The Lord of the Rings - Second Age - Amazon Prime

[Mon0Zer0]

 

[Elckerlyc]

<RANT>
I cannot suppress the feeling that people are overly sensitive. As if they set out to overturn every stone to see if there's something underneath it they won't like, point at and declare 'Blasphemy! Utterly un-Tolkienese! UNWATCHABLE!'
Bah!
Tolkien has left much untold, his great voice was silenced and cannot be replaced. So everyone has their own picture of how he would have told the great stories, if only he had lived long enough. And that picture is bound to clash with the picture of any other person. And that picture will never be like Tolkien pictured it, that is to say, that even he did not yet had all the answers to all the mysteries.
But it was the work and fantasy of a human, how much idealised he may be. It is not gospel. Therefor we should be... let's say indulgent when viewing another person version of this story. A story had had to be condensed, had to be reworked for a different type of media. Of course it is not what you expect or at least hoping for.

Now, I am not a Tolkien expert. I only read LotR, long ago. So my views are no doubt worthless and rubbish. But watching the first 2 episodes tonight, I saw TV at its very best. It was top-notch entertainment. (mind you, it is meant as entertainment, not a college on Tolkien-verse.) I found it 10x more interesting and engaging than House of Dragon, you know, that series that's about Nothing.
Just open your minds, be receptive and Enjoy!

<\RANT>

 

[ctg]

Just open your minds, be receptive and Enjoy!

In my case, it's not a problem, but I've learned that there are some things that my mind cannot shut up.

 

[svalbard]

Loved the two first episodes. Looks gorgeous, think some of the actors are excellent especially Galadriel and Elrond. Looking forward to the remainder of the series.

 

[Mon0Zer0]

<RANT>
Now, I am not a Tolkien expert. I only read LotR, long ago. So my views are no doubt worthless and rubbish. But watching the first 2 episodes tonight, I saw TV at its very best. It was top-notch entertainment. (mind you, it is meant as entertainment, not a college on Tolkien-verse.)

It's great you like it. Your views definitely aren't rubbish or worthless. It is fine to disagree on stuff. Its all subjective, right?

I found it 10x more interesting and engaging than House of Dragon, you know, that series that's about Nothing.
Just open your minds, be receptive and Enjoy!

<\RANT>

I mean if it's not to your taste it's fine - but HOD is basically Mary Queen of Scots vs Elisabeth I mixed with King Lear and takes in themes like male resistance to female power, competence to rule, sibling rivalry and so on. It about something.

 

[Vince W]

I’ve watched the first episode and my initial feeling is that they are trying too hard to impress fans of the films and GoT.

It looks great and while the actors are stiff and unbalanced they may get better as they learn the roles and the world they inhabit (think the first two seasons of st: tng). The thing that strikes me most is that the tone is dour, very dour, with little to no relief. It’s hard to get fully engaged in a world that one dimensional.

Despite the flaws the show has promise. It could be great if allowed enough time to relax and breathe, something that doesn’t happen often these days.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I'm not a Tolkien expert, either, but I have read his early drafts and the notes that Christopher Tolkien compiled and deciphered (in the case of some of the scribbled notes) so painstakingly over the years after his father's death, and also his published letters. I read some of this once, and some of this multiple times, and my conclusion is that aside from the books published during J. R. R. Tolkien's lifetime, there is no canon, nothing set in stone, because he never had the chance to finish writing it exactly the way he wanted it, because he didn't know exactly what he wanted. Prior to the publication of LOTR he couldn't get any publisher to touch The Silmarillion, though he tried very hard to sell LOTR and The Silmarillion as a set. However, when LOTR became such an enormous hit and phenomenon in the sixties (long after it was first published) I don't doubt that he could have found someone to publish it, readers were so eagerly awaiting it. And the reason it didn't happen was because he was never able to put it all down in a form that he was satisfied with. It had grown too big, too complex, his ideas about it were always changing. (I know a lot of people think--though possibly nobody here--that he wrote the Silmarillion material first and then The Hobbit and LOTR, but the fact is that he started the Silmarillion first by many years, but afterwards he was working on and revising both at the same time, and while he stopped revising the latter two once they were published, because he had not sold the former to a publisher, he had the freedom to go on thinking about it, and revising it, and changing his mind (regarding some plots and characters and details changing it many times) right up to the end of his life. Maybe if he had lived another ten years he might have finally wrestled it into a shape he was ready to release into the world (or maybe not) but he died and left much of it just sketched in, much that was contradictory or ambiguous. This allows the rest of us to choose from the differing versions whichever bits we like best, whichever feel most right to us, that speak to us most clearly and powerfully--or simply to accept whatever a scholar or expert has told us. I've also read a lot of their works, appeared on a World-Con panel with one of them (which he dominated and would not let any of the other panelists get a word in edgewise--though he was a man of deep understanding, he apparently didn't understand the meaning of the words "panel discussion-- and he said a lot of things that impressed me and illuminated areas I hadn't given much thought to before, which I then incorporated into my own "head canon", although I've come to wonder about some of it after more reading and more thinking), and as a result understand that even the experts are not all in agreement about some things.

