I'm in the minority; I enjoyed The Hobbit even fully aware it suffered from First Film Syndrome. (Just had a thought: Peter Jackson should film Dune next, so he can annoy two posthumous estates.)
I didn't know there were 3 films, so I was so annoyed at the ending that I went back and read The Hobbit. And you know what? The movie is actually a pretty good adaptation.
somewhat <SPOILER ALERT>:
The battle of five armies, which will show up in the last movie is likely to be much more epic than the book, based on Jackson's renditions of other battles of Middle Earth.
</SPOILER ALERT>
I would go one step further: Peter Jackson's adaptation has been nothing short of fantastic. He's been pretty faithful to the LoTR story, but his movies have sparked interest in Tolkein's universe among those who would have never known about it otherwise. None of my friends would even consider reading the Hobbit or LoTR, but they've all seen and enjoyed the movies. (A tiny minority even tried reading the book). Now, its something that we enjoy talking about over many afternoons
I have to disagree, at least about the LoTR films (I haven't seen The Hobbit yet). I think Jackson "adapted" the story out of all recognition. It may well have drawn a larger audience, but the Middle-Earth that the audience is seeing is not the Middle-Earth that Tolkien wrote about.
<SPOILERS FOLLOW>
Just a few points:
(1) The elves in the movies are way too immature. For example, Elrond, who is something like 6500 years old at the time of the War of the Ring, acts in the movies like an angst-ridden middle-aged father in a second-rate TV drama about Arwen wanting to marry Aragorn.
(2) Way too much screen time is spent on stuff that isn't even depicted in the books and adds nothing to the story, such as Saruman breeding the orcs.
(3) There are some major plot changes that make no sense: for example, the part in The Two Towers movie where Aragorn apparently falls off a cliff and is lost. (When I watched the movie in the theater with a friend, who had already seen it and who has been reading Tolkien as long as I have, he told me when it got to this point, "Here's the part you're going to hate.")
(4) The Scouring of the Shire is completely missing; that's an integral part of the plot in the books and omitting it takes away a lot.
Again, if someone is just taking the movies as their own story, without knowing anything about the books, I can see how they would like it; but they're not seeing the same world that Tolkien wrote about.
You've probably heard this counterargument, so I'm just putting it out there for the sake of completeness:
If Jackson hadn't done those things, there was no way he could have culled the story down to 3 3-hour segments.
That said, I do agree. I was disappointed that Bombadil and his immunity to the Ring didn't show, for instance. But while the Scouring of the Shire was immensely critical to the books, it was also profoundly anticlimactic: it would have broken the simpler narrative of the movies to pull in those more complex themes to have a second climax.
As it was, Jackson only barely managed to hang the two main plotlines together. They didn't need a connection in the books, but it's much more challenging in a movie format. It might have been worth it to split The Two Towers into two films in order to give each its room. (Frodo and Sam from the Breaking to the escape from Cirith Ungol in Film 2; Aragorn and Gandalf's contests with Theoden, Saruman, and Denethor as a very long Film 3; and twisting the two back together in 4 with room for the Scouring.) Nolan managed it in The Dark Knight, where after the Joker was beaten, there was one final emotional explosion. So it can be done. I don't know if Jackson could have done it.
If Jackson hadn't done those things, there was no way he could have culled the story down to 3 3-hour segments.
Done what things? Except for omitting the Scouring of the Shire (for a further comment on that, see below), the things I was criticizing could have been changed without lengthening the film at all. Indeed, leaving out all the "Hollywood" stuff like Saruman breeding the orcs would have left more time for things that would have added more value.
while the Scouring of the Shire was immensely critical to the books, it was also profoundly anticlimactic
Again, if Jackson hadn't wasted screen time on "Hollywood" stuff, he would have been able to add the extra themes that would have helped the Scouring of the Shire to make sense to the movie viewer.
I don't agree that the Saruman breeding the orcs should have been left out, but I'd have to re-watch the entire thing to be certain my argument holds water and well... I'm not going to do that anytime soon.
I don't agree that the Saruman breeding the orcs should have been left out
Perhaps not entirely left out, but a lot of screen time was spent on it that, IMO, added no value whatsoever to the movie. A quick cut or two would have been enough.
Also, he basically destroyed the Ents. That was my favorite part of the book ("You have angered an elder power. The elder power hits you. You die.")
Instead we get Treebeard being basically a dummy sidekick for the hobbits, who realises late that Saruman is destroying the trees and then goes on a rampage.
I was greatly peeved at how many times Jackson expanded a 1- or 2-sentence mention in the book into major scenes. See Radagast and the stone giants for prime examples.
I think a PJ-style movie adaptation of The Hobbit would have fared well as a 3-hour theatrical cut, plus some extras for the Super Deluxe Director's Extended Blu-Ray Edition.
And why the hell didn't Bilbo's actual finding of the Ring from The Hobbit match the scene from the first LoTR film? Can't Jackson follow his own freakin' canon?
The only way for it to match would be for them to have filmed The Hobbit first, then copied footage. They changed actors too - obviously not following his own freakin' canon. Does that ruin it too? Should he have used the same actor, damn the results, to satisfy canon?
The story in the LOTR movies was "Bilbo found the ring in a hole and Gollum yelled 'Loooost!'". There's no canon. That is not a story, it's an obviously-intentional massive oversimplification that was obviously not intended to be reused verbatim in The Hobbit.
An unsatisfying excuse: all the stories are from eye witnesses and second hand story-tellers. No wonder, there are discrepancies. Bilbo tells the finding different than Gandalf. It is like the chinese whispers/telephone game.
