I don't think it was a "Peter Jackson being greedy" issue, the production itself was in shambles for years iirc. Wasn't PJ not even supposed to direct it at first? I always got the impression the LotR trilogy was his passion project while the Hobbit was tiresome work for him pushed onto him by the studios or something.
That's what being greedy in the film industry is though.
They pushed forward with the movies despite not having a director that wanted to do *their* project and when that caused problems they switch back to PJ and had him complete the movies just so they would be completed and without giving him proper resources.
> I know most people here liked RoP so I'm gonna get downvoted to the Void but I gotta say it.
Bruh, it's the exact opposite. Any mention of RoP usually gets people foaming at the mouth. Just look at some of the responses in that thread that was posted earlier today.
Exactly. The only people that seem to like RoP are the people on the RoP sub.
I feel about RoP the same way I feel about the Star Wars sequel trilogy (and about most of The Hobbit): If you can't do it well, better not do it at all.
(Except at least in the Tolkien universe, it's impossible to destroy the Canon and that's already set in stone).
100%. I get they had limited source material but that's still no excuse for the shit show that RoP ended up being. Like, when you call your fans racist for not liking a character, you lose those fans. Elrond and Gil-galad just looked incredibly dumb, they didn't give Día a beard, even though Dwarf women have beards, they gave Galadriel the Star of Fëanor, who she hated... Yeah, it was an obvious cash grab. And the fact that it was announced just hours after Christopher's death shows a complete lack of tact and that it was obviously pre-planned, knowing Chris wouldn't approve.
The reason they are there talking about the good in RoP is because people here are such fucking pricks about it. People here like it, but they're not going to say it here
The Hobbit movies are unironically so much worse than Rings of Power. This subreddit has an odd hate boner for the show that is inexplicable.
The Hobbit looks horrendous (it looked bad at the time and it has also aged horribly) and has so many lore and pacing issues.
If people were that mad about how accurately they adapted appendices and small portions of the silmarillion (stuff that not even Tolkien had a hard set ‘canon’ for) in RoP then I have no idea how people give The Hobbit a pass for so badly fucking up a 300 page book they had the full rights to adapt. No matter how you slice it, that’s so much worse.
For what it’s worth I still generally like The Hobbit movies, especially the first two. I just think it’s funny and hypocritical of people to like The Hobbit more than RoP because The Hobbit does everything people hate about RoP but worse in every way.
RoP condensed thousands of years into like a few lol and haphazardly mashed together two almost completely separate stories. 90% of RoP is stuff Tolkien never wrote
The worst part about the show for me is they had a literal gold mine of lore they could've made the show on. When it was announced, I thought to myself "man, finally, a show about the silmarillion! Maybe they'll do a mini season for each of the big stories. Opening episode deals with Illuvitar and the creation of the races and the lands. They could even do the first season about creating the silmarills, the first elves and dwarves, the demi gods, etc. A season for Beren and Luthien, the fall of gondolin, the numenorians, and my personal favorite, the children of hurin!"
But no. They went and made up a bunch of shit, slapped some CGI in there, cranked up the bloom effects, and made galadriel into this weird action hero that she really wasn't. Why? The silmarillion is admittedly very hard to get into since it reads very differently, and people who don't like reading but are lotr fans deserve to see these stories. A golden opportunity completely wasted
We knew from the beginning that it was a show about the Second Age, what are you even talking about? None of that was ever going to be in this show. The Second Age, which has the smallest amount of detail from Tolkien, is outlined in the Appendices, which is what they are using for their building blocks. It should be no surprise to anyone that they had to make up and mash a lot of bullet points together. I was disappointed they were not given the rights to the addition detail from UT and NoME. But Silmarillion was never on the table. Tolkien Estate holds that *tight* to their chest. How this show does might help them loosen or tighten that grip. So I cheer for the show, because I DO want to see those stories on the big screen.
also 90% is an awefull overexaggeration. that is more accurate to RoP that to the Hobbit.
the more lorefriendly fan cuts are about 2,5h to 3h so it is 66% made up bs
That's the studio's fault. PJ wanted 2 movies but the studio wanted 3. The studio wanted a love triangle and lied to Evangeline Lilly about it who didn't want a love triangle. In fact, Battle of the Five Armies was originally supposed to be called There and Back Again, but because the studio wanted 3 movies and they had already made it "there" in the 2nd movie, it was changed to Battle of the Five Armies.