So I would never say that my own understanding of Tolkien's work and his intentions is anything like perfect.

And I did say much earlier that I was not at all pleased with the "prologue" part of the first episode of The Rings of Power. In fact, I rather feel that they made a hash of it, in their efforts to make it comprehensible to the wider audience who know nothing at all about his earlier (and later) writings, and also to make it fit with what they had decided was the rest of the story they wanted to tell. But to be fair, they weren't able to acquire the rights to most of the details of the First Age materials which ctg summarized so well in his post. They only have rights to the briefly sketched-in version in the appendices and the hints at lore given here and there throughout the trilogy, which I remember finding intriguing the first time I read it, but also, without access at that time (because none of it had been published yet) to the fuller treatment of the story of the Silmarils, I also found confusing and hard to follow. The showrunners and writers for the Rings of Power may have read all that subsequently released material (in fact, I am convinced that at least the showrunners have) but by the agreement they made with the Tolkien Estate and the Tolkien Trust (headed by Christopher Tolkien at the time they made the deal) they cannot use the most illuminating and interesting details unless they directly appear somewhere in the books they do have the rights to adapt. They were handcuffed and hampered to a very great extent. I still think they could have done much better, even with those constraints, but expect they didn't want to devote that much time to doing so, when they were eager to get on with working out and writing the rest of the story, where they had more room to breathe.

While Peter Jackson did a better job condensing the much simpler backstory he used in the first minutes of The Fellowship of the Ring, he also took liberties. Identifying the future ringwraiths as great kings of men was a minor one—Tolkien never identified who and what they had been before, except that one of them went by the name of Khamûl the Easterling—though I expect that those in thrall to Jackson's vision will at some point be horrified when various characters are chosen to fill those roles. Of more significance, I think, is the evil smile on Isildur's face when he refused to destroy the Ring. This has given a lot of people a very incorrect idea of this character. He did not turn evil after keeping the Ring—he just kept it instead of destroying it is all, and this without knowing (as we know) what the outcome of keeping it would be. Frodo also refused to destroy the Ring when it came to the point (and he did know what had come of Isildur's refusal). In one of his letters Tolkien said that it was beyond the power of any mortal to willingly destroy the Ring. What made Frodo so extraordinary, he said, was that he'd had the strength to carry the Ring all the way to the brink, which probably nobody else could have done, which made it possible for Gollum to accidentally destroy it. I think it's going to be an uphill battle to make viewers think well of Isildur in the current show, with memories of that evil smile working in their brains.

In fact, although I did love Jackson's first trilogy of films most profoundly, he did take a great many liberties with the text, and some of them were not good choices in my opinion, so I think I may get a bit impatient with posters who complain about The Rings of Power being unfaithful to the source material by comparing it unfavorable with the "faithfulness" of the Jackson films. If I do, I apologize in advance.

Also, for all the faults that I might end up finding with the show myself, I think I am going to have a hard time taking seriously comments that the cinematography in The Rings of Power was just OK.

 

[thaddeus6th]

As mentioned a while back, not watching this (not really a boycott as I don't have any streaming services) but I disagree with the criticism of those who dislike it for playing very fast and loose with the lore.

If you want to view it as a general fantasy and don't care about lore accuracy at all, fair enough. Maybe you like the show, maybe not.

But it's entirely legitimate for those who do care to dislike a property based on the lore being wildly inaccurate. They bought the Tolkien name, the Tolkien world, the Tolkien characters, and the Tolkien fanbase. It's not justified to condemn people for not liking The Thing, when The Thing has been changed from The Thing they liked.

If I order a ham sandwich and get a cheese sandwich, it's legitimate to be annoyed.

