We think Tolkien used the word in the old English meaning (donkey), not in the new vulgar expression.

Elladan & Elrohir

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The Sons of Elrond

We have the Appearance of Men, the Souls of Elves, and Behave like Dwarves.

It's still an insult. And can you stop using "we"? It's really freaking me out lol.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
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It is but its not crude.

Sorry. Its the pleasure of us both having the same membership and posting together lol.

Elladan & Elrohir

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The Sons of Elrond

We have the Appearance of Men, the Souls of Elves, and Behave like Dwarves.

You should at least have made your name "Sméagol & Gollum".

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

Re: Legolas defying physics.
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/laws-physi ... y-legolas/
I'm just going to add my comment from the article here, because he missed several key factors. Legolas has at least the same strength as an incredibly fit human, he has better reflexes than a human and he weighs substantially less than a human. He can run for 3 days straight over an incredibly far distance after having been in a very physically demanding battle where he shot a bow of at least 75-100 lb draw at least 40 times, as he emptied his quiver. He can also walk on 5 foot thick snow and barely foot prints. His reflexes speak for themselves. When considering this, he definitely does not weigh 60kg. We do know he weighs something, because the mumak (giant elephant) that he kills could feel him climbing up the arrows. Meaning he wouldn't need anywhere near as much force to push himself up. And seeing as he has greater strength than the average human, he can easily exert this force. He also has the reflexes necessary to easily check his surroundings and react in such a way as to climb the falling rubble using his superhuman strength to move his incredibly small mass. The unbelievable thing about that scene is that the tower held together. I'm a civil engineer, and I know that the mortar holding those blocks together would never survive the initial fall.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

no matter how awesome legolas may have been, he doesn't belong in the hobbit.
all his screentime was not really relevant and could have been filled by other characters. the dwarves were pushed to the side in favor of a character not even in the book. and Bilbo baggins is almost a side character sometimes.
it's 'The Hobbit', not 'The awesome adventures of Leg o Lamb'

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jobs. shelter. food. it's all they ever bleat about!

Agreed. No scientific explanations for his crazy stunts will justify the fact that the guy takes over the story (or that that kind of action is better suited to an Asian manga-styled film where we could enjoy it in its right place. We do sometimes like that kind of stuff). "We" have no problem with him being there, (Appendices say he was present) but he has no right to take over Bilbo and Thorin and Company. The story belongs to the Hobbit and the dwarves. Some PJ stuff is great, but Tolkien comes first. This is what "we" feel is missing in these films.

Sméagol & Gollum

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The Sons of Elrond

We have the Appearance of Men, the Souls of Elves, and Behave like Dwarves.

If it is physically possible for a magical creature to do something in a specific fictional universe, then it belongs in that fictional universe. And again, the dwarves were never the main characters, so they weren't sidelined. I agree that too much of the focus was on Legolas, but he definitely belonged there. Why would the ~6000 year old Thranduil not have his ~3000 year old son and heir with him? I would be very surprised if they expand his role in the EE. I would be willing to bet that the dwarves get most of the extra screentime.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

It was PJ's idea in the first place to give Legolas those amazing physical powers. In the book, he can walk on snow and shot with deadly accuracy, but there's no mention of him killing Mumak or having such unbelievable powers. If you mean PJ's version of the Middle-earth universe though, guess it works. But his idea of Middle-earth is certainly growing more and more different from Tolkien's.

With all due respect, we have to emphasize that the dwarves were main characters in the book... The fact the half of them don't say anything, or that they are nearly all clones of each other, doesn't mean they weren't the main characters. The story starts with Bilbo, who with Gandalf goes on a quest with the dwarves to the Lonely Mountain. The story is about Bilbo, but he follows in the Company. The dwarves are mentioned from the beginning to the end of the story. They are often just referred to as "the dwarves" or "they". They often act as a collective, and what was really great about AUJ was that PJ stuck to this but also gave them individual characters, thus deepening the story without changing it. We have read the Hobbit many, many times, over the years (more than any other single book), Bilbo has always been the central character, followed by Gandalf, and the dwarves. The Elven King, Bard, The Master of Lake Town, Elrond, etc. are the secondary characters. There is nothing wrong with deepening these secondary characters, or adding some new ones from the Appendices and deepening them too (even making them main characters is okay), but you also cannot forget who this story is really about. Bilbo. Gandalf. Thorin. The Dwarves.