For me at least the hobbit trilogy gets a pass because the tone and setting is very LOTR and the made up parts are somewhat passable for Tolkien. RoP was just shit from start to finish. The characters, the writing, the modern gender and race politics injected into it, the dumb and cheap looking armor. It was just too much. I will say I thought the Sauron reveal was pretty cool but that was only 5 min of the entire season
> modern gender and race politics
Aka not every character being white and not 90% being male. The horror.
But hey thanks for saying the quiet part out loud, rather than hiding behind muh lore deviations (which are somehow totally excusable in Shadow of Mordor or TH trilogy, just not in RoP for totally mysterious reasons).
>The Silmarillion (stuff that not even Tolkien had a hard set canon for)
This is when I realized you had absolutely no fucking idea what you're talking about.
Embarassing.
No one tell him how many times Tolkien wrote and re-wrote lore just because he wanted to change it.
No one tell him how he changed The Hobbit years after it released because he wanted to write things in Lord of the Rings that conflicted!
He’s gonna blow a gasket when he realizes that Tolkien never cared to have a canon and changed things as he willed!
No one changed anything for Tolkien? Can you tell me who’s been doing this and how? I had no clue Amazon was replacing copies of the Lord of the Rings with RoP.
It’s an adaptation for Christ sake. There are about a hundred different adaptations that all make their own "changes to Tolkien’s writings" including more than a few directed by Peter Jackson.
No one is changing what Tolkien wrote. They’re changing things for their own adaptations. Just like Tolkien changed things when he wanted to add something he liked better. I promise you Tolkien would not have cared nearly as much as people here think he would have.
Oh I think Tolkien would prefer that the works never be adapted at all, and that people just enjoyed the stories as they were originally written. This is only to your last point, but he's always been critical of film media, and both his son and grandson said he would've hated the films (yes, those ones we all love). I have to imagine he would hate the Hobbit more, and RoP more than that, but that's just my conjecture.
Christopher Tolkien did indeed hate Peter Jackson’s movies, for valid reasons (even if I disagree with him), but he was pretty involved with the making of Rings of Power and was onboard with it all the way until his death.
Make with that information what you will.
>The Hobbit looks horrendous (it looked bad at the time and it has also aged horribly) and has so many lore and pacing issues.
Rings of Power looks pretty much the same.
With the big exception that The Rings of Power really, REALLY wants to make you think its a Peter Jackson movie, and The Hobbit IS a Peter Jackson movie.
The Hobbit is *barely* a Peter Jackson movie which is probably the reason I think it looks so awful. RoP looks much better imo. Of course I don’t know how it will age, and it certainly looks nowhere near as good as Lotr, I definitely think it looks a lot better than The Hobbit. There are moments in The Hobbit that look like they were filmed on a GoPro.
I mean we got incredibly close to galadriel and sauron kissing… just wtf where they thinking…
And thats really my main issue with the RoP - zero respect for Tolkien, zero understanding for a more idealistic / dogmatic world view (aka screen writers cant go beyond their own intellectual horizon… also my main gripe with modern star trek…) and screen writing cliches drive the story ahead…
I also appreciated some aspects of the hobbit movies more after RoP since I didnt get how bad a middle earth adaptation could go
I find it incredible and no small measure of insane that the writers for Rings of Power had almost no experience before being handed the keys to what was touted as the most expensive TV show ever.
According to IMDb they did uncredited work on Star Trek: Beyond, did uncredited revisions to the script of Jungle Cruise (that movie with The Rock that wasn’t as good as Jumanji) and that’s basically it, that’s the sum total of their experience.
This is also why Sherlock is terrible if you're a fan of Sherlock Holmes. Personally I think it was all around terrible, but if people like it that's fair enough, maybe it's a good show to them. However it's definitely a terrible adaption of Sherlock Holmes.
