You can read the book in half the running time of the movies. There's a lot of padding and pointless meandering in them. It should never have been a trilogy.
While I think the hobbit movies were very bad, I've never agreed with this take. Mostly the movies pull details out of the lord of the rings appendixes and fill in gaps in the plot of the hobbit that would honestly be quite strange in a modern film. Gandalf just screwing off for no apparent reason for half the film would be confusing and weird (honestly it was in the book too, but it's too whimsical to be a bother). And a lot of people complained about Legolas being there but other people would complain if he wasn't, or if he was just a no name member of the mob like the elves were in the book.
There's nothing inherently wrong with an adapted version of the hobbit that fits in better to lord of the rings imo, it's just that this particular try at it was a disaster.
If you look at the word count and movie runtime of LOTR, then compare it to the word count of The Hobbit, you'll find that a similar treatment of The Hobbit would result in probably around 90 minutes of film.
There are complications with that assessment, but 90 minutes would fit quite well with the fact that it's supposed to be a children's story. The Rankin Bass animated version left out a few key plot points (particularly the arkenstone subplot) that could be recovered with a 90 minute runtime. I could also see the possibility of having a 2 hour extended edition
You can listen to the audiobook in just under six hours, compared to the theatrical release of the trilogy which is nearly eight, or the extended release which is over eight and a half hours.
I found the LOTR movies completely missed the essence and magic of the books and I see them as little more than cliche-ridden hollywood garbage. I can't possibly imagine Tolkien being happy about such depraved debasement of his life's work.
The only adaptation of Tolkien's work that I think does justice to it and captures part of Tolkien's spark, are the albums of the Austrian black metal band "Summoning".
Watching Leg-o-Lamb surf in the battle of Helm's Deep kinda ripped me back to "this is just a movie". Jackson should just snip that out and burn the footage of it.
These days, I tend to just put LotR on with the sound off, as moving wallpaper.
In the "Letters of Tolkien" you see a couple of references to screen-plays where he's very critical of changes, condensing, etc. But also a memorable entry in which he says:
"Stanley & I have agreed on our policy : Art or Cash. Either very profitable terms indeed; or absolute author’s veto on objectionable features or alterations."
Finally somebody other than me who is aware of Summoning. They are awesome.
"The Passing of the Grey Company", "Land of the Dead", "Mirdautas Vras", "Nightshade Forests" and "Kor" all evoke specific scenes from the books for me.
I agree, but I'd also like to defend Jackson on this one. He was brought in after Del Toro dropped out and the movies had been in production for years already. He had no prep time and seemed to exist on little sleep for years. You can see some of this in the behind the scenes recordings/interviews they did. I have a feeling they were only as good as they were because of him. Regardless, they were disappointing.