Elladan & Elrohir

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The Sons of Elrond

We have the Appearance of Men, the Souls of Elves, and Behave like Dwarves.

Well, someone who can walk on snow, and still kill 41 heavily armed and armored Uruk-hai in one night, can probably do some other incredible stuff. I don't think I can stress enough the fact that he has to only weigh a couple of pounds to be able to NOT leave footprints. And I completely disagree that all of the dwarves are main characters, Thorin was the only one who was anywhere near a main characters.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

The fact that it might be physically possible for a creature to do something doesn't justify them doing it. Waltzing on people's heads is cheesy and walking on falling stones just doesn't fit with The Hobbit. It's out of place in Middle-earth. We're sure Legolas could do amazing things, but those thing are out of context in Tolkien's Middle-earth.

The same goes for Alfrid. There's nothing in the Appendices that says "There was no Alfrid, and he did not do this and this." He's artistic license. Nothing wrong with him. But to have him take over the show and run around with bags of coins on his chest isn't appropriate, and goes against Middle-earth in the books as well as the Lord of the Rings films.

Not all the Dwarves are main characters by themselves. As a group, they are the main characters. That is what we mean.

Elladan & Elrohir

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The Sons of Elrond

We have the Appearance of Men, the Souls of Elves, and Behave like Dwarves.

He was talking about not worrying about what the book fans (a relatively small portion of the audience) think when making changes to the source text to improve the story and he is quite, quite right.

Legolas absolutely should have been there, if Tolkien and written the Hobbit after The Lord of the Rings then Legolas would have been in it. I have no issue with Leggy in Mirkwood (I would've had more issue if he wasn't there to be honest) and the barrel escape scene was a great action set-piece. All that said, I could have done without him going to Laketown, it would have been cool to see the 4 dwarves fight off the orcs rather than being saved by elves. I also would have been fine with him then turning up at TBOTFA (makes sense again) but I do wish he'd had a smaller role in the climx, he should have been scrapping with Thranduil in Dale and I would have much rather seen Fili, Kili, Dain or Beorn kill Bolg.

I said before that the good that PJ's done to the story is often overlooked in favour of the perceived bad. This is true of the wider story as a whole. Paradigm wrote a great post about how the presence of Azog improves the story but the Arkenstone thread is also hugely improved in the films. Make no mistake about it, the story in the book does not make sense. In the book, Thorin and Gandalf are heading to the mountain with 12 dwarves to 'get their treasure back', they need a burglar for this for reasons that are never explained in the slightest. Their plan is to sneak though the secret door and then what? Kill Smaug? Take the treasure back piece by piece? It's never explained and it's a stupid, stupid plan.

In the films this is fixed entirely, the plan is to go to the mountain, steal the Arkenstone (hence why they need a burglar who won't smell like dwarf) and then leave the mountain. They will then unite the armies of the dwarves, march on Erebor in force and attempt to retake it. It makes SO much more sense than the book and is an absolutely brilliant piece of adaptation on the film maker's part.

Whatever issues you might have with elves and CGI and everything else, I can't believe that anyone could argue that the story, motivations and character development have not been VASTLY improved in the films.



Again I have to utterly disagree, I don't get this feeling at all from either the films or the behind the scenes material. The simple fact is that PJ and Co HAD to make bigger changes to The Hobbit to make it work for film. However much we all love the book, a 100% faithful live-action adaptation of the Hobbit would have been a horrible, horrible mess.



If these are the best examples of your claims above then they're doing little to persuade me. The dwarves weren't marginalised (relative to the book), Saruman simply accuses Radagast of eating mushrooms, we never see it. And even if Raddy did eat mushrooms, Hobbits eat mushrooms in the movies, does this mean PJ was making a joke of the books then? Oh, no, because the books make it very clear that mushrooms are a staple of the Middle-Earth diet. Yes Kili falls in love with Tauriel, but then Gimli falls in love with Galadriel.

And even if you think that these things are 'making a joke' of the book and 'don't belong in Tolkien's Middle-Earth' are you sure? This is the Middle-Earth in which the trolls talking purse catchess Bilbo and in which Beorn's dogs walk in on their hind legs and lay the table…is the film trilogy really more absurd than either of those things?!?!



This isn't true, the battle wasn't refilled, Arwen was just digitally erased.