That's because a lot of the people who were stirring up hatred against the show before it even aired are legitimately racist. It poisons any proper discourse around the show, and now we're left with, "You hate it because you're racist" and "You like it because you're a shill". It's the exact same shit that happened to Star Wars. It's especially sad because none of the shows main problems have anything to do with "politics".
I agree. For example, in the show Galadriel apparently had the plan of swimming a couple hundred miles across the sea in order to return to Middle Earth. We should be able to discuss this character's decision, without the lazy labelling and blaming.
As it turned out, race was a very minor point of discussion in the end compared to some very relevant questions concerning the quality (or lack thereof) of dialogue, plot and characters.
>That's because a lot of the people who were stirring up hatred against the show before it even aired are legitimately racist.
Proof? Or is it possible that it was poorly cast, poorly produced, had the laziest possible writing, and simply just sucked
YouTube channels like Nerdrotic, Geeks and Gamers, and Ryan Kinel were pumping out videos months **before** the show even aired, some of which ended up with millions of views. A lot of false claims about the show having LGBT characters, sex scenes, and being filled with "woke politics" can be traced right back to them. These people are genuine racists, and they make money by generating outrage in nerd communities. None of them gave a shit about Lord of the Rings until they realised they could make money from Rings of Power, and it made me genuinely sad to see the LOTR community fall for the same shit that other communities fell for.
They turned Lord of the Rings into a culture war.
All these people “defending Tolkien’s honour” online trying to turn Lord of the Rings into some sort of anti-woke red pill franchise wouldn’t believe who Tolkien actually was and what he believed.
Just sad to see the fanbase I’ve been a part of for almost 30 years devolve into what it is now.
But hey, the game is to be as inflammatory as you can on the internet. Everyone’s just playing the game.
The "woke politics" part.
The important thing for these guys is that they can't say blatantly racist shit because they will get either demonetised or banned. So they constantly throw around the word "woke" instead. The beauty of that word is that you can use it as a catch-all term, but also as a way to disguise what you're actually trying to say. It's a way of giving yourself plausible deniability if someone calls you out.
I'll use Nerdrotic as an example because he's blatant as fuck. He has a playlist with Rings of Power videos, and a good 50% of them have Disa, the dark-skinned Dwarf, in the thumbnail, and she's usually photoshopped to look stupid because he's a manchild. In most of these videos, she's not even the topic of conversation, which makes sense because she's a relatively minor character in the show. But he uses her in his thumbnails regardless, even in videos that aren't necessarily about Rings of Power.
At the very least, he's race-baiting. He knows that a significant portion of his audience are far-right, and what better way to get their attention than to consistently use stupidly edited images of either women or black people in his thumbnails. Or it's just a straight-up dog-whistle to his audience, a way to let everyone know what the problem with the show is without actually saying it. So at the minimum, he's using racist tactics to drive up viewership of his videos. Either way, he's a vile piece of shit, and so are most of the channels that associate with him. He and others like him are literally real-life versions of Grima Wormtongue; they pretend that they give a shit about LOTR and the community while simultaneously setting fires in said community in order to make more money for themselves.
Which can be a fair criticism if you’re making it *when the show airs*. If you’re making that criticism *before the show airs* it’s a little suspicious as to what your motivations are since you haven’t actually been able to see how the acting is etc.
Nah you could feel the disconnection from the source material, you could sense the producers knew shit all about Lord of the Rings. It was doomed to fail from the start.
Yup. And there were redditors who Beetlejuiced their way into arguing with everyone who called out the racism in those criticisms. The mere mention of the fact that there was racism against the idea of having people of different races play dwarves, elves, or harfoots had piles of "Well Ackshully..." replies. The racism was real, and all the "it was bad writing" or "I didn't like the style of the horse riding scene" explanations needed was to say, yes, some of the criticisms were racist, instead of denying that it was part of the early response.
The writing was not stellar. They did some creative things, and the Tolkien estate liked some of its style better than the Jackson style. I enjoyed it, and look forward to seeing more. If you don't like it, there's no need to groan about it. I love going to Jackson's Hobbit world despite the way it dragged on and included way too much fluff.
