The Hobbit vs. The Goblins
We saw The Hobbit on New Year’s Day, and overall, I enjoyed it. It did feel occasionally bloated, but there were other additions I appreciated and enjoyed. “Riddles in the Dark” was, as many have said already, one of the best parts of the film. While I don’t think it was as strong as Lord of the Rings, that would be a pretty high bar to reach.
That said, the movie did have some problems. I have no taste for fat jokes, which felt like pretty much all they did with the character of Bombur. The stone giants seemed completely random and unnecessary to the story. But my biggest complaint, which will probably come as no surprise, was the way the story treated the goblins.
In Lord of the Rings, our heroes slaughtered an awful lot of orcs. Orcs were the stormtroopers of Middle Earth, generic villains who could be killed with little to no remorse, because they’re all Evil. On the other hand, Lord of the Rings took place in a time of war. The orcs we saw were generally soldiers sent out to hunt and kill humans and other races. The Uruk-hai were specifically created to be evil killing machines.
But then we get to The Hobbit. The dwarves take shelter in a cave, and find themselves tumbling into the goblin kingdom under the mountain. They’re taken prisoner and brought to the goblin king, and oversized and grotesque creature. The dwarves, with Gandalf’s help, eventually break free and fight their way out. In the process, they pretty much Kill All The Goblins.
This scene drags on and on. Goblins are smashed with rocks, stabbed with swords, chopped with axes, knocked into the abyss, and generally massacred left and right.
As a mental exercise, how do you think a party of goblins would have been treated had they stumbled into a dwarf kingdom? They’d have been taken prisoner, hauled in front of the authorities, and probably sentenced to death for the crime of being goblins. How is what the goblins did any different? Yet we’re supposed to sympathize and cheer as the heroes kill every goblin they come across?
Exercise the second: remember toward the beginning of the movie, when they’re talking about how most of these dwarves aren’t really warriors? Yet they killed all of those goblins without a single casualty. What does that tell you about the goblins they were fighting? Those goblins weren’t trained or experienced fighters. They couldn’t have been. Most of them were probably just minding their own business and got caught up in the chaos.
Yeah, I have a soft spot for goblins, but this was just thoughtless storytelling. It felt almost pornographic in a way. Instead of Debbie Does Dallas, we get Gandalf Guts Goblins.
I can appreciate a good fight scene. This wasn’t one. This was empty hack and slash, and I want better.
Daniel D. Webb
January 14, 2013 @ 10:07 am
Haven’t seen it yet, but based on this and reviews like it I’m not at all certain I wish to. The comments about unnecessary padding I’ve heard from other sources, but your description of the lengthy goblin-slaughtering is particularly off-putting. Wasn’t the Hobbit supposed to be LESS warlike than the Lord of the Rings? There was no war going on, it was a classic quest story, and originally published as a children’s book, no less.
It’s been too many years since I’ve read the source material, but unless my memory fails me, I thought that the party escaped from the goblins, rather than annihilating them.
Kate Shaw
January 14, 2013 @ 11:22 am
I didn’t like that sequence for several reasons (including the needless violence), but mostly because it all but shouted, “This part is what will be in the video game!” It’s one of the few sections of the movie where I get bored (I’ve seen it twice).
I still liked movie, especially the first part where the dwarves are arriving. But you definitely make a good point about trained orc soldiers on patrol and goblin citizens just minding their own business.
Jim C. Hines
January 14, 2013 @ 11:29 am
Yes! It’s the pod-racing scene of the Hobbit movie.
Jack
January 14, 2013 @ 11:34 am
Goblins (as they are shown in THE HOBBIT) are throwbacks to the First Age and the first dark Lord Morgoth. They were crafted by him for one purpose, to kill living things. That is their sole purpose. Steal, horde, and kill.
Dwarves are makers (as created by the demi god Aûle), they serve a purpose on the face of Arda.
Goblin’s are a perversion of nature and don’t add anything to the world in which they live.