 

[Mon0Zer0]

there is no canon, nothing set in stone, because he never had the chance to finish writing it exactly the way he wanted it, because he didn't know exactly what he wanted.

This is a fair point but, I think the criticisms are better expressed by the Tolkien scholar above. Conversations about the nerdy aspects of lore sometimes indicate a wider problem with spirit, tone and writing that's hard to articulate, so people dive into the weeds.

It does "read" like fan fiction. Structurally and tonally it's a mess. To be fair, few people write as well as Tolkien, so the makers have had an uphill battle all along.

In fact, although I did love Jackson's first trilogy of films most profoundly, he did take a great many liberties with the text, and some of them were not good choices in my opinion, so I think I may get a bit impatient with posters who complain about The Rings of Power being unfaithful to the source material by comparing it unfavorable with the "faithfulness" of the Jackson films. If I do, I apologize in advance.

Agree. Personally, I'm not a Jackson LOTR fanboi. Some of the same criticisms levelled at Rings of Power could also be levelled at Jackson's version.

Also, for all the faults that I might end up finding with the show myself, I think I am going to have a hard time taking seriously comments that the cinematography in The Rings of Power was just OK.

There is a lot of money on the screen, for sure, but there are issues with it in parts - the battle in Mordor is fantastically cinematic - the framing and blocking in present day Mordor is more like television - the choice of lenses and soft focus during Galadriel's past or the Harfoots sections makes it feel like it's in a studio. The portal to another world was awful. Possibly these are intentional choices - but I don't think they're great ones - the kind that world-class DoP's like Roger Deakins would make - so good, not excellent.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

I liked these first two episodes. I would have enjoyed them immensely more without the presence of Harfoots.

I can't say I'm a fan of Tolkien's brand of fantasy (Bad guys wear black, good guys smoke pipes). As already mentioned in another recent topic I never managed to finish The Fellowship of the Ring despite trying to read it twice and at an age when most people fall in love with it. Oh, well...

Thankfully the show seems to have more in common with Peter Jackson's movies than what little I've read of the books, and I like that it's able to sell us the idea that nightmarish orcs and childish Harfoots coexist in a shared universe. When you think about it, it's pretty much akin to setting Willow in the world of Dawn of the Dead and making us all fall for it. Quite the achievement.

The actress portraying Galadriel is fantastic and I wish the show was just her climbing mountains, walking around in the rain and tracking down Orcs. As far as I'm concerned she carries the whole show, in the same way Milly Alcock carries the GoT spin-off. Great to see these two monster shows stolen by female characters. The actor portraying Elrond is extremely annoying to watch (although a competent actor). Too many elves don't look like elves (and no, that's not an ethnicity thing: Ismael Cruz Córdova is far more convincing as an elf than Robert Aramayo or Benjamin Walker). The Harfoots are... Urgh, I won't go there again. The sets, costume, music are all wonderful but at that price tag anything less would have been an insult. On the downside the fight choreographies are typical Hollywood-does-medieval fare: Disgraceful.

I cannot judge the faithfulness of the material to Tolkien's lore for obvious reasons, but to be honest even were I a Tolkien scholar it would be the least of my concerns. Yes, they bought the Tolkien name, characters, lore, right to use his writings and notes, etc. And along with them let's not forget they bought the right to give us their own take on it all, and that in my book takes precedence over everything else. I find it far more refreshing and stimulating to see something different that will echo the original, share some of its DNA and potentially make me fall in love with it and want to revisit the original material again, than it would be to see a retelling of something I already know by heart.

I think somewhere deep down in our unconscious we all have come to accept that the audiovisual medium is the Imago, the ultimate form of storytelling. It's the only reason I can use to explain why fans of a book so desperately want a verbatim retelling of their favorite piece of literature on screen, as if the ultimate achievement a writer could ever hope to get ouf of all their hard work was to see their book optioned by Hollywood and turned into an audiovisual piece, and until then it would just be "another book." It's a bit sad, really.

 

[Elckerlyc]

It's not justified to condemn people for not liking The Thing, when The Thing has been changed from The Thing they liked.

If I order a ham sandwich and get a cheese sandwich, it's legitimate to be annoyed.

To clarify, I don't think - and certainly did not intend - to condemn people for disliking it. I apologize if that was how it came across. Nor was it about their dislike, but the why and how this dislike was reached. Is it justified to compare something to a Masterwork and than condemn it for not being equal? Like or dislike something for its own merits, not its parentage. It is quite possible we'll never see a ham sandwich again.