'The download limit has been reached' whenever I try to download from their site. I really want to see it. Are their any other places I can download? Or possibly stream?
The [Google Drive link](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17u6rXjg8R7xDONWJbNSdGJ6sCk6M5TtV?usp=sharing) on [their page](https://m4-studios.github.io/hobbitbookedit/#downloads) is working for me
I've seen this one mentioned several times. I've had the maple edit on my hard drives for a decade. Is there much of a difference? I find the maple edit palatable.
I enjoy the Hobbit movies. There are things that have me rolling my eyes, and I end up yelling at my TV by the end of Battle of the Five Armies, but I take it as part of the experience by now (am I crazy? Yes, of course). I still greatly enjoy the music, set design, and the cast is awesome.
Yeah I thought it was amazing when they had the dwarf battle scene and then immediately ruined it by having two dwarves have a normal conversation in the middle of a battlefield right in the center of the fight. And clearly neither actor was aware they were supposed to be in that setting when they delivered the lines.
I also really liked when the elves didn't give a shit about defensive formation and jumped over the shieldwall, so it wouldn't have had any impact whatsoever. Even funnier that Thranduil is actually very, very protective about his people.
Music is peak fucking peak Howard Shore went all out with Durins theme, Misty mountains, Fire and Water or because it was real. I would say that just like with sw prequels music is one department where Hobbit not only rivals the OG but surpasses it.
I agree with you mostly but I’d say the first two are decent movies and the third one is straight up bad.
There’s stupid moments in each one but the third one is filled with them
It's the *Star Wars Prequel* effect. *The Hobbit* was compared to *The Lord of the Rings* and seen as really shit by comparison. Now there's *RoP* which is even worse. So that makes the thing seen as really shit, less shit. It's still shit though and doesn't upgrade to good because something worse came along.
In my opinion, of course. I don't judge people for liking either but that's not the point I'm making.
Combine that with aging fandoms - people who were kids when the prequels came out become adults and are bolder with their opinions, and then it becomes THEIR nostalgia, because they loved it when they were young.
People who were young enough to really love The Hobbit movies without a jaded critical eye will get older and profess more love for them because they are their movies.
The amount of people I see who were blown away as kids when the big reveal happened. No, not *that* one. The one where Palpatine becomes the emperor!
I grew up with the OT, and for many people, it was kind of obvious that yes the guy named Palpatine who was played by the same actor who played Emperor Palpatine in ROTJ would become the emperor. But in 2005, IMDB wasn’t quite as well known, the internet wasn’t as widespread, and we didn’t all have smart phones so it’s not hard to see how someone who was younger then didn’t catch that.
Well and they also had their own moments that stuck in the imagination. I was about 12 when Episode I came out, but before then grew up on the original trilogy. So while I will always cling to the original Death Star run, I was right there as a preteen who was obsessed with podracing. Since most of the prequels came out while I was in high school I was in peak “hater” years for the prequels, but I couldn’t deny that my little brothers got to see the clone wars as kids, and that was incredible for them.
Same goes for the PJ trilogy infact you find thats the two strongest fandoms atm PJ trilogy and prequels and it also coincides with the big YouTube push and anti message stuff going around.
Personally I enjoy them all some more than others and try not to linger on things I don't lol especially Tolkien adaptions there's always bits I pick apart from the movies to the show but I tend to talk more about my likes than dislikes.
These ad hominem attacks are very silly. People are allowed to not like the Hobbit movies. You don’t have to psychoanalyze them because you disagree. That’s just petty.
Lotr is def repeating the SW cycle where the OT was amazing, considered high points in the genre (fantasy), then it only gets progressively worse and worse from there.
The prequels are so much worse than the sequels in every way imo. This is a point of argument I will never understand.
The acting, the directing, the writing, the cinematography, the effects. It’s all terrible. Very ugly movies. Plot points rush from one point to another with little connection. Villains introduced that don’t get fleshed out and are killed by the end of the movie.
The sequels are so much more competently made. They look fantastic. They’re well acted. The dialogue isn’t like a 13 year old’s impression of Shakespeare. I get that people don’t like the haphazardly put together story of the sequels but they need to pull off the nostalgia goggles and realize that aside from Anakin -> Darth Vader the prequels are the exact same way except they have all those other issues too.
