Being a fan of the original Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy, I have been excited about the Hobbit being adapted into film since it was first confirmed. Recently, however, I am a little worried about a recent production decision. While the film adaptation was only going to consist of two films originally, it has been decided that it will now be an entire trilogy.
My biggest concern comes from the fact that each of the volumes of LOTR had one movie, and they were all rather long. Now, the Hobbit in book form is shorter than all three of the LOTR books. I am concerned that there is not enough material to justify a trilogy. The first Hobbit film, entitled, “An Unexpected Journey” is over 140 minutes long. If the other two films are of similar length, I have to wonder how stretched out these movies are going to be, coming from only one source book. I expect each will be incredibly detailed, but I fear it might get to the point of tediousness and lack-of-interest in much of the audience.
Personally, I think they should have maintained the idea of doing two films instead of three. However, I still have a bit of optimism due to it being in Peter Jackson’s hands; he did fantastic with LOTR, so I’m sure this will still be a great showcase of talent.
You could try reading the thread. It’s at 403 posts already, and has everything from rampant speculation to idle curiousity to actual production information.
My short version answer:
I would watch a miniseries or ongoing TV show of anything set in Middle Earth. I love it that much, and everything I watch or read based on Tolkien’s works makes me love the originals all the more. In addition, while PJ occasionally veers off into unnecessary (Aragorn off the cliff) uncharacteristic (everything with poor unfortunate character-assassinated Faramir) or just plain silly (avalanche of skulls) I do trust his overall artistic vision and I believe his love for that world and those writings is sincere.
They are adding material. This time, not completely extraneous filler material with no support from the text. But rather, adding the side quests that Gandalf often goes off on, which do not necessarily have importance to The Hobbit (other than justifying why their Deus Ex Machina is often gone,) but they do serve as a prequel of sorts to LotR.
I’ll repeat what I said in previous threads. I think it’s a bad sign. A longer film is not necessarily a better film. The extra material is likely to be unneeded padding.
I tend to agree with the OP. Three movies, each of which is bound to be over 120 minutes long, is just too much. And you know that when the DVDs come out there will be at least 180 minutes of extra footage thrown into them. Maybe I’m cynical, but I honestly think it’s a business decision: a simple way to increase ticket sales (and DVD revenue) by 50%.
I have reluctantly decided I have no intention of going and watching the films. I was upset by watching The Two Towers and The Return of the King. I know that I’ll be pissed off enormously at The Hobbit, if for no other reason than the attempt to put it in perspective will ruin an otherwise perfectly good children’s book.
Peter Jackson has many positive qualities as a director, but he has a flaw when it comes to stuffing his films to the point of bloat. It wasn’t as bad with the LotR movies, since the books were each a full, epic novel in themselves. It was very noticeable with “King Kong”. That film could easily have been 20-30 minutes shorter.
I was looking forward to it as 2 films, and now I’m not.
Though I enjoy the LoTR films, and I don’t object to some of the extra bits added as sometimes the story does need it; Arwen as in the books would appear briefly at Rivendell, then not be in it at all again until the wedding (unless she appeared weaving a flag), which would just be silly in a film. However, I agree that lot of the extra film not strongly based on book material was pretty awkward, and occasionally downright stupid (see: Avalanche of skulls).
Given the evidence, I have no faith in Peter Jackson’s ability to stretch:
into an entire film without delving deeply into the cringeworthy.
Two films was imminently doable, though probably somewhat excessive. While it’s a little silly to cite it, the animated Rankin Bass film managed to stuff about 75% of the relevant stuff, plus some musical interludes, into 77 minutes. The only way they’re going to get 9 hours of stuff out of this book is a lot of “inspired by one sentence in an appendix” sort of stuff, and after Lord of the Rings, I don’t really have a lot of faith in PJ’s ability to make stuff up.
