The Hobbit

I enjoyed Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. Mostly that's because I like Tolkien, but the sets and and scenery were also nice. That said, it's easy to imagine how any non-fan of Tolkien -- the benighted few -- would find a lot to dislike. The interminable fight scenes - mostly a pure invention of Jackson's - were awful. Trite, boring, and absurd. It's amazing how thoroughly he managed to remove suspense from a very suspenseful story.

Jackson took some liberties with the plot. It's pretty hard to find the dangling over a cliff gimmick very suspenseful after the characters have survived repeated thousand foot falls without suffering any discernible harm. I'm guessing that the White Council might have been more successful against Sauron and friends if Galadriel hadn't been stoned all the time. Radagast the Brown and his rabbit-mobile were OK though.

So how did Jackson, who made a mostly pretty good version of Lord of the Rings, make such a hash of The Hobbit?

I blame Potter envy. After condensing the six books of LOTR to three, he realized he could have made another zillion dollars by making six movies, or maybe even seven. So The Hobbit had to be blown up to three movies, and the bloat is everywhere.

I predict that the Silmarillion will be ten movies.

Did I mention that 3-D still sucks?

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