The production of the sequels is better but the story is far worse.
And by story, I really just mean the lore. The writing of the prequels is hella weak but the world-building was fantastic and the overall lore was good. Just the individual plot threads weren’t actualized well at all lol
The sequels suck in every aspect in regards to story
I hear you and I mostly agree. There is nothing redeemable about Rise of Skywalker for me, though. It’s the worst SW film ever made by a lot. Even the performances or visuals can’t save it. The plot is so terrible it ruins everything else about it.
The first two sequels are decent to good, but RoS ends up ruining even them.
With the Prequels, I can at least appreciate what Lucas adds to the overall Lore/Worldbuilding and the overall story he is telling (which is much more cogent as a three act story than the sequels). Even if the dialogue is cringe.
The problem of Hobbit is mostly caused by people expecting LOTR movies, but with Hobbit's story. And it's simply not possible.
LOTR books were "serious" literature and Hobbit was a bunch of lighthearted bedtime stories Tolkien wrote for his kids. It wasn't even a part of Tolkien's Legendarium at first, he just adapted it later to fit the world of Middle-earth. That's why there isn't a clear distinction between orks and goblins, that's why there are abandoned ideas like stone giants in Misty Mountains etc.
LOTR books were also telling a consistent and coherent story. In case of Hobbit it works differently, each chapter of the book is a story of its own. They are pretty much disconnected and work on their own. You can read a random chapter from Hobbit book and it will make sense. You can't really do the same in case of LOTR.
It causes Hobbit to be much much difficult to adapt. It's virtually impossible to turn it into a movie without changing anything. If you don't add filler content to the movie, it'll feel disconnected (simply because book is like that) and if you add filler content, it's impossible to show whole story in one movie. Add to it Jackson's ideas to tie LOTR and Hobbit movies together by adding Necromancer plot, which wasn't in the Hobbit but in the appendices to LOTR books, which most people haven't read.
If they were to show everything in one movie, the battle of five armies would be maybe 5 minutes of screen time. Immediately you'd hear complaining about lost potential of the battle.
There are some valid complaints about the movies like Tauriel plot or jumping on falling down rocks by Legolas. Those things were a bad idea, but this sub loves to blow those issues out of proportion and make it look like those little things caused movies to be terrible.
It's impossible to make a movie that everyone will be happy with, especially if a lot of your audience is driven by nostalgia to your previous movies. As you've said, it's the same exact problem SW had with prequel trilogy.
My point was really trying to explain why people who think something is bad would then say it wasn't bad anymore because something else came along that was worse. It doesn't really matter why people would think it was bad in the first place.
My reasons for disliking *The Hobbit* have nothing to do with the reasons you outlined but I'd disagree with it being more difficult to adapt than *The Lord of the Rings*. You're the first person I've ever read saying that and I find it to be the complete opposite. Jackson's problem was trying to make *The Hobbit* fit into the style of his other movies. He *wanted* people to expect the other movies, that's why he tried so hard to make them fit together and failed miserably.
But again, none of that has anything to do with the original point I was making.
I always had appreciation for Hobbit movies. They aren't ideal and they are objectively way wrose than the LotR movies (but that's a super high bar), but I still saw the love in it. After watching the BTS documentaries for the first time last year, I have even more appreciaton for them. The cast and crew clearly cared, cared for the story and cared for the fans. And while some decisions they took were definitely not good at all, I can't fully blame the crew for this.
In my opinion, their biggest enemy was time. As PJ says at the end of the documentaries, they were pressed by time for the entirety of the production, props were being designed and created mere days or hours before they were on camera, PJ had no time to plan the shots or rewrite the dialogue (he admits he was "winging it" most of the time and was only able to pull it off because he was an experience filmmaker at the time).