So that’s why. The heroism stems from the fact that Dwarves are inherently good as a species. Goblins are not.
Required Reading: THE SILMARILLION.
ganymeder
January 14, 2013 @ 12:12 pm
I liked it, but it did feel bloated and way too violent. The Hobbit was written as a children’s story, unlike LOTR, and my son spent half the movie covering his eyes from all the beheadings. THAT was certainly disappointing.
Paul (@princejvstin)
January 14, 2013 @ 12:17 pm
I had other problems with this movie, too. The final fight, for example, makes Bilbo into an action hero far too early in his narrative.
The ‘podracing scene’, as we’ve discussed on twitter, does not work.
Meagen Voss
January 14, 2013 @ 12:35 pm
During the movie, I couldn’t help wondering whether someone had bothered to remind Peter Jackson that admission to a 3 hour movie costs just as much as a 1.5 hour movie. If they did, clearly he didn’t listen.
Also (note that I’m not well-versed in the subtle differences between orcs and goblins), how come the goblins spoke English and the orcs didn’t? I felt that distinction contributed to making the goblins more comedic than menacing. That plus the goblin king’s goiter-beard.
Angela Korra'ti
January 14, 2013 @ 12:37 pm
I’m in the middle of a Hobbit re-read right now, and I note: at least according to what Bilbo learns later once he rejoins Gandalf and the dwarves, there was indeed fighting on their way out of the goblin caves. Dori gives Thorin shit for almost taking their heads off waving Orcrist around at everything.
That said? Yeah, even though I quite liked the movie, I did find that the fight scenes went on far too long.
Agreement as well re: Bombur. Honestly, Bombur doesn’t get much better treatment in the original story–in Chapter 8, Bombur complains that he’s always last to do something when Thorin says he’s going to be the last one to cross the stream in Mirkwood, and Thorin tells him it’s pretty much his fault for being so fat. It’d be nice if the films gave Bombur a shot at something more, but I’m not really counting on it.
Abhinav Jain (@abhinavjain87)
January 14, 2013 @ 12:41 pm
I haven’t read the book in a long while, so my question is this: does the same thing happen in the book? And if it does, then the criticism still applies? It probably does, so then is the fault to be laid at Tolkien’s door or Jackson’s?
Something else: some races are inimical enemies, such as Elves and Dark Elves; Dwarves and Orcs; in almost any fantasy setting. Goblins are often a subset of the Orc species, as seen in the twin Warhammer settings (in the SF version, the goblins are often referred to as gretchin and are menial slaves a lot of the time).
So should the Dwarves in The Hobbit really have any valid reason for killing the Goblins other than the fact that the Goblins trussed them up and were going to kill THEM anyway? Not to mention that the Goblin King had exposed himself as an ally of sorts to Thorin’s most hated enemy?
Dwarves are one of the proudest races in fantasy and in no fiction do they suffer their holds and kingdoms to be invaded at all. If they find Goblins sneaking about their kingdoms, I really doubt that they would simply be taken before the lords for a judgement. That is correct. The goblins are correct to do the same as well. But the goblins are the bad guys for the purposes of this movie. Just as the trolls were, and they were effectively killed as well. An audience rarely cheers for the bad guy, unless he happens to be someone like Darth Vader, in my opinion.
Mark
January 14, 2013 @ 12:56 pm
“Required Reading: THE SILMARILLION”
That’s kind of a problem, isn’t it? If you have to have read additional material for a scene in a movie to make sense, that scene has failed.
Abhinav Jain (@abhinavjain87)
January 14, 2013 @ 1:06 pm
This totally applies in this case however, especially since the Hobbit trilogy is drawing on a lot of the extra material in the LOTR appendices and books like The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales. There has been no secret of this fact at all. And Jack is addressing the point that there should be sympathy for the bad guys being killed by the good guys, just because. The principle is this: is it in doubt that an Orc or a goblin is evil, as per the dictates of the Middle-Earth setting? The Silmarillion shows how Morgoth corrupted the Elves to create the Orcs and other races, the humans and dwarves as well, to create his other “dark” races.