Not entirely made up. In Tolkien's world. Azog was indeed the leader of the orcs in Moria and he did behead Thror. However, Tolkien's story has Azog killed by Dain in that same battle. The scene at the end of the first Hobbit movie did take place in the book, but Azog was not present--if I remember right, they were just treed by some random goblins, who sang a cheery song :)
While I enjoyed the Hobbit movie, I was annoyed by the Jabba the Hut scene, and some of the slapstick that was lifted right out of Laurel and Hardy movies.
Hardy played the hit on the head with a brick, and then when he thought that was the worst, he'd get hit on the head with another brick.
This schtick has appeared (in various forms) in endless movies. It's so cliche I knew the goblin king was going to fall on the dwarves the moment one of them said "that wasn't so bad".
Then there's the good guy slicing the bad guy with a sword. You think he missed, then the bad guy looks surprised as his head slides off. I've seen that in probably at least 6 movies.
Falling into the abyss, and yet being grabbed and saved at the last second. Where have we seen that before? The literal "cliff hanger". And we get to see it several times over in The Hobbit.
I still liked The Hobbit. But in spite of those scenes.
I think the goblin king should have been played a little more subtly, but as jonny_eh points out, it's a children's story. While The Hobbit takes place in the larger world of Middle Earth, it is also significantly lighter in tone than LotR. It was silly in places, and some silliness is appropriate.
Consider the trolls they find early on. Do any of Tolkien's other works ever mention them being more than mute beasts? Yet in the Hobbit, they're dumb but capable of making tools, etc., and they turn to stone in sunlight, a weakness never mentioned elsewhere. This is much more in line with traditional fairy stories, down to Gandalf tricking the trolls until they're caught in sunlight and turn to stone.
I didn't know there were 3 films, so I was so annoyed at the ending that I went back and read The Hobbit. And you know what? The movie is actually a pretty good adaptation.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean by "pretty good". Enjoyable action movie? Sure. Has all of the right characters? Check. Actually follows the plot? Complete fail.
Off of the top of my head, Bilbo should sign the contract the night before, wake up, and only actually go out because Gandalf comes and tells him that he's late. When Bilbo goes to investigate the trolls, the dwarves have no fire and no idea what is there. It should be Gandalf who gets the trolls to argue with each other, not Bilbo. Azog should not appear in The Hobbit. There should be no encounters with orcs until, possibly, the battle of the 5 armies. There should be no encounter of goblins, or wargs until after visiting Elrond. The dwarves should be made far more welcome - I personally had been looking forward to the Elvish songs they were supposed to be greeted with, and did NOT like seeing a bad repeat of the meeting between Aragorn and Èomer in The Two Towers. Gandalf should leave Rivendell with the party. The white council should not meet while the dwarves are there, nor in the book is there any hint of romance between Gandalf and Galadriel. (Useless trivia, Galadriel is actually Elrond's mother-in-law.) The dwarves should hear the stone giants - but not be caught riding them. In the cave where they were captured, Bilbo wakes, sees goblins in the back, then shouts (which is how Gandalf escapes). He doesn't wake, have an eloquent conversation, then have the floor cave in. The goblin fight sequence is very long, entirely made up, and the goblin cave we see (complete with rickety structures, the messenger, and so on) owes no debt to Tolkien. (Goblins chasing behind, yes. Rivers of goblins coming from all directions being comically killed by every dwarf in sight, not so much.) Bilbo should be lost by the party because he falls off of a dwarf's back while they are running, and not because he managed to avoid initial capture. Bilbo should not meet the goblin that Gollum was killing when he lost the ring. Bilbo should lose his buttons leaving the goblin cave, not squeezing through some random rocks. The whole tree sequence complete with heroic fight, trees being pushed over, and dangling over cliffs...? All made up. As a reminder, in the book the wolves discover them, they hide in trees, Gandalf throws burning pine-cones, the wolves are driven crazy, goblins come, turn the fire on the trees, Gandalf gets ready to pay dearly with his life and then the eagles come and save him.
That's just off of the top of my head. If I was to actually put effort in it, I'm sure I'd come up with a much longer list of differences.
Of all of the changes, the only one that I consider completely justified was making it light enough in the goblin cave fights for people to see. A bunch of running in the dark would not translate to the screen very well.
Random disclaimer. I have no idea how many times I've read the books. But my last two times reading the Hobbit were painfully slow - I read it to my son.
I agree with almost all of your points, but there is one minor item to correct:
There should be no encounters with orcs until, possibly, the battle of the 5 armies.
"Orc" and "goblin" are just different names for the same creature. In the book the word "goblin" is the only one used, except for one passage in "Riddles in the Dark", where "orcs of the mountains" are equated with "big" goblins.
I didn't know there were 3 films, so I was so annoyed at the ending that I went back and read The Hobbit. And you know what? The movie is actually a pretty good adaptation.
somewhat <SPOILER ALERT>:
The battle of five armies, which will show up in the last movie is likely to be much more epic than the book, based on Jackson's renditions of other battles of Middle Earth.
</SPOILER ALERT>
I would go one step further: Peter Jackson's adaptation has been nothing short of fantastic. He's been pretty faithful to the LoTR story, but his movies have sparked interest in Tolkein's universe among those who would have never known about it otherwise. None of my friends would even consider reading the Hobbit or LoTR, but they've all seen and enjoyed the movies. (A tiny minority even tried reading the book). Now, its something that we enjoy talking about over many afternoons