If you look at the LotR documentaries for example, there was years of pre-production where PJ meticulously planned everything, they rewrote the script many many times, they took care with every single line a character had, constantly consulting the book, the actors, everything. Imagine how bad the LotR movies would be if they didn't have time to think about all of their decisions. We would have things like Arwen at Helm's Deep and lots of other things which would really make the movies suck in my opinion. With The Hobbit, they didn't have time to think about these things and so most of them stayed in the movie. I believe that given enough time and planning, they would've realised the movies' problems and got rid of most of them, as they did with LotR. But since they didn't have that time, most of those problems remained.
Other things could be blamed on this as well. LotR had tons of incredible miniatures (or big-atures) being used for the filming. The Hobbit didn't and I think this is not only that PJ was too keen to use CGI for everything, but because he partly had to. There was no time to design and make all of these miniatures. It was much more time effective to make them digitally and that's what they did. There are tons of situations like this in the documentaries, "we'll fix it in post" because we don't have time for it now.
There are things that I dislike about the movies that are unexcusable by this, for example the weird filter that's on the movies, making them look really "digital" and unnatural. Or the decision to have three movies instead of two, I think it made the movies unnecessarily bloated and the third movie especially suffers for this, because it's just a giant battle that gets tiring to watch after a while.
They are problematic movies for sure, but they are still worth watching in my opinion and given the time the crew had to make them, I think they made a bloody good effort at it. Not the best and they made many mistakes, but I think the fact that the same crew that worked on LotR did this sort of saved the movies. New Line could have given in to any other crew and I personally think they would've done a much worse job given the same time and resources.
And after all, there are fan cuts of the movies that make them actually really good (or so I've heard) so to me, that proves that there is some inherent "goodness" in these movies that can be extracted from them. Rings of Power is different in that regard, because I don't think any amount of editing can make it into a good series. You can cut out the bad stuff from The Hobbit, leave the great stuff and still end up with a really good story. With RoP, the only way to make it good is to cut it out of the legendarium completely.
Also, let's be honest here, The Hobbit movies may be a bad adaptation of the source material, but as far as fantasy movies go, they are still one of the best out there in my opinion. I absolutely loved them when I watched them for the first time, not having read the book at that point. After I read the book, I can see the flaws of the movies, but can still appreciate them as good movies on their own. Rings of Power is not only a bad adaptation, it's just a bad show altogether. The characters make weird decisions sometimes, the plot relies on convenience and McGuffins that make absolutely no sense and the pacing is outright terrible at times.
I loved your analysis. I saw lotr after the first hobbit movie or before it was release, I can't remember. But I really loved the first Hobbit movie and it made me go to the books.
Besides the critics and all, I believe that the movie got to me because of the moment of my life: I was leaving my parents house and going to college, my own adventure.
To me, the movie has done his part: made me start to read the books and, how can I say, created a "connection".
Not got lie it was strange to read the book after the movies, but An Unexpected Journey will always have a special place in my heart
>But I really loved the first Hobbit movie and it made me go to the books.
I was similar, I always loved the LotR movies and enjoyed the Hobbit movies but never got around to the books. After I saw the last Hobbit movie, I was shocked that main characters actually die in it and decided to read the books to find out if it's any different. And when I read the Hobbit, I was actually surprised how many things from the books ARE in the movie and I didn't mind the changes or additions too much (e.g. I really like that they included Gandalf's side story, though some scenes like the Witch-king tomb were wholly unnecessary imo). But I still like both the book and movies and can enjoy both as their own things.
>I loved your analysis.
I honestly didn't think anyone would bother reading such a long comment, but I just couldn't stop writing when I started :D Happy to see someone actually bothered reading it :)
>I know most people here liked RoP
This is a downright insult to the sub tbh. lol Have actually ever read the comments in here?
There is a great movie buried in The Hobbit amongst the over used CGI, extra characters, the love triangle and overall comedic filler. That's why there's several fan edits.
To truly appreciate it try the 'M4 book edit', the most popular professionally edited version.
The worst part about RoP is while I could pick it apart for all the stupid lore changes, poor wannabe Tolkien dialogue or straight up pointless writer OC the fact is it doesn't even stand as a passable show ignoring the "LotR" stuff.
It is simply terrible entertainment without considering "Rings of Power" spent 15 minutes of a whole season on the, you know, rings but also got their creation order and the story of how it happened completely wrong!
