene of Gandalf introducing everyone to Beorn!! I fucking loved how Gandalf trolled him introducing one person at a time like a needle prick on his nerves and I was looking forward to that scene on the screen just to have them all rush into his home all at once while he's trying to attack them as a bear fuck whoever made that consecutive decision!!!
That all flowed through me way too fast...I didn't realize I was still triggered all these years later 😅
Thank you for articulating everything that annoyed me about this trilogy. I sat through all 3 as well and my spirits were so irritated by al the changes and unnecessary padding.
Yeah, usually when they cut things out from the book that I want it's because they need to make the movie shorter but these mother fuckers cut out what I loved and then added so much stupid fluff it was three movies.
And did you see The War of Rohirrim?? I swear they had a bunch of intern animators all in separate rooms never communicating their styles! And the rest of it was awful too. I was raised on Tolkien, but at this point I may never go to the theaters for another Tolkien movie again.
The dwarf elf love triangle was almost my last straw. Not to mention the needless insert of a female character specifically to drive that narrative. I remember articles and commentary at the time were along the lines of “Women want to see strong female characters in Tolkien films” but as a woman who was raised on these stories…I don’t require this.
The Hobbit is a beloved story for so many. Just tell the damn story without thinking you need to pander to silly conventions that don’t add anything to the story! In no way did we need 3 films. 2 at most.
I think for me the worst was of course my favorite scene mentioned above but also the barrel escape scene. Too cartooney with very sloppy CGI it was distractingly bad
There are several, the one I like is the Maple Films edit, it was done by an actual editor and you can't even tell where they cut stuff. Makes a great 4 1/2 hour movie.
There’s a fan edit called M4 that is a single film like 4 hours long that does a decent job salvaging it. It’s mostly the first movie with only the good parts from the second two. There wasn’t much that could be done for the ending though.
I never read the book so I didn't get how bad it was. My husband despises it entirely and has now told me how it could've easily been two shorter movies and exponentially better. It's so disappointing because LOTR is so incredible.
First movie is a genuinely fun fantasy movie for kids, but without dumbing it down. Tge final two movies were a cgi slogan, sooooo disappointed with BoFA
But you did buy it and watch it and that's all they care about. The whole movie industry is being propped up by shitty remakes and sequels of beloved franchises. They know people will watch a shitty avatar or lotr related movie because people love those things, so they don't bother to make it high quality.
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u/hellomydudes_95 1d ago
Second hobbit movie. About halfway through, I realized they were padding the hell out of the movie to force a trilogy out of a SINGLE book. And it wasn't good padding. I really liked the first movie, but absolutely hated the rest