What’s this a reference to?
The TV series Lost.
Yes, but… there is a difference between book and film, and therefore some changes are necessary. I thought Peter Jackson did a great job in the LotR movies, almost every change I could understand WHY in cinematic terms. (Quick example, at the destruction of the ring sequence at Mount Doom: In the book, Gollum bites Frodo’s finger and has the ring, he jumps up and down with excitement and overbalances and falls into the cracks of doom. That would be totally unsatisfactory for a movie, that the quest is achieved by sheer dumb luck without any action on Frodo’s part whatsover. Similarly, I can understand lots of the changes in THE HOBBIT – makes for better visual cinema. For instance, (a) not repeating the arrive-one-by-one at Beorn’s house. It’s OK in the book because it’s only two pages; in the movie, it would interminably long screen time; and (b) having the dwarves half-out of the barrels is much more interesting visually than watching a bunch of barrels bob up and down. Tolkien can describe the dwarves INSIDE the barrels, but the movie has to SHOW us, and that’s best done by the half-in/half-out (regardless of laws of physics.)
Really, the biggest problem with the movie is that so many changes are just so very bad. Poor film-making. I really don’t understand why so many big-budget movies think it’s so important to constantly ramp up the peril. More and more peril. Here’s more peril. Oh, that’s not perilous enough, I know! Add more peril. The end result is at best more comic than dramatic, and utterly devoid of suspense.
That’s what PJ has done to the Hobbit. There are numerous examples of this problem. With goofy and unnecessarily long action sequences, wave after wave of feeble, easily-dispatched low-level mobs, and suddenly miraculous fighting ability at odds with everything else we’ve seen of the main characters, the film becomes way too much like a video game, and not at all a great story.
Exactly - there are moments in the film where I can think “that is the scene they will turn into a level of the video game”. Stuff that that just pulls you out of the scene.
I’m fine with some things changing with the medium - Dex had some good examples. I’m not so fine with adding things that are unnecessary to the plot just to stretch the film out.
Watching that made me think: gold panning!
Thanks. I would not have recognized him. I miss the pie maker.
It looks like I have a different reaction to the “triangle” than most folks. To me, the sylvan elves are torn between withdrawing from the world to be safe and accepting the danger of being part of the wider world, with most of them content to withdraw. You could show that in a movie by having symbolic arguements between Legolas and his father, but why would Legolas, a sequestered prince, take the world’s side in a forceful way?
Tauriel is more of an outsider and her personal experience of the elves’ dilemma is being torn between loyalty to her lord/people and doing what’s right. For her, Kili represents the outside world and maintaining an honorable relationship to it. When she leaves the woods it isn’t to moon over an individual, although she does follow and help him. She leaves to fight the orcs that the elves have allowed to cross their land. She feels responsible for anyone who might be endangered by them.
Legolas isn’t sold on isolationism, but without Tauriel to draw him out, he wouldn’t have defied his father and left the woods. He may be discovering that she’s more to him than a friend and fellow soldier, but he hasn’t said anything, yet. His attitude so far could be incredulity that she’s taking such risks for . . . outsiders.
He may not become dedicated to being part of the wider world in the next movie, but we know that he joins it in LOTR, so I suspect we’ll see him at least get close. In The Hobbit, the elves came to the mountain to fight the dwarves. I expect that to happen again and I’m curious to see how the two outside elves will be placed.
I’d be disappointed if events go romantic, but seeing Kili flirt and Tauriel acknowledge it doesn’t bother me. I don’t see a triangle so much as I see links in a chain. Kili becomes the face of outside and Tauriel follows. Then Legolas follows Tauriel, maybe Thranduil follows Legolas, and the elves come out of Mirkwood.
For me, the biggest problem is that to make room for all the dumb goblin fights in Lake Town, they compressed the whole Mirkwood scene. I’m not a filmmaker so I don’t know how to do it without a montage, but they should have done…something to get a feel for just how freakin’ huge the Mirkwood is. As it is, the feeling I got from watching it is that they entered, tramped for half a day, met the spiders, got free, got captured by wood elves, spent the night in the dungeon and were out a day after leaving Beorn’s place. There was absolutely no sense of duration/time spent in Mirkwood. In the book, the trip through Mirkwood took weeks at least.
Finally saw the Desolation of Smaug, and the first Hobbit movie was much truer to the spirit as well as plotline of the book. They left out a lot of the Mirkwood subplots such as the dwarves going off of the path to watch elven banquets. But I guess things had to be omitted to make room for the heroics of Legolas. The casting is generally good, but Thorin looks, and kind of acts, like a short Sly Stallone to me, which makes it difficult for me to accept him as a dwarf. Kili getting wounded and being left behind in Laketown seemed like an unnecessary change of plot from the book, but I guess that allows for more time given to his romance with Tauriel.
Just came across this collection of the best of the LOTR cast commentaries, and thought I’d share it here: 16 Insightful Gems On "Lord Of The Rings" From The Cast
So sue me, I’m late to the party.
I finally got around to this, watched Hobbit I and II back to back on On Demand today. The one thing that stuck out to me, was that I had assumed breaking it into three books would make it somewhat leisurely paced. But instead the pieces they picked, with the added action sequences, kind of cheapened the whole thing 
Instead of the feeling of an epic quest I got from LOTR, It felt like a shallow serial melodrama like the Perils of Pauline or something.
The first half hour of I was good, a bit of downtime to set a mood much like LOTR. But then in rapid sequence
- Captured by trolls, how will our heroes survive?
1b. Bilbo saves our Damsels in distress by tricking the trolls to stand in the Sun into the Sun, but then… - Chased by Orcs on Wargs, how will our heroes survive?
2b. Radagast gives enough of a distraction to allow a frenzied chase where they to sneak into a cave, but then… - Captured by Goblins, HWOHS?
- Saved by Gandalf followed by a frenzied running Arial battle, till they make it out of the cave.but then…
- Chased by orcs and fire saved by Giant Eagles
- Chased by a Giant bear, safe in a house , protected by Giant Bear.
Interlude… challenged by panic and mental stuff in Mirkwood… but right back to…
7 Captured by spiders, saved by Bilbo. - Captured by Elves , saved by Bilbo, frenzied water chase, saved by elves.
small interlude to hide in Bard’s house, attempt to steal weapons…
9 Captured by lake-town…(Yay the dwarves actually manage to get out of this one themselves by speachifying).
10 Race to mountains… interlude to find door, followed by Bilbo in solo peril… but for the finale… - Long Frenzied chase through ruins( at least Smaug never “captured” them) culminating in bizarre Rube Goldberg fight-back plan.
Even for a kids book it had a lot more intellectual depth than that. The Dwarves are the most incompetent adventurers ever to leave their porches, which I never felt from the books.
ETA ohh yeah, forgot the Rivendale interlude.