The adaptation of the Lord of the Rings world to film is one of the greatest

Yes, absolutely. I've always wandered how much better the Hobbit series would have been if they were made first? The original trilogy just had the touch that no other film could even come close to.

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It's such a shame he dropped the ball with The Hobbit films.

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Where did he go wrong? I remember reading the book prior to seeing the films, and just remember how great and exciting of a read it was. And then I thought the films were just too long and drawn out.

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It's such a shame he dropped the ball with The Hobbit films.

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Yep. But in all honesty, we should have seen it coming. All the signs were there in the progression from Fellowship, through Towers, to Return. Jackson kept having to up his ante. HE felt that every action scene had to out do the ones before it. We go from Legolas jumping around while fighting the cave troll, to him skate boarding down some steps on a shield, to him single handedly taking out a massive elephant and surfing down its trunk. With each movie he defied physics in more outlandish ways.

That was a connect the dots progression to that ridiculous falling platform scene in the Hobbit, then the hopscotch on dwarf's heads down the river. Because CGI allows Jackson to do ANYTHING, he felt compelled to do stuff that just insults our intelligence.

Plus, the cash that the LOTR trilogy pulled in was too good to resist. Thus, The Hobbit gets drawn out to a bloated mess that only needed to be one movie long, two tops.

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So Jackson was forced to wing the parts he didn't really care about and focused all his talents on making sure the scenes he had to get right were perfect. The scenes he needed to get right he did so masterfully. It's obvious if Jackson actually put thorough care in a scene or not in this movie. Who can really blame him due to the pressure he was under.

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Yeah, I've heard that too. I also heard there's a fan cut that takes out all of the scenes that weren't in the book and it's a really big improvement.

I just haven't taken the time to find it on youtube.

As mentioned in this thread,a large part of his failure with the Hobbit franchise has to do with the pre-production. Trying to plan these movies is a massive undertaking and takes years of work. For reference, the original trilogy took over 8 years to plan, film, and edit.

A second major downfall was technology. The dependence on CGI seriously handicaps what Peter Jackson is capable of. For instance, compare the quality of the Fellowship of the Ring to the quality of the first Hobbit movie. In the original trilogy, so much emphasis was placed on practical effects and cinematography. There were actual orcs fighting instead of CGI orcs. There were actual models of Minas Tirith used to film scenes instead of 100% CGI.

Also, the development and use of forced perspective in the original trilogy was both groundbreaking and mesmerizing. Take a look at this video.

Overall, the story of the Hobbit was seriously stretched and bloated with unnecessary filler that it took away from the central story. And the extreme over-use of CGI took away from the immersion (looking at you, giant golden dwarf).

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Yeah, I've heard that too. I also heard there's a fan cut that takes out all of the scenes that weren't in the book and it's a really big improvement

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Yeah, I've seen it, and it's fantastic. The Battle of the Five Armies itself is cut down to 12 minutes and much better as a result. It's a fantastic movie that I recommend seeing. About as long as te Return of the King Extended Edition.

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Samwise, as much as I love him, is cartoonish in his goodness.

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I don't think so. Sam is outright cruel to Gollum and a big reason Gollum turns them over to Shelob. Sam is a fairly prejudiced character who is largely distrustful of the outside world. He can certainly be a dick. Pippin more meets this definition than Sam does.

The original trilogy is one of the greatest pieces of cinema ever. The quality, cinematography, story telling, and musical score are all amazing. I watch the extended editions once every month or so and read the books about once a year.