But this is absolutely true of the dwarves in the film too! You can't have it both ways! You can't say "the dwarves in the films didn't get enough screen time and character development" and then say "In the book they were just a collective of dwarves who were still main characters". It's exactly the same in the films and the book, there is a large group of 12 dwarves following Thorin around as a collective and we don't get to know most of them particularly well. However, we get to know them ALL far FAR better in the films than we do in the book.

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We must respectfully disagree. With the Lord of the Rings, PJ at least tried to appease many of the original book fans (although he lost many). With the Hobbit, he hasn't been so loving. The book fans may be a "small" minority, but they are the most loyal and devoted to Middle-earth. All we asked for is that he stuck to the spirit of Middle-earth, and stayed in line with Tolkien's writings (including the material outside the Hobbit). His changes within this frame are improvements, but his own changes that have nothing to do with Tolkien are nonsense. It's the books that give these stories their power. If some of the fans only like the films because of PJ and his style and additions, then there are hundreds of modern movies just like that that are much better made.



We have already said above that we agree with many of PJ's changes that follow Tolkien's works. Legolas at Mirkwood, The White Council, making the Arkenstone more important to the Quest, giving the Dwarves a better plan against Smaug, all these are great improvements! It's PJ's own unnecessary changes that are outside of and contradict Tolkien's Middle-earth and story that we are complaining about.


A 100% faithful adaptation may indeed have been boring, which was why PJ's idea to delve into the Appendices was good. Tolkien would have wished it. The idea was to give us the bigger picture that Tolkien had for the Hobbit after he wrote the Lord of the Rings. PJ's bigger changes though have nothing to do with Tolkien, and in our opinion make an even more horrible mess!



Once again, Radagast is "portrayed" as a drug addicted hippy, even if the mushrooms are not the direct cause. This was not how the wise wizards were imagined by Tolkien. Also, we meant the whole Tauriel-Kili relationship. This kind of love plot smacks too much of politically-correct multi-racialism etc. and has no place in Middle-earth.

There is a wide deference between a talking purse and walking animals and PJ's additions. These things are classic fairytale paraphernalia, and are not like the popish, ridiculous, and politically correct additions of PJ's. There is a very different "spirit" between these additions. Tolkien's were made before he took on the more serious saga like tone of the Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit was written as a children's story. PJ tries to keep this saga style from the Lord of the Rings but also combine it with downright modern movie elements and his own crazy ideas of what Middle-earth is like. The result are films that seem like they are making fun of what Tolkien intended (even for the children's tone of The Hobbit). If PJ wanted to stick to the more innocent attitude of the children's story, then why skip out the walking farm animals and talking purse and instead add things for the modern popcorn munchers? There are worlds of difference between intelligent talking crows, farm animals that serve their master, a talking purse, and a stretched love relationship that follows the recipe for modern Hollywood, together with manga-styled ridiculous action, and a guy that runs around with pecuniary breasts. There's a big difference between Trolls talking in a Cockney accent, (which has a fairytale charm about it) and dwarves using vulgar British slang (which has nothing Tolkien about it). Sorry, but the Hobbit films fail both as an epic saga and a children's story, never mind as Tolkien's stories!


We must have heard PJ wrong on the Documentaries. We do think we remember him having to re -film some scenes though. Nevertheless, couldn't PJ at least digitally remove his nonsense in the Hobbit films?


Forgive us if we have not been clear in explaining what we mean. We are not contradicting ourselves when we say that the dwarves are a collective of silent clones in the book and then complain of lack of screen time and character development in the films. PJ's job was to take the Hobbit and expand and deepen it (within the limitations of Tolkien's writings) for the big screen. PJ chose to expand the dwarves' individual characters, which was an awesome idea! When you expand a story however, you need to do so proportionally. You cannot overly expand characters like Legolas (who have no real part to play in the Hobbit) and not also majorly expand on The Company. In proportion to the part they play in the book, the dwarves are marginalized in the films! Their individual roles are most definitely better than in the book (vastly better!), but they are no longer as important as they should be. Rather keep them clones but don't replace them by other characters!

We are not trying to persuade you or force you to agree with us. We are just mentioning the things that we personally disliked! We respect and understand your opinion. Please forgive us if we ever sound like we are forcing you to our view of Middle-earth, or that our way is the only way to interpret Tolkien intentions. We may be forced to sound like that to explain ourselves plainly in these arguments, but its not our intention. Tolkien is so popular because so many different people have come to love his world in different ways.