 

[HareBrain]

I think somewhere deep down in our unconscious we all have come to accept that the audiovisual medium is the Imago, the ultimate form of storytelling. It's the only reason I can use to explain why fans of a book so desperately want a verbatim retelling of their favorite piece of literature on screen, as if the ultimate achievement a writer could ever hope to get ouf of all their hard work was to see their book optioned by Hollywood and turned into an audiovisual piece, and until then it would just be "another book." It's a bit sad, really.

I think you're right that we have been persuaded of that, though you can come round from it. I really liked the LOTR films when they came out, or at least Fellowship, but I've gone off them now as representations of the books because I've come to realise that the feel of a book is as important to me as any other aspect, and an AV version will almost never capture this because it comes partly from being a text. A film version of the Silmarillion could never work because you would either have to expand the characters, losing their mythic feel, or keep true to the original and have all the characters seem unreal and wooden; they cannot both be real people (which is what AV tries to sell us) and who they are in the stories. (This is why puppets or similar might work.)

 

[Mr Cairo]

Huh?

I know but oddly enough it kind of made sense in the moment.

 

[Mon0Zer0]

I cannot judge the faithfulness of the material to Tolkien's lore for obvious reasons, but to be honest even were I a Tolkien scholar it would be the least of my concerns. Yes, they bought the Tolkien name, characters, lore, right to use his writings and notes, etc. And along with them let's not forget they bought the right to give us their own take on it all, and that in my book takes precedence over everything else. I find it far more refreshing and stimulating to see something different that will echo the original, share some of its DNA and potentially make me fall in love with it and want to revisit the original material again, than it would be to see a retelling of something I already know by heart.

I don't think it's just wanting a retelling of something you already know - it's wanting something that shares its spirit. To inhabit the world Tolkien created as he created it.

To me, Tolkien's world looks like this:

But this isn't quite the world that Jackson and his derivatives gave us. The aesthetic is slightly off. Epic. Beautiful in its own right, but not Tolkien. So in RoP we have a copy of a copy. Something that has the names and some of the events of Tolkien's mythology but lives in the uncanny Rivendell.

I think somewhere deep down in our unconscious we all have come to accept that the audiovisual medium is the Imago, the ultimate form of storytelling. It's the only reason I can use to explain why fans of a book so desperately want a verbatim retelling of their favorite piece of literature on screen, as if the ultimate achievement a writer could ever hope to get ouf of all their hard work was to see their book optioned by Hollywood and turned into an audiovisual piece, and until then it would just be "another book." It's a bit sad, really.

I agree with this. As Alan Moore's resistance to filming his books shows - each medium has its own strengths, and to think of books as subservient to movies is a shame. But it is a thing, and if we have to have the thing, the least we can expect is that it translates it faithfully as far as the diktats of the medium allow for the benefit of people who will never read Tolkien.

People often say when we have reboots that they don't harm the thing itself. "Ghostbusters still exists", etc. But the thing is the artefact and its meaning is also created of the discourse around it. When "uncanny valley" material is made at the level of mainstream mass consumption, the thing itself is diminished. It's no longer a life-changing text in which you're invested, but a commodity. It's difficult to get excited about an obvious product.

Let's also be honest, these derivative works don't exist out of any great love for the original, but because it has enough brand recognition to generate attention and bring in the bucks. If the symbols and aesthetics are divorced from the soul of the original, you've got someone's own creative work wearing the skin of the known property.

The outcome of this is to strip it of meaning. The thing becomes a hollow dressing into which all kinds of products and messages can be adorned by the rights holders, regardless of whether these have anything to do with the insights of the original.

In this sense the reactions of "purists", aware or not, is to the destruction of the soul of the thing - the animating humanist myth that Tolkien wanted LOTR to construct.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I do love the illustrations of Tolkien, but I don't feel that they accurately represent his written word as much as the movies did. I think that the only way that his illustrations could be transferred onto the big screen is via animation; and to be honest that is the only way that I ever expected the books to be successfully transferred to the screen. In the original trilogy of movies, I think that Jackson did an excellent job of representing the look and feel of Middle-earth; not only in the landscapes and many of the places, but also in the characters. I think that they got most of the characterisations spot on, especially with Merry, Pippin and Sam. Yes, there were a number of significant changes, and quite a number of disappointments (the Scourging of the Shire being the main one); we saw with the Hobbit trilogy how easily things can go wrong, but LOTR was done as well as it could have been.