Angela Korra'ti
January 14, 2013 @ 1:09 pm
To the best of my knowledge, Jackson is ONLY drawing on the Appendices. He _can’t_ draw on the Silmarillion or the Unfinished Tales specifically because he doesn’t have the rights to do so. Christopher Tolkien has not released those rights.
Which is why, to the best of my knowledge, there’s that little crack in the movie about Gandalf not being able to remember the names of the Blue Wizards. Their names only appear in Unfinished Tales.
Jim C. Hines
January 14, 2013 @ 1:09 pm
Some of that material has been incorporated into the movie. But not all of it.
So yes, according to the films, it is absolutely in doubt that an orc or goblin is by default evil. Because nothing in the films, neither the material taken from the Hobbit nor the material they added from the Silmarillon and other works, establish or explain why goblins should be considered all evil.
Sooz
January 14, 2013 @ 1:27 pm
I was really annoyed at the movie’s insistence on Bilbo being an action guy instead of a clever thief. I’m not a big Tolkien fan, and it’s been years since I read the book, but even to me it was glaringly obvious how his scenes were rewritten from “guy gets out messes with quick and devious thinking” to “ACTION CLICHES!!! oh wait I guess Bilbo’s clever, too. BACK TO ACTION!!!!”
Hyptosis (Daniel Harris)
January 14, 2013 @ 5:03 pm
You goblin sympathizers are all the same! “Ohhh, poor goblins! Oh, they have to live in a hole in the ground! Oh, they’re so mistreated.” Dude, they eat ponies. And ponies are awesome! 😛
Actually I don’t know if they eat ponies, I’m just being a troll. 😛 A cave troll! I’m hear all night folks!
Hyptosis (Daniel Harris)
January 14, 2013 @ 5:03 pm
here… here all night … >_>
Aaron
January 14, 2013 @ 5:10 pm
I liked the film very much, however, I feel it suffered from an attempt to make it stand on its own. In the novel, the dwarves are a bunch of bumbling entitled idiots until they turn into bumbling entitled jerks at the end. Bilbo spends the whole book simply trying to keep them from being killed by their own arrogance and stupidity. In the film, they tried to make them more heroic and likable. Thus they added the antagonist orc that is chasing Thorin. In the novel, it is clear that goblins were made evil and are morally on par with the Ebola virus, and wholesale slaughter of them is perfectly acceptable, even if it mostly happens off screen, but that does not translate well into a film, as seen here. I think it is easier to sell “and they killed the evil things” in writing than on film.
I also have mixed feelings about the padding to make one novel into three films. I relish being able to spend even more time in middle earth, but at the same time, it can feel forced.
Timm
January 14, 2013 @ 5:13 pm
It actually is stated the LOTR movies why they’re inherently evil as they mention that they were creatures twisted by Melkor to mock the elves and even hate the master they serve.
Nenya
January 15, 2013 @ 2:28 am
I enjoyed this movie tremendously, but I have to agree with you about the goblins. I was struck more by Jackson’s lavish focus on all the details of the ugly creatures and their ugly surroundings than by the philosophical question of whether it was fair to hack and slash them (though I do agree on that point as well). My literary kinks are not the same as PJ’s, but then I’ve known that for a decade.
I did love a lot of the other detail from the Appendices that they managed to work in. Galadriel! Dol Guldur! Radagast and the rabbits of Rhosgobel! More, please. Though thumbs down to action-hero!Bilbo and Even More Unnecessary Dangling Off Cliffs.
Nenya
January 15, 2013 @ 2:30 am
I definitely recall feeling uncomfortable at Bombur being made the butt of fat jokes in the book; I can’t recall how much gleeful slaughter of goblins there was, though I do think they were cardboard villains there as well.
