The Hobbit: A Disoriented Movie

This is an article I wrote around last year. I hope you enjoy.

THE HOBBIT: A DISORIENTED MOVIE

BY KOLBE FLOOD

Why were The Hobbit movies worse than The Lord of the Rings movies? When The Hobbit movies first came out, I was very surprised. I expected a movie of more awesomeness of The Lord of the Rings. Being a Tolkien fan, I soon realized that the movie had three missing elements. The first flaw of the movies, was that the movies were not intended to be a mythology. The second, was that the movies were too long. The third, was that were not intended for the English people—all of the qualities that The Lord of the Rings had well executed.  

The first major flaw of The Hobbit movie was worse is that it was intended by Tolkien originally to be a mythology. Going back to the Greek, Roman, Asian, and other mythologies of the past brought down through the years, they all were centered around a culture without Christ. Their tales were created around the idea that there was no Christ. People may argue that the Arthurian tales were the mythology of England. But this is false, because this so called mythology had Christ and Christianity as one of its main elements. Therefore, the Arthurian tales were not England’s mythology. Rather, England had no mythology. Then came Tolkien: his mythology of Middle-earth was arguably the mythology of England. Since this mythology is the mythology of England, it must be preserved with the utmost respect, as other mythologies, such as Greek and Roman mythologies, have been preserved. This was done with a passing grade in the Lord of the Rings, but, in the Hobbit, Peter Jackson, the director of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, butchered the original tale, putting in new creatures(The Stone Giants), completely new characters(Tauriel), and unheard of scenes(The Taurieal-Legolas-Kili love trianlge). Therefore, the movie was not preserved as Tolkien originally intended to do. 

The second argument is that the movie was not loyal to the book at all. In The Lord of the Rings movies, there needed to be a trilogy of movies, because there was a trilogy of books. The Lord of the Rings movies were meant to be a trilogy because of the book’s sheer size in pages. This was not so with The Hobbit. The Lord of the Rings, in its Houghton Mifflin edition, was 1,216 words long (Tolkien). The Hobbit, in its Random House Group edition, was 320 words long (Tolkien). Obviously, this was a huge difference. This was a major mistake, leading to the conclusion that Peter Jackson extended the movie by putting scenes that weren’t even in the book. Actually, the movie, without all the added material that was not originally in the book, would only be 4 hours long (Tolkieneditor). Even Peter Jackson stated, “I spent most of The Hobbit feeling like I was not on top of it. Even from a script point of view, Fran [Walsh], Philippa [Boyens] and I hadn’t got the entire scripts written to our satisfaction, so that was a very high pressure situation” (Hall). For example, in The Lord of the Rings, the crew working on the armory had three and a half years of preproduction: The Hobbit had mere days (Hall). The Hobbit movies were ultimately movies that consisted of being disoriented, not loyal to the book, and too long.  

The third reason was that the book The Hobbit was intended for an English nation. In The Hobbit movie, the scenes with the people of Laketown revealed them to be of different . Maybe Peter Jackson intended this Middle-earth movie to be more distributed between nationalities. But if J.R.R. Tolkien was alive and directed the film, he probably wouldn’t put any Asian people among the people of Laketown. This would have not been racist. This was would have been just the nationality of the mythology. The mythology was written, again, for England. In The Lord of the Rings movie, they did a more articulated job on this. 

The Hobbit lacked many qualities that were well executed in The Lord of the Rings. Overall, the Lord of the Rings grossed 2.92 billion, while the Hobbit only grossed 1 billion. Therefore, The Hobbit movies were mostly failures compared to The Lord of the Rings movies.  

Bibliography:

Hall, Jacob. "Peter Jackson Explains Why the 'Hobbit' Movies Are Such a Huge Mess." Film, Blogging in the Reel World. N.p., 19 Nov. 2015. Web. 29 Nov. 2016.

"I HAVE RECUT PETER JACKSON’S HOBBIT TRILOGY INTO A SINGLE 4-HOUR FILM." The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit. N.p., 13 Jan. 2015. Web. 29 Nov. 2016.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit: The Enchanting Prelude to Lord of the Rings. N.p.: Random House Group, n.d. Print.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Print.