Elladan & Elrohir

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The Sons of Elrond

We have the Appearance of Men, the Souls of Elves, and Behave like Dwarves.

Don't forget that Christopher Tolkien did give his approval for adaptations of his fathers work as he approved the 1981 BBC Radio play of The Lord of the Rings. The scripts for it were approved by CT and he even sent them a audio tape of pronunciations of Middle-Earth words and names to help them out. The play is 13 hours and it is well worth getting. I often listen to it when painting. You may even recognise a couple of the actors voices from other film versions.

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My Blog http://quendilsworld.blogspot.co.uk

i agree that the company were mostly filler type characters, without much real personality. i mean, the only defining traits they seem to have were the colors of their hoods.
but you can't deny that there's plenty of opportunity for character development here. why did they join thorin? are they more after the treasure, or out of a sense of loyalty, are they after revenge for families lost when smaug took over, or are they simply in it for the fun? questions like these enrich the story greatly.

instead we get treated to legolas, once again. and tauriel. a pointless story not in the books that serves no purpose. they do not push the story forward at all. in my opinion legolas should only exist as a cameo, not a main character. tauriel is fine, if only there was a point to her character beyond a love story.

i'm not saying PJ should have followed the books faithfully, obviously some of it will never work on the film. but if he was going to add filler, then he should have focused on the Dwarves at least. or maybe the main character? maybe a bit more on Beorn and Dain, who were the ones meant to have killed Bolg and Azog? it's such a wasted opportunity for great storytelling, for me.

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jobs. shelter. food. it's all they ever bleat about!

I am going to walk out on the thin limb and say that a love interest in the story is not a bad idea. I know it is not in the Hobbit book, but for film it gives a sense of humanity and love is something people can connect too where just fighting over gold is a very narrow focus. So I think PJ was not making a bad decision when deciding to add a love interest.
That said, I think it sucked.
I had zero feelings for Fili, Kili or Tauriel. Why? Really why. Peter should have made me care about them at some point right? At first I thought the brothers were cool, in AUJ, but as soon as kili was making jokes and looking at elf maids I thought he was lame and another sex crazed jerk with a mind on one thing, scoring a chick.
From there it was obvious that the very next girl he meets he is going to try and get with, Tauriel. He made bad flirty come-ons. They shared a single night of talking between jail bars and I am supposed to believe they are in love? Hardly, I still think he is saying anything to score a chick. And Tauriel I thought was a bit desperate and had a sort of crush on Legolas but was put off by the dad. But that should not mean she is ready to jump in the arms of some other guy.
Anyway... I now pretty much cared not at all for Kili andFili had almost no lines or depth so when he died it was no big deal.

in the end the love story was a failure and all the characters that were killed off I didn't have any connection too except that jerk Thorin whom I only felt bad for Bilbo, Freeman sold me on caring for his passing. And that is the key.

So, I think we could have had a love interest in the film, but not the one we got. Legolas with Tauriel would have been ok and tauriel getting killed and legolas going ape nuts to avenge her would have been a way better story. Some more depth and love for Fili and Kili would have gone well too so that I would have cared the least bit about them. I have brothers, so I know how I would feel if one was harmed, I didn't get that from Kili at all.

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I actually had a cry of glee when Kili and the somewhat more likeable fili were killed, when I was in the cinema.
No remorse whatsoever, I was genuinely happy when they were murdered!
There should never be a point where the audience is actually happy the protagonist dies...EVER.
When I watched botfa for the second time I was very much irritated by it. The acting is kinda hammy(in all fairness same goes for the first time). Evangeline Lilly is terrible actress, mind I wouldn't want to be in her shoes acting that Devlan Mud. Same goes for Cumberbatch.
In the cinema I actually liked the film for what it was... a mindless self indulgent action fest with ZERO fidelity to the source material and a very misleading name, it should have been named The duels of arrogant self important unimportant characters we will quickly forget for the sake of a diluted story with no apparent direction. Of course Battle of five armies is a catchier name probably not accurate.
The second film is essentially filer material with nothing of any credibility, full of innuendos and poor acting from pretty much the entire cast, yet again I wouldn't want to be in their shoes acting this ludicrous piece of cinema.
Auj isn't that memorable a film either but at least you got see more NZ in it also, flawless Golum scene
Make no mistake this is my opinion of the films, I make no apologies for any of it, I'm a very displeased customer and after the first film well I quickly realised the best thing that would occur from this was more models and rules, which as far as I'm concerned is the only good thing to come out of it all

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Ha ha! You couldn't be more right! When the brothers died, we didn't care a bit. When Thorin died, Elrohir actuall exclaimed "Oh thank God, he's finally dead!"