Jim C. Hines
January 15, 2013 @ 7:56 am
Yes, ponies are awesome. AWESOMELY DELICIOUS!!!
Especially with a side-order of fried troll toes.
Eric H
January 15, 2013 @ 1:00 pm
I haven’t seen the movie yet, in case that matters.
Personally, I don’t really see the concept of “Tolkien said so” making the treatment of the goblins any better. It may make it true to canon, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a bad idea in the first place. Making your heroes virtuous for the slaying of noncombatants is just a bad idea in general.
Eric H
January 15, 2013 @ 1:05 pm
The goblins had been living on their own in the western areas for ages. They probably had to learn the common tongue for whatever little interaction they’d have had with the Men of the area. (Plus, it was a kids’ book – what kids are going to sit through a complicated bunch of language barrier issues during their bedtime story? The trolls would have been way less funny if they had just been grunting and speaking unintelligible language.)
The Orcs of LOTR were from Mordor, and dealt primarily with each other and the other beings that spoke the Black Tongue. (And in the books they did speak the common tongue, just not among themselves.)
KatG
January 15, 2013 @ 1:54 pm
1)In Middle Earth, orcs are goblins. Goblin is the generic name that refers to them all and they make reference to that in the movie. There are different types of orcs/goblins; the Urak are larger and can deal better with daylight, which means the albino and his pals are Urak; the ones usually called orcs are somewhat smaller than humans and don’t do well with daylight, and these goblin goblins are smaller still. But they are all made to serve the Dark Master and bear no real resemblance to your goblins. They don’t bear young, they don’t have families or professions or trade. They are creatures entirely of dark magic. When albino Urak puts out the word to catch the dwarf prince, he puts out the word to the creatures of Shadow; which is why the goblin king is gleeful on capturing him. The goblin orcs have killed many, many dwarves, taking over their mountains, which also gets mentioned in the movie.
2) But the other dwarves besides the prince the goblins plan to kill and eat, just like the trolls, whose deaths in the movie you don’t seem that upset about. Are you making the argument that the dwarves should have simply allowed themselves to be killed and eaten? Or politely tried to get away from the goblins who were trying to kill and eat them?
3)The goblins were not nearly exterminated. Most of the goblin deaths were accidents from the dwarves simply trying to get out and away from them, and rickety paths collapsing from the weight of jumping and falling bodies, but even the accidental deaths were of goblins who were seeking to recapture, kill and eat the dwarves, not again little goblin families or innocent workers. There were thousands of goblins in the cavern and most of them were still very much alive and coming after the dwarves. They did not, however, leave the mountain after the dwarves because these smaller goblin orcs don’t like sunlight at all — as they say clearly in the movie — and when the dwarves get out of the mountain, there’s still some daylight left (although the sun sets really quickly and oddly, one hitch for the film.) So the goblins took strong casualties because their prey fought and escaped, and their king was killed, but they got a new one easy enough. And once the dwarves were out in the sunlight, they were safe from those goblin orcs, which is why they stop running. But then they have to deal with the albino Urak on their panthers.
In the original book, the panthers were the property of the smaller goblin orcs under the mountain. There was no albino Urak and no larger orcs or Urak in the battles to come. The armies that attack later in the story are all the goblins under the mountain. While Jackson decided to give fans their beloved bigger orcs from the LOTR movies, you’ll probably be seeing lots of the smaller goblin orcs in those later battles. And while the dwarves all survived the first encounter with them, largely due to the advantage of surprise and the luck of coincidence, they do not all necessarily survive the rest, as you know.
Realistically, if you are in a cavern filled with thousands of shadowspawned goblin orcs who want to kill and eat you, you are going to kill some of them to get away. I’ll agree that making some of the beatings and falls comic raises issues, but they did it throughout the movie. Once you’ve got a sorcerer on a sled pulled by rabbits being chased by an albino Urak on a panther, the tone is pretty much set. For Tolkien, the shadowspawn were symbols of land and magic corrupted, reflecting human and land corruption and devastation out in our world. That’s not the world you created in your stories or even the world of D&D, but going into Hobbit or LOTR, that’s the symbolic world you get.
