I’ve watched the first movie and tried reading the first book. I agree. These are among the most boring experiences of my life.
I got half way through the final book before I couldn’t take it anymore.
If he would have only tried to let my imagination fill in become details, it wouldn’t be so bad, but it was a trudge of over detailed explanation of everything.
Everything that spawned because of it was great, but the books themselves really are overrated.
That’s said, I enjoy the movies, solid 8/10.
If you feel it’s that bad, create better.
But in all seriousness, while I do think the films are alright, they are nothing compared to the books. People should definitely read them before watching the adaptation, it really is an experience.
I think the movies are the best adaptation we could have gotten. The books a hard read and most of it wouldn’t translate well to film. All the songs, the long winded dialogs, descriptive parts, the ending, etc. I can understand Christopher Tolkien though, especially since he grew up and old with these stories, and probably nothing would ever do it justice compared to what he imagined his whole life.
Having read the books long ago, and recently listened to them narrated by Andy serkis, holy shit the books do NOT translate into movie form.
Maybe a miniseries like Battlestar Galactica, but the budget for it would have to be insane.
People don’t seem to understand that nobody is going to fimund their dream movie adaptation, because their dream movie adaptation has a larger budget than most countries’ GDP.
I would LOVE to have seen Tom Bombadil and the barrow wights. I’d love to have gotten to see everything in the book, but let’s be realistic here.
Go back in time with a few metric tons of gold, fund it however you see fit. I think if given proper funding, and more strict guidelines to keep the funding, he’d make as perfect an adaptation live-action could get in a miniseries. Make it like 90-100 minutes per “episode” and stretch it out however long it takes.
Do people not realize he was told initially it would have to be shown in ONE movie? And he fought to have at LEAST two, and that the studio we finally got insisted on 3 because this story is too long and complex (and lucrative) to be only two movies?
It could have been much, much worse. But hot damn do I wish it were better, even recognizing how good it was.
I read the books as a child and young adult multiple times before the films came out. The films are fantastic and a solid adaptation for a different medium, they got the feeling down even if some parts were left out as part of the change to the other medium.
The Hobbit movies are hot garbage though, and I blame studio meddling for those.
On the Hobbit movies, I don’t even think studio meddling was the biggest issue.
Peter Jackson had so much time to prepare for the original trilogy, where as he took over the Hobbit movies quite soon before they were scheduled to shoot and he couldn’t use the preparation the previous director had done.
So he had no time to prepare and basically had to wing it with 3 movies and little to no prep.
That lack of time is a direct result of studio meddling. The studios pushed Guillermo del Toro out, threatened Peter Jackson with removing the production from New Zealand to force him into coming on as director, and tried to force him to keep to a similar timetable as the GDT production.
I liked the hobbit movies, but I’m not going to argue that they were good. I even reread the book in preparation. The movie hit all of the points I was curious to see illustrated visually. I thought the new characters ramped up the tension nicely, and the barrel scene was genuinely joyous. I was also glad the singing was such a big part of the theming, including the wonderful opening, where Bilbo is beset by the Dwarfs and has to host them against his will.
Anyway, I’m not saying I’m right, or that my view is objective, but I enjoyed all of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien movies more than I thought I ever would. Clear evidence that we don’t live in the darkest timeline, at least.
I’ve thought this for a long time, I thought the movies were bad, like actually bad, and the first one, despite being the most boring, was actually probably the best one. This year I watched the extended version of the first movie and it was the first time I enjoyed it, but the others felt like large set piece battles and some simple, high fantasy plot as glue.
Three simple words: Droning minor chords
You get maybe, in a 2 hour movie . . . 20 minutes maximum. Not 100 minutes.
