I watched a 2.5 hr fan cut and it was halfway decent - that is, superior to the Hobbit trilogy.
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I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels this way. I enjoyed the LOTR trilogy, but I hated pretty much everything about The Hobbit trilogy. Yet most everyone I talk to either hates all of the movies equally or seems completely blind to the massive drop in quality between the two trilogies.
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I enjoyed LotR and found The Hobbit to be a massive letdown. Usual reasons, way too long, way too much pointless padding. I should go watch the cartoon version again.
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I feel that there is a massive difference in qualities between the books so was not surprised by the differences in the films.
How many times are authors (and fans) disappointed by their film equivalents? “Not as good as the book” is a frequent refrain but then should that be a realistic expectation? Does that go the other way, have film viewers who have gone on to read the book said it was not as good as the film?
I think the best example would be Bladerunner. As a standalone movie it is outstanding. As an adaptation of the also outstanding novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ it is an appalling travesty that totally misses the point.
Similarly, as a novel DADOES is outstanding in its brilliance, but if seen from the perspective of someone who has watched and loved the movie it is a travesty.
Better to think of them as two stories told in the same setting with some of the same characters - much like the vast range of quality in the many Sherlock Holmes interpretations out there.
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LOTR movies: Love.
Hobbit movies: Blecch.
I read LOTR several times in high school. I don’t care about the ways the movies differ from the books. The movies are beautiful, grand, and fun. I thought the Hobbit movies were rotten.
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Yup! Thankee 
I’m another, though I’ll definitely admit my reason isn’t entirely fair. 
I wanted films of the books, not films based on the books.
I totally get that changed need to be made for the medium, but for me that meant altering certain things and editing/omitting others. Not adding entirely new things.
Gandalf’s cavalry charge down a cliff at Helm’s Deep? Cool for a generic fantasy film, but not in the book.
That’s the point where I decided not to bother with ‘Return of the King’, and certainly not ‘The Hobbit’.
Oddly enough, I love ‘Bladerunner’ but wasn’t overwhelmed by DADOES, and I’m happy with the reinterpretations of Sherlock Holmes stories.
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Warner Bros got the New Zealand government to de-unionise the film industry by threatening to move production out of the country.
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I think the scene that sums up my dislike of Jackson happens during the attack on Minas Tirith. In the books, which often are not particularly cinematic, the gate is broken and then all falls silent. Tolkien keeps it simple and focused on an unmoving Gandalf just talking to the Witch King as he rides alone through the gate. The stillness heightens the potency, which is only broken as first a rooster crows to greet the morning, and then by the horns of the riders of Rohan.
Jaws is a classic example of how stillness and pacing increase the power of moviemaking action and suspense. Spielberg knows how to structure movies to take advantage of contrasting scenes.
But Jackson doesn’t do stillness, and he doesn’t understand pacing. His confrontation between Gandalf and the Witch King is just more of the breakneck speed scenes happening before and after, one incident of chaos among many, all filmed with Jackson’s frantic cuts – his shots rarely last for more than five seconds, with a two minute scene often chopped into 30 separate pieces.
It’s a style designed to whip the viewer into a state of nervous excitement, but it’s all surface jitters. It’s a McMansion made up of a long checklist of isolated pieces stitched together without an understanding of how to put elements together in an organic way.
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IMO Jeremy Brett was the only true Sherlock Holmes.
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wow, i had forgotten about a bunch of that. no wonder they were messy. it’s a wonder they were made at all. i read somewhere that making them almost killed Jackson. i don’t know if it’s true, but the sheer amount of work and stress had to have been staggering.
He didn’t make it to his hundred-and-eleventh birthday, but he lived a goodly span of time as counted among men.
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They also did Return of the King, which I haven’t seen in quite a while but remember liking quite a bit (and you’re right, The Hobbit by them is classic!) I think they skipped some of the LotR material because of the Bakshi movie which covered that territory.
“Frodo of the nine fingers… AND THE RING OF DOOOOOM!”
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I think the real killer is that they apparently dropped a nearly complete pre-production from Del Toro. They’d produced props, costumes, sets. They had finalized scripts, seems like all they were waiting on was a shooting date.
I saw an interview with Del Toro around when he was still working on At the Mountains of Madness, shot at his production company’s prop workshop. He was showing swords, costumes, and god damn molds and busts for orc make-up never used for The Hobbit.
All of it went in the bin and Jackson had just months to start from scratch.
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i’m seriously surprised the job didn’t kill him.
Sadly, Rankin/Bass’s Return of the King was not nearly as good as their Hobbit. This time around, the limited run-time really hurt in terms of coherence and character explanations. There is one very nice original moment, where Frodo has a brief fantasy about A Better World: he and Sam are walking along, and meet a couple of Orcs. They all exchange cheery waves and continue on their way.
When I first saw it at a young age, I had read The Hobbit but not the Lord of the Rings. They changed Gollum’s color-scheme slightly, and so I assumed that he was the original Gollum’s son, as Frodo had replaced Bilbo…
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Likewise, but there are scenes from The Hobbit that I enjoy. Basically, all of the interplay between Bilbo and Smaug is gold. And then there is…nope, that’s it.
ETA: Oh, yeah, and Stephen Fry as the Burgher.
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As a sucker for all things Tolkien I loved the LOTR movies, hated the Hobbit ones, and am positively dreading the new Amazon show. The first two episodes are directed by the guy who did the Jurassic World sequel, and the main character is called “Tyra” which sounds like a soccer mom rather than an inhabitant of Middle-earth.
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Yeah well that is Philip K Dick, right? He was really a movie concept originator more than a good writer. His stuff is pulp. I say that as someone who has read many many of his books. He was incredible at coming up with plots - he was the consummate idea man - but not such a good writer. So he is a perfect example of where movie watchers are going to almost always be disappointed turning to the book source.
Tolkien? No movie is going to be as good. IMO it is pretty much that simple. So I am not so critical of the films as many here are.