However this does remind me of a number of humor pieces set from the perspective of the Middle-Earth orcs.
Jim C. Hines
January 15, 2013 @ 2:14 pm
2) No, those are not at all arguments I am making.
KatG
January 15, 2013 @ 5:29 pm
There is the issue of violence for violence’s sake in these films. Padding them out to three films for the three acts in the book means a lot of filler, a lot of stuff that was off-stage in the novel being brought in for the films. It definitely did show a bit in the film, especially this first one. There were scenes I greatly enjoyed, but the battles were not that interesting and I don’t find the albino orc that wonderful an addition. It’s personalizing the orcs into a Western style nemesis, and that was not Tolkien’s intent. But there seems to be a lot of pressure on Jackson to replicate in part the battles of LOTR. So I do think it’s a bit of a mess when it comes to big action pieces, but the acting was quite good, I thought.
Michelle
January 16, 2013 @ 4:37 am
For me, I felt that the movie really struggled to hit the right tone. I couldn’t quite tell which audience it was going for.
On the one hand, there was lots of child level humour of the sort likely to be extremely appreciated by young boys – bodily humour such as with the trolls (farting and boogers for those who can’t quite remember/haven’t seen it yet). I certainly couldn’t watch those ‘jokes’ without wincing in pained disgust.
On the other hand, there was all the blood and gore. A head bounces and rolls down a hill and the dwarf king gets sliced open, an orc is killed and then devoured by wolves (it’s been a few weeks, I’m really hoping he was killed) and some poor goblin or other gets his head bashed in by Gollum.
We should also consider the fact that The Hobbit was originally a children’s novel.
As you say, your son didn’t enjoy the violence, and yet assuming that your son is aged somewhere between 5 and 10 (because that’s around about the time I decided I was too old to cover my eyes), that would be the audience I would expect to appreciate the humour.
I’m thoroughly confused, Jackson. I don’t know if I’m supposed to laugh at your heroes madcap adventures and high-jinks (the hero never dies in a comedy) or be on the edge of my seat in fear for their lives (gripping adventure tales are generally more serious and confuse sarcastic/’biting’/whining ‘retorts’ with side-splitting jokes).
Nokomarie
January 18, 2013 @ 1:20 pm
I saw this film slightly before New Years and must confess that it sent me to sleep. The battle scenes were particularly soporific in effect because they all seemed just a writhing mass of limbs with a few moves that were directly out of Jackie Chan movies tossed in. The ladder around the necks on the bridge and so-on. The battles were nothing like the fights in the book (I had just re-read it for probably 20th time in over four decades) and were a real argument for asking to be woken up when any acting was being done.
As for the acting, well, it was OK, really. Gollum was a wee bit over the top but then so was everybody else, very little naturalism anywhere. We were mystified by the small size of Thorin’s head in comparison to the other dwarves. We had to assume that Thorin’s folk had some sort dreadful small head condition, not spoken of by other dwarves out of courtesy as Fili and Kili also showed that tendency to an extent.
Going back to the goblins, where did the fight in the cavern come from? Gandalf smothered the lights and led the still bound dwarves away in the chaos after stabbing the Great Goblin through the chest. They didn’t make a fight of it until deep in the tunnels. The same complaint goes for every other fight in the movie. A pure hash was made of the book from beginning to end with practically nothing in its proper order for no real reason that I could discern other than gratuitous padding.
Also, we do agree with KatG about the unnecessary supervillain that has been chucked in. Really, the opponent was the journey itself. Certainly Bilbo played no heroic part in it, rather he was a bit of an anti-hero. Only chance words of his carried by the thrush warned Bard of where to shoot Smaug. Just as Bilbo ultimately betrayed the Dwarves for the sake of a little peace, Jackson betrayed the nature of the Hobbit for the sake of a little extra violence and derring do.