On the note of book to film/tv, I'm probably in the minority of not really caring if this is done or not. I don't particularly care whether any of my favourite books are made into tv programmes or movies, because I know that they won't ever be as good. I think that any time that you read the book first, you will largely be disappointed with the film. When you watch the film/tv series first, I think you enjoy it more because you don't know any different. I really enjoyed the first 4 seasons of GoT enough to go out and buy the books; they are different enough to tell their own story, but it's almost impossible not to imagine the characters from the tv series looking like and speaking the lines from the book - which in many ways helps.

 

[HareBrain]

I do love the illustrations of Tolkien, but I don't feel that they accurately represent his written word as much as the movies did.

I think something like this is so personal. To me, Tolkien's illustrations in The Hobbit very much represent the visual feel of that book, but not LOTR. My "visual" LOTR is a mish-mash of the look of the 1970s hardbacks, the map, and some Pauline Baynes artwork -- plus of course the effect of Tolkien's very visual description on my imagination. Because all that sunk into me at such a formative age and made such a huge impression, the Jackson films could never "be" Lord of the Rings, and neither could Alan Lee's excellent illustrations. But that might be very different if I'd come to them later (and especially if I'd seen the films first).

Having said all that, no one has ever drawn or portrayed an elf that looked to me like a Tolkien elf except for Victor Ambrus's illustrations in David Day's The Tolkien Encyclopedia. What's with the long lank hair in the films and this version? Ick.

When you watch the film/tv series first, I think you enjoy it more because you don't know any different.

I can't think of a single case, since childhood, where I've preferred the visual adaptation of a book I'd previously read -- but in the other direction, nor can I think of a book I've preferred to an adaptation I've previously watched. Maybe this has something to do with feel or spirit (to use Mon0zer0's word) being difficult to translate from one medium to another.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

I don't think it's just wanting a retelling of something you already know - it's wanting something that shares its spirit. To inhabit the world Tolkien created as he created it.

To me those are two different things - the "spirit" would be the general concept (good vs evil, medieval fantasy, rings, swords and hairy feet), while 'inhabiting the world as created by the original author" means being faithful to it on what's maybe a more superficial level: the atmosphere and tone of the books, the aesthetics you envisioned while reading...

People often say when we have reboots that they don't harm the thing itself. "Ghostbusters still exists", etc. But the thing is the artefact and its meaning is also created of the discourse around it. When "uncanny valley" material is made at the level of mainstream mass consumption, the thing itself is diminished. It's no longer a life-changing text in which you're invested, but a commodity. It's difficult to get excited about an obvious product.

This is where I strongly disagree with you, but that doesn't make your point any less valid and understandable. Maybe it all comes down to the way we're hardwired and we'll just have to accept that.

I'm a long-time Batman fan. Growing up all I knew about Batman was the 1992 animated TV show and to me that was the one and only Batman, the one that defined who my ultimate Batman was. One day I picked up the VHS of Burton's Batman Returns at the shop and watched it, fully anticipating to see another episode of the animated show, only with real people this time. I was gobsmacked. Bruce Wayne was a puny dude and a neurotic mess rather than a brave, muscular, charming playboy; The Penguin was a straight-up circus freak, an actual 'penguin-man' with black fluids oozing out of him... 'Wait, you can do that?!' was my reaction. But I wasn't disappointed. Both takes started living parallel lives in my mind and I appreciated both for different reasons. And a few years later I read Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, and was again floored by yet another universe that had nothing to do with either the animated series' or Burton's, another take on the character. But the bones of the character are always there: You always have an orphaned kid who swore to fight crime wearing a batsuit, and ultimately that's all Batman needs to be. He doesn't need the Batmobile, he doesn't need Gotham, he doesn't need Alfred... I'm not saying all Batman iterations are on the same level. But each new take, each new interpretation of the character, enriches the mythology, creates another layer on top of all those that came before. Sure, some layers are flimsier than others and so I choose to see through - look past - them. But my appreciation of what I consider to be the original Batman (the animated series) was never lessened by any other take I experienced as a reader or spectator. No Zack Snyder movie can undo what that show accomplished, no matter how hard he tries.