Bad directing. It's a shame really. These films had such potential. The director puts all his effort into Legolas and Alfrid (stupid effort) and gets rid of the dwarves as fast as possible. It's like PJ is holding a checklist. Fili dead, check. Kili dead, check. Thorin dead, check. Whew! That's over with. Now how can we squeeze in some more of Alfrid?

It's like they intentionally made it so that you really cannot emotionally connect with any of these characters. Unless of course your a love-sick teeny bopper, in which case you'll just burst over Tauriel.

Elladan & Elrohir

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The Sons of Elrond

We have the Appearance of Men, the Souls of Elves, and Behave like Dwarves.

I think it's a question that the Hobbit trilogy is a victim of the success of LotR, the difficulties in the adaptation of the book, and a troubled production at its inception.

Firstly, when PJ made the LotR trilogy, he was breaking new ground, and had a point to prove. He was driven to make the films, be faithful to the books, be successful yet make something the fans would back. He was basically saying, 'Trust me, I will make Middle Earth come to life, you will love it". And he delivered. The movies of The Hobbit have to measure up to that and it's a high standard.

That means, secondly, there is a problem. The source material is wildly different in size, audience, and tone. The Hobbit is a children's book at less than a third in size of LotR. There simply isn't enough there to make 3 full films of the calibre of LotR. So PJ has filled the gap by 'making stuff up'. This again results from the artistic and more importantly the financial success of the LotR films. Remember it's a business in the end, they need to make money and as much as they possibly can.

Del Toro's vision might have actually been better, a new viewpoint. But PJ is trying to take slightly lightweight Hobbit story and give it the impact and gravitas of LotR and seamless with the later films. This could have worked better if he had kept it shorter. A case in point is the Council of Elrond in Rivendell. On the Director's commentary in LotR he and the co-writers complain at length about this huge wedge of exposition slap in the middle of the first film, disturbing the 'dynamics' of the story. Yet PJ then goes and adds one in The Hobbit!

We can pick out many many oddities and 'wtf' moments in the plot like the love story, the switch to Azog after Thorin (instead of Bolg), the 'wereworms' (rolls eyes), the threat of the reforming of the kingdom of Angmar (just nonsense), etc etc ad nauseum.

But has PJ lost his touch in creating the latest trilogy?

Yes, somewhat. the film and PJ were being pulled in many directions and many factors.

Is the trilogy as good as LotR?

Not by a long chalk.

Are they worth seeing?

Hell yes! Silliness and problems aside... We are once more in Middle Earth (well kinda).

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I tend to agree with many of the common complaints voices so far. Some of these are undoubtedly attributable to interference from WB, while others are more likely due to poor desisions on the part of PJ.

Even though I liked The Hobbit trilogy for the most part, it had many glaring flaws and was certainly inferior to the Lord of theRings trilogy. Too much Legolas (I actually thought it was a good idea to include him at first, but he was overused). Too many OTT fight scenes (tobogganing through Goblintown, burying Smaug in 10,000 tons of molten gold, Bobur bouncing over the orcs, Legolas dancing up a stream of falling stones), overuse of CGI, not enough time spent developing most of the dwarf characters, Bilbo and Beorn (especially criminal given the overall bloat in the story).

Now, I don't think everything that was done was a bad idea. I liked the inclusion of Radaghast (even if he did get a bit silly at times), the initial inclusion of Legolas (to help tie the two trilogies together), the addition of the scenes of Angmar and Dol Guldur and the battle of the White Council and the Necromancer. The prologue and epilogue scenes with old Bilbo and young Frodo were nice, too.



To be fair, Christopher T. hated the idea of the movies before the first scene was shot. The only reason the LOTR and The Hobbit were even made was becuase JRR himself sold the film rights before he died. The Tolkein estate has staunchly refused to licence any of the other material JRR wrote (The Silmarillion, etc.) for any reason, to anyone.

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“The Ring has awoken, it’s heard its masters call.”
– Gandalf