Editing The Hobbit (section)

=The Adaptations=
It was not surprising, considering how popular the ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy was, that at some point the entire series would be fitted to the Mithril Screen. Unfortunately the Tolkien Estate didn't do as well maintaining hold of ''The Hobbit'' as they did with ''Lord of the Rings'' and hoo boy does it show here, as no adaptation to date has ever managed to perfectly stick the landing. 

== Gene Deitch's 1967...thing ==
In 1964 one William L. Snyder got the film rights to a up and coming children's book by Dr. Tolkien that was becoming big and so he had veteran cartoonist Gene Dietch put together an animated version. If you've never heard of it, don't be surprised. 

See a common point in contracts for film rights is a Move-It-Or-Lose-It clause, basically the studio has to make a movie before a certain date or the contract expires and they lose the rights. In general this is straightforward and mostly does it's job of getting their asses in gear or terminating bad deals, but occasionally the system can be gamed by [[Rules Lawyer|technically fulfilling the contract by slapping SOMETHING together which was never intended to be released to keep the rights]] either because the Studio can't do it justice at the time or because [[Capitalism|the Film Rights are appreciating in value and they can flog them for a profit to a bigger studio.]]

So they cobbled together a 12 minute long something that's basically a narrated version of one of those 1960s style psychedelic children's books with a vaguely hobbit shaped outline.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBnVL1Y2src For those of a dread fascination].

== Rankin Bass' 1977 Saturday-Morning Cartoon==
This was faithful in a lot of ways to the original book in structure and perhaps tone... for better or worse. 

Like the original book the Rankin/Bass version is aimed at children and you could almost call it a musical with songs adapted from the poems within the book. Smaug is decent in this adaption, being a lot more smug and witty then the Jackson version (which we'll have to get to), even if his cat like face is a bit derpy and he doesn't have Benedict Cumberbatch's voice.

Unfortunately the Hobbit is just a little too much book for just one movie with little over an hour's worth of running time, and much was cut to make the story fit (AKA the opposite problem of the Peter Jackson trilogy detailed below).

(After [[Ralph Bakshi]]'s hash of the first half of Lord of the Rings, R-B got called in again to do ''The Return Of The King''. We do not speak of such things here.)

==That super campy 1985 Soviet TV Play==

Yep, Soviet TV made an unlicensed version of The Hobbit as a one off. Basically a TV theater production (as in literally shot on a theater stage with stage actors) with all the cheese that would imply.

[[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AcLANfzYTr4 If you are curious, here it is]].

Still not as weird as Deitch's adaptation though...

==Peter Jackson's Trilogy==
{{Fail}}
As the work on it commenced, it was announced that the Hobbit would be split into a two-part movie, which surprised many, but they went with it. The first act of the book moves at a breakneck pace anyways, and some much-needed characterisation for our dwarf party would be a welcome addition. It was when it was revealed it would be a trilogy itself that [[rage|cries of the fanbase rang through the air]]. Across the community, people complained about the film execs [[capitalism|ignoring the book's anti-greed moral]], along with jokes about the producers and the film studio execs comparing them to the Dwarves and even the dragon.

The first movie featured an awful amount of walking and future plot building. It had a few redeemable features, such as the spot-on portrayal of Bilbo, the Misty Mountains song that you now hear everywhere online, and kickass glimpses of Smaug in the prologue and epilogue. We also get to see a nobler side of Thorin Oakenshield to contrast against his later gold-crazed state by the third act of the book (and third movie here). The aesthetics for Erebor were also quite nice, as we finally get to see a proper dwarf realm portrayed in the setting. It also includes Andy Serkis' last turn as Gollum, the riddle scene being one of the better moments in this film.

The second movie ramped things up, although it had frankly hilarious and/or stupid scenes. For the former was Orlando Bloom (Legolas) doing his best [[Eldar]] [[Harlequin]] impressions through long scenes of acrobatic juggles and jumps that just made the orcs seem utterly pathetic (not that that's really out of character for them, but still). There were rounds of applause for his displays in the cinemas, for Emperor's sake. Bard the bowman shows up, but because Legolas is our designated super-special-awesome archer he's been redesignated as "Bard the boatman." Somewhat fitting since he does smuggle the dwarves in by boat in the book, but it still underlies how downplayed he is (in the books he was a pessimistic but noble-hearted Captain of the Guard). Later, Smaug the dragon, voiced to perfection by Benedict Cumberbatch, was awesome, despite being a wyvern unlike in the book [[Retcon|or the original release of the first movie]], until the [[derp|stupid]] kicked in when the Dwarves and Bilbo ran rings around him without dying in the process. (In the book all the Dwarves were terrified of Smaug and never even entered his line of sight because "Nothing can escape Smaug once he sees it."). His fire breath not being able to go through anything the heroes hide behind also undercuts his menace quite a bit. Still, it's generally considered the best of the three Hobbit movies overall (for what little that's worth).

Like with the LotR trilogy, the first two movies are building up for a nice big epic battle in the third instalment.

Sadly it was shit, as the third movie stank monkey balls, featuring Smaug dying almost immediately, more Legolas bullshit (the most infamous of which being his [[What|running up crumbling stones as a bridge is falling)]], [[Dune|random giant earth worms]], even more conspicuous CGI, and a dwarf-elf (so-called) romance plotline that went nowhere due to Kili's death (which is obvious in hindsight since he dies in the book which, remember, has been out for decades before most of us were born). The dwarves in this movie were also a lot cheesier than in the first one, what with them riding goats into battle and Dain sporting what looks like an anemic [[Slayer]] Mohawk (two things that would otherwise be awesome, but here they clash something fierce against the more grounded medieval aesthetics of the film). Then we've also got Not!Wormtongue trying to avoid combat by dressing as a woman as he mockingly declares Bard the new king before skulking away from the battle (in the extended edition he falls onto a catapult and gets flung into a troll's mouth before being bitten in half, so at least he gets killed). Even Thorin's final battle with Azog, which is supposed to be epic, just goes on for way too long, and the big battle on the whole having so much obvious CGI it just comes up short compared to the big battles in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. One of the only bright spots is Thorin's descent into gold-madness, which is handled alright. 

All in all, one wonders what Christopher Tolkien thought of this rehash of his dad's work.

For a more in depth explanation about this (if you have an hour or so to kill) Ms. Ellis (Now Mrs. Ellis, she married in '19) has her videos...
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTRUQ-RKfUs Part One]
*[https://youtu.be/ElPJr_tKkO4 Part Two]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi7t_g5QObs Part Three]

And just for the record, those are ''far'' from the only video essays that tear these films a new one. You throw a rock in any direction on Youtube and you'll hit at least a dozen anti-Hobbit trilogy videos.

Over the years, there have been some attempts by the fans to edit the Jackson's films into something more watchable. Some fan-cuts remove the bloated scenes and unnecessary plots, condensing the story into two films (as it was originally planned by Jackson); while others go as far as to remove the Appendices material (from the Return of the King book) and trimming the story into one single film, solely about what's in the book. [https://hobbitfanedits.fandom.com/wiki/Hobbit_Fanedits_Wiki Here is a list of them.] One of the most famous examples of these fan-edits would be [http://www.maple-films.com/jrr-tolkiens-the-hobbit Mapple Films' cut.]

Hindsight has removed a lot of the criticism. Not because these are hidden masterpieces, but because the more recent The Rings of Power (among other recent entries in other franchises), managed to go over that much worse with people and given them new things to [[Rage]] over.