Perry
January 18, 2013 @ 2:19 pm
Bilbo coming to Thorin’s aid in the fight near the end was my biggest gripe. I feel it takes away from the significance of the moment when he gives Sting it’s name. That, in the book, was the moment when he first proved himself. Moving that moment to this made up scene really robs the upcoming scene of a lot of it’s power.
Angela Korra'ti
January 18, 2013 @ 2:25 pm
Agreed! I don’t have as much of an issue with setting up Bilbo to have more heroic agency–it does play better in a movie context, and Bilbo deliberately choosing to try to save Thorin actually makes a bit more sense to me when I note that he’s really bad at it and does proceed to get knocked right out of the way. That he tried at all I think is the point the movie is trying to make there, i.e., that he cared about Thorin and that he wasn’t going to stand idly by while the orcs delivered a smackdown, even if he himself is pretty ridiculously incapable of actually fighting one orc, much less several.
But that said, I just read Chapter 9 in my ongoing re-read of the book. And yeah, his whole fight with the spiders, including the naming of Sting, is that first pivotal point in the book and I too am worried that having had that moment at the end of the first film will make the spider fight a little less powerful.
(Though I am REALLY looking forward to hearing Martin Freeman say ‘I will give you a name, and I will call you Sting!’ (heart))
Clay
January 18, 2013 @ 4:04 pm
I had some overlapping thoughts. Going through the movie, anytime someone fell, it was obvious Bombur was going to fall on top of them. It decidedly played to the ‘fat guy’ archetype. Then hey presto, for once he didn’t fall on them! It was the goblin king, weighing in at 50 stone.
The goblin king was just plain campy, although I didn’t think pod racers for the escape from the goblins; I thought amusement park ride. Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Misty Mountain… In fact the stone giants battle also struck me as amusement park fodder. Between those two scenes and the similarly over the top collapsing bridge in Moria from Fellowship, it’s safe to say that sort of action just isn’t in Peter Jackson’s wheelhouse.
The dwarven features were too inconsistent as well. Other than possibly wanting the audience – largely human in my experience – to be able to relate to some of the characters a little more readily, I couldn’t see any reason for Thorin and his nephews to look utterly different from every other dwarf portrayed in the franchise.
I don’t mind the additions from other materials and appendices, but the Radagast sequences were absurd. I haven’t read the other source material, but I didn’t like the portrayal of Saruman – at that point he was still in the good guy camp; there was no need to show him as delaying action.
On the positive side – the riddle sequence was brilliantly executed. Martin Freeman as Bilbo? Brilliant. Ready immersion into the world? Check.
KatG
January 19, 2013 @ 9:08 pm
“Just as Bilbo ultimately betrayed the Dwarves for the sake of a little peace, Jackson betrayed the nature of the Hobbit for the sake of a little extra violence and derring do.”
I don’t think I would go that far. I think Jackson kept the spirit of The Hobbit and that’s why there was a lot of the humor. He kept in snatches of poetry and stuff and things that could probably in modern times be cut, but I thought gave it some charm. But I do think he felt he had to bring the movie in line with the previous movies, and give some ominous edge in the Hobbit movies to tie into the other movies and this very much led to an uneven tone and pace. I think it may get a bit better in the next movies, but it’s also going to get a lot more violent and the goblins will return and get killed. This is not going to be the 1930’s kids’ version certainly.
KatG
January 20, 2013 @ 3:36 pm
Not that it particularly matters, but I just found out that the albino orc is not a made up concoction by Jackson, but is instead part of the dwarves’ history in the appendices of Lord of the Ring. They are also planning to throw in a whole battle story with orcs, wargs and elves from the appendices into the Hobbit movies. But at least they are actually raiding Tolkien and sticking to the histories and timelines that he proposed mostly.
