Why Peter Jackson's The Hobbit Movies Suck

While I don't want to rain on anybody's party, I think Edit-The-Hobbit efforts are doomed to failure.

If you look at what plot threads actually constitute the films, like in this chart I made a few years ago there are two basic flaws with em.

1. There's a ton of material (everything in color in the chart) that was simply invented and shoved in (I am 100% sympathetic about how terrible most of these scenes turned out. PJ gets way too much blame for this, he was making up the story on set practically).
2. The movies substitute an Aragorn story for a Bilbo story. But there is no Aragorn in Hobbit, you say? Yes there is, he's just not called Aragorn... he's called Thorin Oakenshield.

The first flaw is fixable... if you don't like Tauriel or Dul Guldur you can just cut those elements pretty cleanly out of the film.

But the second flaw is not fixable. Bilbo is reduced to a side character in his own trilogy and Thorin is turned into the main character.

Here's something that's kind of a joke, but makes a point too. "The Hobbit" Bechdel Test: when two random characters are talking, who do they talk about? When Smaug and Bilbo are talking, Smaug talks about how Thorin's quest will fail (a line invented by PJ). When Evangeline Lilly and Dwarf Number Whatever are talking by themselves, to each other ... they talk about Thorin. The second movie opens with an added flashback scene that exists only to remind us this is all about Thorin's king-destiny. The third movie makes the entire battle climax in a duel between Thorin and Orc Whoever.

It's Thorin's story.

What's worse is that Bilbo's scenes are robbed of their story importance by the adaptation so you can't even make a "Just Bilbo" film. When you think about adapting Bilbo's story arc - like what scenes would you pick to audition and cast Bilbo? - you probably think of:

• Bilbo being a timid host at his own unexpected party
• Bilbo riddling with Gollum
• Bilbo taunting the spiders and saving the dwarves
• Bilbo sneaking the dwarves to Laketown in barrels
• Bilbo's verbal duel with Smaug
• Bilbo giving up the Arkenstone
• Bilbo's final conversation with Thorin

I think the first two scenes on this list were done appropriately and well. Also Martin Freeman is fun in the role.

But all the rest of these scenes were adapted ABYSMALLY badly. Like "Yeah... you missed the point of the story" badly.

In each beat of the story, Bilbo is growing in knowhow, courage and gumption. He increasingly LEADS the dwarves, who are static characters. Yet in the movies, each one of these scenes has Bilbo being completely upstaged by a cast of charismatic action-movie ninja dwarves, plus fucking Legolas, plus a Girl Legolas. Bilbo just becomes Indistinguishable Backup Dwarf. If the entire cast is action heroes why is Bilbo needed?

PJ was so worried about making the dwarves distinguishable and interesting characters. Remember their goofy haircuts? He should have asked himself - why does Tolkien take us on an adventure with these 14 characters and apart from Gandalf, Bilbo, Thorin and mmmmmmaybe Bombur the reader doesn't get any sense of their personalities at all? Because that's superfluous to the story.

The other problem with these movies is how violent they are. Now don't get me wrong - there's already too much arguing on the Internet about the Hobbit being "a children's book" whatever that means.

What I mean is something different. Look back at that list of key Bilbo scenes. How many problems does Bilbo resolve with violence?

Oh wait... is it NONE? (he does kill a bunch of spiders. Kind of weakens my point. However, the other scenarios/problems are solved nonviolently.)

This is like a key storytelling point of The Hobbit. Bilbo isn't the biggest or strongest character but he's the one who sees the solution before all the dwarves. The guy who was dragged along just to be their "burglar" instead becomes very much their leader and guide in Gandalf's absence.

The truth is that after doing LOTR Peter Jackson was afraid to do a movie that didn't meet those expectations. For instance, a movie where the protagonist solves most of the problems by his wits.

It would be like making an Indiana Jones sequel about Indy's son Mutt except Mutt doesn't shoot any Nazis, or kiss any ladies or even drive a tank. What kind of Indy story is that? Well it's not an Indy story, it's a Mutt story. But if it has Indy branding it has to be an Indy story or else audiences will say it's a ripoff.

I have no doubt that this central paradox is why The Hobbit was plagued with preproduction problems. It's just a central conflict between adapting the movie as itself, or adapting it as "another volume of LOTR" which was the eventual direction.

This is what forced PJ to shove in more Gandalf, more Legolas, more orcs, and even attempted to bring back Viggo before the actor wisely shut him down.

It's also why the BO5A is the central focus of the third movie... a faithful adaptation would probably omit it just like Tolkien did. The storytelling purpose of the battle is that it's an avoidable tragedy that ends Thorin's life, but not before he admits how wise Bilbo has become. Bilbo plays no role in the battle itself, he doesn't even witness the battle, and its main protagonists (except Thorin & Gandalf) and the consequences of the battle (except Thorin's death) are enormously beyond the scope of Bilbo's perspective and the resolution of his story arc.

But the most important reason that BO5A stunk from beginning to end is that it was a faked climax. The Hobbit is a story of escalating episodes. Each of them is disconnected more or less from the others. That is, the spiders, the wargs, Gollum and Smaug aren't in league against Team Bilbo. They're not all controlled by a mastermind orc (ok yes, they are metaphysically on Team Sauron by being Creatures Of Darkness, but it's not like Sauron is giving them orders). The Hobbit is a serial adventure story but because The LOTR had a doomsday threat and a mastermind, The Hobbit has to have one too. Because The LOTR had a climactic battle against all odds, The Hobbit has to have one too. If the Battle Of Five Armies had not been in the book, Peter would have invented it.

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IMO the craziest thing about the Hobbit movies is that if you think about them critically you start to realize that the same flaws nearly took down the LOTR trilogy. Did you guys know that Peter Jackson originally shot a final showdown battle in Return Of The King between Aragorn and Sauron? I shit you not, it's in the behind the scenes DVD, and the huge CGI troll Aragorn fights was originally intended to be a badass Walking-Around Sauron like in the Fellowship prologue. It's a fucking miracle that they slapped themselves and said "We Better Not." There are a lot of scenes added to LOTR where that We Better Not thinking wasn't strong enough, like the theme park ride pile of skulls in the Paths Of The Dead, or the scene in TTT where Aragorn falls off a cliff to have a convo with Dream Arwen. But IMO, the structure of LOTR as a book FORCED Peter to tell the story the right way, by splitting the Fellowship into two story threads.

I think that Peter shot the Aragorn half of TTT+ROTK in a very Aragorn-centric way just as a desperate backup in case this weird story of

"two homoerotic leprechauns being led through a swamp by a CGI skeleton-man on a quest to throw away magic jewelry"

didn't test well with audiences and he had to fall back on telling a more intelligible Disney-fantasy story of

"a prince and his cool comic-relief sidekicks returning to the prince's kingdom, fighting awesome battles against a demon king and winning a princess's hand."

I mean which of these is the easier movie pitch? It's not really a contest, huh? If the entire Fellowship had gone to Mordor together, I think poor Sam might not have even made it into the script. But Tolkien gave PJ no choice. It was all because Tolkien divided the story threads that Peter even gave the Hobbits a fighting chance. In the new movies everyone's in the same group so Peter naturally gravitates towards the Aragorniest character.

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