The Hobbit (1937, J.R.R Tolkien)
The Hobbit Trilogy ( 2012-2014, Peter Jackson)
Following on from the critically acclaimed Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit trilogy tells the tale of Bilbo Baggins, one of the major characters in the LOTR books and the lore of Middle earth, on his adventure to the misty mountain and his battles along the way.
The Hobbit trilogy upon release split the LOTR community into two parties. Those that adored the films and those who loathed them. Not only did Peter Jackson decided to take a 300 page novel and turn it into a 3 film long epic. He decided to remove certain characters that were integral parts of the story, change certain events and time frames, remove scenes and add character's that did not belong in the story entirely. This is why these movies are a great choice when discussing Hollywood adaptions of Novel's and why so many of them fail to deliver when the books are acclaimed by millions of people around the world.
Added Stories and Character's
As there are many deviations from the Novel I will only be referring to the ones that are the most noted among The Hobbit fans. Starting with the whole necromancer side story. In the films a side story of sorts appears, Where Gandalf runs off to deal with a hidden threat that seems to be fueling the orcs and scaring animals away from the mountain. What we get from this is a deeper look into the story of Sauron's return and how he became so powerful in the LOTR movie's. This storyline, while adding interesting set pieces. Serves no other function then to link the Hobbit to Lord of the Rings and show characters that every one knows.
In the books Gandalf knows of the Necromancer, but there wasn't a story where he ran off to deal with him. The inclusion of this story allows the film maker to not only add more urgency to the story, allows people like Elrond, Galadriel and Radagast to have much more major parts in the story.
Radagast himself is another story. In the Movie's he plays a major part in the story. Providing the hobbit's a distraction with a chariot driven by rabbits (a complete departure from anything Tolkien described) and assisting Gandalf in his fight with the necromancer. However in the books Radagast is only mentioned off the cuff when Gandalf is talking to the Dwarves "my good cousin Radagast who lives near the Southern borders of Mirkwood". These scene's show how Jackson took a minor part of the story and made it larger then it needed to be.
The Inclusion of Legolas and the Love story.
Another major issue with the Films is the inclusion of one who didn't need to be in the movie and another who wasn't in the books at all. As everyone will know. Legolas was a fan favorite after the LOTR movies. Increasing the love of elves across the fan base. Even effecting people's characters in some games. (Night elf hunters in WoW increased after the movies). This means that it would only be logical to bring him into the prequel films to increase the hype and marketing for the movie, as he is a familiar character and will bring in people who don't know the Hobbit books and are just going to see it for it's relation to LOTR. Then we get onto the character designed purely for these movies. Tauriel (Evangeline Lily). A female elf who was, in my opinion an amazing addition to the world. While her character wasn't fleshed out too much, I still found her to be an exciting character. However what I didn't like along with many other people was the forced love triangle. Kili the Dwarf falls in love with Tauriel, who is loved by Legolas. This relationship was not present in the books due to the elves not being involved in the story until the very end, and Kili's death was only written in to emphasis this story.
As I said before there are many other minor deviations from the novels. Moving events around, Azog being a villain, The Dwarves designs, Biblo's attitude at the start of the movie etc etc. A lot of the fans hate the trilogy due to all of these changes and the fact that Jackson needlessly padded out a small children's book into a 3 film trilogy, purely due to marketing and being able to make money off of them.
However when it comes to representing the world of the Hobbit, which was written before the LOTR series, we get more of the beautiful landscapes that LOTR had become famous for, more interesting characters, more orcs (although mostly CGI this time round) and the return of characters that people loved in the original trilogy.
Some people hate these movies but I myself love them and will always think of them as separate from the novel, making the changes just part of another story.
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