Jim C. Hines
January 20, 2013 @ 6:42 pm
Martin Freeman did an amazing job.
Susan de Guardiola
January 21, 2013 @ 3:44 am
Saruman at that point was already secretly seeking the One Ring for himself, so he was deliberately sabotaging the White Council and delaying action. That’s Tolkien canon, from the appendices.
Susan de Guardiola
January 21, 2013 @ 3:49 am
The albino orc wasn’t albino, and was supposed to be dead by the time of The Hobbit. He was killed in that battle at the gates of Moria. It’s his son who (canonically) turns up in the Battle of Five Armies (and not before).
I don’t have any extra problem with conflating the father/son orc pair for story purposes, beyond the issue of personalizing the Faceless Orc Hordes into a personal vendetta against Thorin. But I am kinda grossed out by the fact that the father/son orc pair means that unless they reproduce by fission, at some point there was Orc Sex and Pregnant Orc. The mind sort of boggles.
Jess Granger
January 22, 2013 @ 11:16 pm
My memory may be fuzzy from my youth, but wasn’t the cave a goblin trap? I thought the whole thing was rigged so if you spent the night in the cave, you ended up in the goblin cookpot before morning. That’s how they found their lunch. If that’s the case, I can’t blame the dwarves for fighting their way out. Now while I love your goblins, Jim, you have to admit, deliberately trying to trap and eat a bunch of crazy sword-wielding heroes on a quest is not the best way to prolong your goblin life, in spite of the tastiness of the soup.
I’m pretty sure Jig would have done his best to stay clear of checking that trap.
That said, I too had to roll my eyes at certain scenes, mostly the battle scenes. To me it was just “Hey, look at how cool the 3D is!” fodder.
I still enjoyed the movie overall and found it charming, though nothing will ever top LOTR. I do confess, I’m looking forward to seeing the dragon. I remember being deeply disappointed in the old cartoon because the dragon looked like this weird cat-faced pig-lizard giraffe bastard.
LadyViridis
January 28, 2013 @ 4:35 am
I think I actually enjoyed the Hobbit more than I did the LotR movies. LotR goes out of its way to make sure you know that this story is Totally Epic and Serious Business all the time, and as a result it can feel a little overwhelming and occasionally melodramatic. (I have a really hard time taking Frodo seriously as a character because they spend so much time having him do slo-motion groans and eye-bulges; after multiple viewings of the movie it just looks silly.) I thought the Hobbit was better about being a straightforward adventure.
The movie was a bit long; I think they could have cut 15-20 minutes and been fine. I was definitely a bit tired by the end, like “this movie is almost done, right? Right? C’mon, guys.” But I liked Bilbo’s moment of bravery and Thorin’s hug of thanks, I thought that was really touching and a good note to end the movie on.
As far as the trolls turning to stone, that’s one of the key moments in the book, so it pretty much had to be in there. They even referenced it in the LotR movies, remember?
I really, really enjoyed all the dwarf backstory and the glimpses we got of the Necromancer stuff happening in Mirkwood. I thought it gave a nice context to the story and a compelling reason about why this little quest matters in the bigger scheme of things; reading the book there didn’t seem to be much reason for it beyond “dwarves are greedy and want their gold back.”
They did such a good job making the dwarves individual characters that I am a little disappointed that Bombur was just “the fat one,” even though that was pretty much his only character trait in the book. Maybe they just ran out of time to give him a bigger role with all the other dwarf character moments they had to build up?
Overall, I thought it was a good movie for what PJ is trying to do– which is make a prequel trilogy that really lays the foundation for what happens in LotR. This movie isn’t a lighthearted adaptation of the Hobbit book by itself, it’s the first section of ‘The Quest of Erebor.’ Or so Dresden Codak tells me: http://dresdencodak.tumblr.com/post/38238171936/where-the-extra-content-in-the-hobbit-came-from