Now that we have seen the last of The Hobbit films there have been many and varied reactions to them and some more or less informed. Although I am not a Tolkien scholar and I am not the most knowledgeable on the Tolkien universe I am well versed on Tolkien matters and I come to the debate with more than average knowledge and my sole claim to qualification is that I have an opinion. I leave it to others to judge whether this opinion has any value. I do not want to appear to be a Jackson apologist since there are many things about both TLOTR and TH films that I think he got plain wrong but that is for another time.
I suppose the two biggest criticisms are that they are making 3 movies from a small children's book and that the tone of the movies is a far cry from that of the book.
Let me deal with the second first since the answer to that leads onto the first point. When Tolkien wrote The Hobbit it was merely a children's story that was loosely connected with the Middle Earth mythology. I think the best way to think of it is as a retelling of a story that came from the mythology and was once within that mythology but was told by someone with the sole purpose in mind of entertaining children rather than to recount part of the history of Middle Earth. Thus the frame work of the book is separated from the original history by several degrees. This can be seen in the legends of King Arthur. There may or may not have been a historical figure, but stories of this figure had been passed down by story telling and maybe by written stories. These original stories have long since passed but the history of the figure continued until after my generations of retelling the legend, being changed in each retelling, barely resembles the original. It is now impossible to piece together the truth from what remains.
Now in The Hobbit it appears that the original story was in no way suitable for children so the characters and events were re-told in such a way as to change the actual facts of the story, but in any case the story may have come to the author from the accounts written by Bilbo, Frodo, Samwise, and other sources via various paths and needed to be brought together into a coherent narrative. It is also important to note that events are never reported consistently by all witnesses. There are always minor variations since people mis-see, forget and details become distorted over time. These variations have to be reconciled by the writer in order to make a coherent narrative.
Given that, it is likely that The Hobbit that we read (within the framework that Tolkien created) is but one version of the original tale. Indeed Tolkien himself was in the process of re-writing The Hobbit from a different perspective to make it more "grown up" and to fit better within the overall Middle Earth mythology.
Now we come to Jackson's retelling of the story. No only do we have the original story which provided the core narrative but we also have the wider implications regarding the history of the ring, the rise of Sauron, the involvement of The White Council (including Gandalf) with the banishment of Sauron, the gathering of the ring wraiths, the history of the rings (It would have been nice to see some more references to the creation of the rings but alas that material was not available to Jackson) much of which is in the appendices to the LOTR.
If Jackson wanted to fit TH into the world in which the LOTR resides then he had no choice but to rewrite it in the way that he did. Having decided to do this then the rewrite had to depart more significantly from the text of TH, more so than he doe with the LOTR. To do this his retelling had to me more Jackson than was the case in the LOTR. I believe that this explains much of the difference between the tone of the LOTR and TH movies. Was he successful? Well, I have mixed feelings. I think he was in many ways but I think that the movies seemed to have less space to develop the world of Middle Earth than he did in the LOTR. This led to a denser narrative and less moments where the characters could be explored further. Having 15 main characters did not help either. The nine in the LOTR was bad enough. The inclusion of the appendix material swelled the story so that it was bursting at the seams. You really had 2 stories being told at once and it was not obvious except to the die hard fans how these were linked. The two EE released so far no not really add that much to the story either. I think in part Jackson can be forgiven since he could not use anything outside of teh LOTR and TH so all of the additional material which could have tied in with the stories was out of bounds. The Tolkien Estate is to blame for that sine they refuse to license anything other than what was already licensed.
So for the length. Three films, too many? No. Absolutely not. What we have was compressed to fit into the films so far. There is much more but with the limitation of the licensed material and the patience of the general audience he had no choice but to limit it to three long films but there was certainly enough material to fill three films, no doubt in my mind.
I look forward to seeing what PJ includes in TBOTFA EE. I eagerly await the Bluray boxed set with 4 commentaries and EE.
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