I love the book too. For a long time I had a pocket copy of it in the fold-pocket of my bag and wherever I went that copy went with me.
Another thing to add to this list, and speaking as someone who never read the book. Several things: The dwarves. I honestly don't even know most of their names save for the leader. Who are they? What are their stories? Why would I care about them? The movies don't really give me that reason. This must be upsetting to people who did read the books and would know who all those characters are. To someone like me who only watched the movies, they're just random faces that all follow Thorin. Legolas and the elf lady (who I can't remember the name of). I've heard a lot of criticism about these two characters, and I agree. It felt more like Jackson was throwing in homages to Lord of the Rings and a random romance plot. Look, I'm all for interracial romance and badass elven women kicking tons of ass, but if The Hobbit didn't have any of this, why inject it in? As for Legolas? Yeah, he wasn't needed; he only serves as a cameo. And his being a dick came out of nowhere. I was so used to Legolas being warm and loyal and here he's cold and treating the dwarves like disgusting vermin. Where did this come from? The albino orc. Yeah, um...who is he again? Was he even in the book? I thought the antagonist was Smaug, not an orc and the 'untold evil that we totally know is Sauron'. Why were these movies building him up to be the bad guy? Am I forgetting anything else?
To be honest, this is one thing the films do well, in the books the dwarves hardly have any character at all. In fact, one of them I don't think has more than one line of dialogue, and Fili and Kili are basically just there to light a fire one time. Good question, I can't remember a single female character in the book. The lady elf is hot and everything, but that's all she was there for it seems. Would it annoy you if I told you that nothing to even do with that albino orc is in the book? And as for Sauron - a Tolkien expert might correct me here, but I don't think he was even thought up at the time The Hobbit was published.
That's right. He was simply refered to as The Necromancer. Both the ring and Sauron developed later. In The Hobbit, the ring was just a magical ring of invisibility and nothing more until Tolkien started to flesh out his world and his publisher demanded a sequel.
I also loved the book, and enjoyed both the LoTR books and the Jackson trilogy. Then I sat through half of the first hobbit film and was just bored off my tits. He had stretched the source material too thin, and added in a whole pile of unnecessary bollox that never featured in the novel. Anyway, the upshot was that I switched the first of the trilogy off halfway through and then never returned to it.
I can't tell you if he was thought up when The Hobbit was published, because I don't know the timeline of Tolkien's development of his world. But when you look at Tolkien's creation as a whole, it is clear that Sauron has already re-emerged some time before the time of The Hobbit, and was afoot in Middle-Earth as the events of The Hobbit unfold. He's the Necromancer of Dol Guldur.
Yeah - Sauron was around in the context of the world history that developed. The ring had been found, and Suron knew about that pretty quick. But when The Hobbit was being written I'm not sure the War of the Ring story was even dreamed up. The Hobbit does make allusions to things happening in the south, but they are so vague so as to be almost anything, and they are among other allusions to other stories too.
All of this, honestly. It's not that An Unexpected Journey was bad, per se, it's that it felt very much like a movie that was stretched out for the purpose of making more movies. I haven't seen Desolation of Smaug yet, nor Battle of Five Armies, although I feel like I eventually will for completionist purposes.
The Desolation of Smaug is tolerable, with some great moments, but starts going down the path that would eventually lead to the irredeemably woeful finale.
Just seen Battle of Five Armies myself. I actually enjoyed it, I thought it was great. There were some amazing shots in it, shots of staggering beauty, and Smaug himself was pretty cool. But ... it wasn't a 'great film', and I love the original Lord of the Rings films with all my heart, while I think I'll eventually forget The Hobbit films.
CGI is my major problem with the movies. I hate the over-use of CGI, wire-work and the ever-escalating spectacle of unrealistic drivel that defines many modern films. Watching a lot of CGI things fighting against stuntmen on wires doing impossible acrobatics against a CGI backdrop is just fucking tedious; yet that is all most blockbusters are. And the whole thing is full of fast cuts so that it all just becomes a nauseating blur of bullshit. This is exacerbated by the fact that these movies are made for people with the attention span of a gnat, so rather than have a beginning, a middle and an end they just have ACTION, ACTION and more ACTION. The audience builds up an immunity through over-exposure and the whole sorry spectacle just achieves a level of normality that makes it slightly tedious.
I also get the impression that some of these movies are made just to advertise the eventual video game versions. You can see action sequences that are clearly designed to be levels in a game.
I don't mind the use of CGI if it isn't so over the top as to be ridiculous, and if the filmmakers haven't confused having good CGI with having a good story.
I liked Battle of Five armies. Not as good as the others, but a passable conclusion. Doesn't live up to LoTR tho...
In my mind he should have made the Hobbit a special movie. One movie, EXCELLENT cast, good writing, maybe some bits of philosophy. Make it stand out in terms of quality rather than quantity.
As of late, T and I have been looking for war movies with female soldiers as major characters (and possibly some inclusion of gay themes 'cause their stories within the confines of the military are pretty much ignored, unless it's porn), but mostly to no avail. We watched Camp X-Ray, which I found pretty good, and next we're gonna check out Close to Home which is an Israeli movie and Little Soldier, a Danish movie which should be about a female vet. We rarely watch anything Finnish (production quality is often not up to par and it's difficult to take them seriously anyway), so it took me completely by surprise when we checked out Tears of April, and it had a gay theme that was not advertised at all in addition to a female soldier, and the production team had put a lot of money and effort into making the movie look and sound really good. Plus the plot was so well-weaved I had no idea how the whole thing would end or what was waiting behind the next corner. I was also glad to notice that it dodged the typical (what I think) audience-pandering choices by the director eg. only female nudity is acceptable (like the first season of GoT) and only straight relationships are explored in graphic detail while gay romance is only hinted at (unless between two women, which is still in the comfort zone). I just wish there were more movies from the POV of female fighters. Those would be pretty interesting.
Probably not the kind of thing you're looking for, but one of the main characters (for a while, anyway) in World War Z is an Israeli female soldier. Not much character development, though.