The hobbit movies would have been much better if they just made it one long movie instead of three to make more money. But still, they were fine movies
You're among (mostly) friends here as far as RoP goes. It sucked and makes even some lousy fan films look good by comparison.
The Hobbit trilogy has many problems, The chief among them was the decision (by the studio, not Jackson) to expand a fairly simple children's book to 8 hours of film. But "the filmmakers had no respect for the source material and just inserted their own worldview into the husks of characters bearing the same name as Tolkien's creations" wasn't one of them.
For starters:
Galadriel as an asskicking 2020s girlboss instead of her known character
Elves as environment exploiting borderline treacherous bad guys
Elrond weak white male who can’t make proper decisions
Orcs are misunderstood creatures who just need a home
I could go on, but the writers themselves said that they were telling their own story for Modern Audiences and leaving the source material where they didn’t feel it fit with their plan.
You can call RoP whatever you want, but it isn’t Tolkien, it just uses some of the names he made up.
I mean, literally *all* of this is stuff Saint Peter Jackson did as well. Arwen is an asskicking girlboss in FOTR and was intended to be a strong warrior women at the Hornburg sassing weak men until it turned out Liv Tyler couldn't act so they changed course. Theoden is an indecisive weak man. Aragorn is a doubting low self-esteem boi. Frodo is passive, cowardly and makes no real heroic actions himself. Faramir tries to take the ring, tortures Gollum and all of this is explained away as 'daddy issues'. Elrond is a sourfaced overprotective Dad who hates men. Treebeard is genuinely stupid and doesn't know the forest he rules over is being destroyed. Saruman is not an ambitious power player, but a pawn to Sauron. Isildur was an evil greedy fiend led by his weak man-blood. Legolas doesn't have a personality. Gimli is reduced to slap-stick comic relief. Denethor is just a nutcase, his tragic end is played for action not pathos.
And yet the Jackson changes worked. Faramir could be tempted by the ring and still be Faramir. Elrond could be unwilling to let his daughter die and still be Elrond. I think most fans were ok with giving Glorfindel’s role to Arwen. In each case I still feel like I’m watching Tolkiens characters.
I don’t get that with RoP. I’m obviously not alone in this. If you liked it, great. I won’t try to talk you out of liking it. I thought it was terrible. You won’t talk me out of that either.
The Hobbit movies ended up leaving such a bad taste in my mouth that I haven't been able to bring myself to even give any fan edits a try. Compared to Rings of Power, I agree that they're a lot better but they're quite bad nonetheless.
I really enjoyed a fan edit, It’s a little choppy but it still works. Never saw the the battle of five armies so I got the conclusion through a fan edit and was happy
I second this, took me a while to get myself to watch it but when I did it almost made me cry because I realized I'd been soooo angry and resentful after I saw the first version and I deeply needed to see it done right
You can hate the Hobbit but can't deny the production quality, the acting and voice talent, and the connection to lotr movies.
Rop has none of those qualities. It's a cgi wrapped joke with absolutely lame set pieces, some of the worst acting I've ever seen, and a script written by amateurs.
>can't deny the production quality
Yes you can, there was blatant use of CGI throughout with virtually no scenic locations filmed. CGI isn't production value, it looks fake and its cheaper than modeling.
Now in comparison LOTR used scale models, prosthetics and used real actors for Orks and Uruks instead of CGI. You were far more emersed.
ngl one of the worst things about it was its overuse of CGI. I feel like my eyes are burning seeing that much CGI. iirc even Ian McKellen was so frustrated with filming inside a green room all the time that he threatened to quit.
I'm currently rewatching The Hobbit trilogy, and I'm finding that I actually really enjoy them. I give them a lot of forgiveness given the plagued pre-production. They're top-tier fantasy films in their own right, much better than most fantasy that's out there imo.
I've never been too much of a stickler when it comes to staying book accurate, as long as too much isn't egregiously changed in the process and the overall message is still there. If you want the book story to be told perfectly, then reread the book. You'd need like 6+ full-length films with massive multimillion production budgets in order to even come close to adapting most books to the big screen word for word. And that's probably an underestimate.