And so to this day I crave for even more, new and fresher takes on the character. If you want to disappoint me, give me the Batman animated series in live-action. Or a retread of Burton's Batmans. Or of any other Batman who has come before or after those. You want to make me happy? Give me an entirely new Batman. Maybe one who's not even a billionnaire, but a bum in Renaissance Venice who has to fight crime using only his wits and a costume he's pieced together from trash. Each new Batman should be a retelling, something new. Different aesthetics, atmospheres... A new layer to further develop and enrich the myth.

No matter how good or bad we think Rings of Power is... Can anyone really say that the 'bones' of Tolkien's universe are not there? Elves and dwarves, orcs, wizards, hairy feet and swords?

Let's also be honest, these derivative works don't exist out of any great love for the original, but because it has enough brand recognition to generate attention and bring in the bucks.

Sure, the show was greenlit by someone (Bezos) who only saw its potential as a commercial product ("to sell more shoes" if I recall his exact words). But he didn't make the show. He entrusted other people with it, writers, filmmakers, actors and crafstmen whom you have to trust believed in the project and loved the material enough to forever allow their names to be attached to it, come what may, and dedicate months or years of their life to it, probably close to a decade for a good number of them by the time all is said and done. No one takes on such a long, exhausting and high-risk project without at the very least a deep admiration for the source material and an unwavering belief that they can do it justice. That says nothing of the ultimate quality of the project of course, love and dedication are not enough in this business, but I have to believe that if nothing else, love and dedication are there.

 

[Vince W]

Just finished the second episode and while it is still overly weighty there was at least some relief from the dark tone in the shape of Durin's wife, Disa. It was a welcome moment. I like elements of the story but it's far from being a runaway hit.

 

[therapist]

There's some great discussion here. Ill add my 2 cents into the mix. I am not a LotR fanboy, don't know any of the lore or extended cast of characters. I'm just in it for the story telling.
I found it very difficult to connect with the first episode. I especially disliked Galadriel and all the scenes with the high elves, they all seemed bland and boring to me.
But the second episode felt very different and I enjoyed it a lot. I noticed it had a different writer, and every character now got their own hook and suddenly became interesting. I thought the arc with Elrond and the dwarves to be fantastic, it made me care about their friendship in such little time.
Also there was a very memorable shot of Galadrial swimming away from the raft as the big ocean godzilla destroyed it. While the waves lapped over the camera, the shot alternated between above water and below. It felt incredibly well done.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I think something like this is so personal. To me, Tolkien's illustrations in The Hobbit very much represent the visual feel of that book, but not LOTR. My "visual" LOTR is a mish-mash of the look of the 1970s hardbacks, the map, and some Pauline Baynes artwork -- plus of course the effect of Tolkien's very visual description on my imagination. Because all that sunk into me at such a formative age and made such a huge impression, the Jackson films could never "be" Lord of the Rings, and neither could Alan Lee's excellent illustrations. But that might be very different if I'd come to them later (and especially if I'd seen the films first).

Having said all that, no one has ever drawn or portrayed an elf that looked to me like a Tolkien elf except for Victor Ambrus's illustrations in David Day's The Tolkien Encyclopedia. What's with the long lank hair in the films and this version? Ick.


I can't think of a single case, since childhood, where I've preferred the visual adaptation of a book I'd previously read -- but in the other direction, nor can I think of a book I've preferred to an adaptation I've previously watched. Maybe this has something to do with feel or spirit (to use Mon0zer0's word) being difficult to translate from one medium to another.

I agree with the illustrations in The Hobbit; much more in keeping with the storyline. My comments regarding pictures were more in relation to LOTR. One of the (many) issues I have about The Hobbit, is that Jackson made in a film in the same style as LOTR. The visuals, the music, and making it into a sprawling epic that requires 3 movies. This would make absolutely perfect commercial sense, and to anyone not familiar with Tolkien's The Hobbit it would be natural to assume that this was the way to go; it's part of the same 'franchise', so why should it be different? But The Hobbit is an entirely different type of story to LOTR; whilst the latter is a sprawling epic of an adventure, the former is more like a fairy tale.

I love the book of The Hobbit; I love it for entirely different reasons to LOTR. It's a story for children of all ages, and the combination of story, poems, songs and beautifully illustrated pictures makes for a magical experience. Which is why I dislike The Hobbit movies so much; they completely undermine Tolkien's story. Whilst I think (hope) that Tolkien might have been more forgiving of the LOTR movies, I think that he would have been deeply disappointed with what was done with The Hobbit.