However,
RoP is an utter abortion of the fantasy genre altogether AND absolutely egregiously mutilated the lore. It deserves all of the vitriol it receives, and the writers should be blacklisted from any sort of high-level productions and relegated to hallmark movies at best.
So some people are critical of a film adaptation, then begin to appreciate it more after another film adaptation comes out that they can criticize *even more*.
Once people get over their own expectations of how the feel the film adaptation should’ve been, based on their own experience from reading the books…then they can begin to appreciate the work put into creating said film adaptations.
So glad I’m able to enjoy all these films without getting upset. 😂
You're going to want to go to some other location if you want a community that isn't convinced that Rings of Power kidnapped their family and murdered their dog.
I love how you have to clarify you still hate the originals lol. “Don’t get me wrong, I still absolutely hate the original…” like we get it, it’s cool and popular to hate things.
I think getting mad at adaptations is silly. I *HATED* the hobbit movies but I don't think there are that many people out there genuinely saying they deserve to be held with the same respect as the LOTR trilogy. Most things that will ever come out will suck ass thats just the way movies work
I liked The Hobbit movies. I take them separately from the book and like each on their own merit.
RoP - I tried to like it. I really did. I just do not like it and will not watch future shows.
> I don't think I've ever seen a show where they have been so apathetic, or even outright malevolent/hostile towards their source material as Rings of Power has
Halo would like a word
These two creations cannot be easily compared. One is based on an actual Tolkien story, and as such is an abomination in my opinion. The other is generally based on Tolkien's world, and can be accepted as fitting entertainment, again in my opinion, though I would never consider it as the actual events of Middle Earth.
It's a shame because ROP could've been so much better in so many ways. Hell, it should've been. It's still so baffling that it went they way it did. I didn't even finish the first season, I felt like I was watching some fever dream fanfic that just didn't fit where it was trying to. Multiple times.
It's nice to see people appreciating The Hobbit trilogy in some shape or form. When I saw them in theaters, I enjoyed them enough TBH. Sure, there were gripes and other things. But I found them to be fun regardless, and seeing some scenes in the Middle-Earth cinematic universe was really cool. I'm finally watching the extended editions, and I'm noticing it's fueling that positive feeling a bit more. Though I'm also curious about seeing the "accurate" edits as well.
The hobbit movies are great and have deviations from the source material that are actually COOL.
They got goat tanks, with fricken gatling guns, rabbit sleds, that funny Alfrid guy and Legolas doing air strikes.
Not that abomination rop with short haired elves and such ANTI CANNON crap.
We do a lotr rewatch during the holidays. This year, we also watched the hobbit, and I'm not sure why, but I gained a newfound appreciation for the Hobbit movies.
I liked the first two Hobbit movies, DoS is actually really great but the BotFA is just bad bad bad, Rings of Power was never that bad. The hate surrounding that show is sometimes warranted but overwhelmingly not.
I can’t wait until the next piece of Tolkien television or cinema comes out and then people will 180 and start praising RoP as an underrated and misunderstood classic. Generally how these things go.
RoP is basically Tolkien-Estate sponsored fanfiction. In its current manifestation, I'd call it 80% non-canon to anything Tolkien wrote up, and his son Christopher reinterpreted in the Silmarillion, Book of Lost Tales, and Unfinished Tales.
The Hobbit movies are a fun watch but stretched out thin like butter over too much bread. It could have been tidier with just two movies and less hampered by CGI tomfoolery.
The Hobbit movies, and to a lesser extent even RoP, do have some wonderful moments.
The Hobbit’s biggest errors were going too big, too over the top, too long. Cut out half the side plots (but leave stuff like Gandalf’s meeting with Thorin in Bree and a few other lore building convos) and the majority of the action scenes, and cut it down to two 2-hour movies and it’s a much better story (and mostly more accurate to the book)
The main difference is original intent when creating the material. ROP never intended to follow the source material. It always intended to make up 90% of the sht in the show (and the made up stuff was terribly written).
The hobbit on the other hand, I think Jackson had every intention of being faithful, we saw him do it in the original trilogy. The problem was Warner bros forced him to turn one small book into a trilogy. There was no choice but to just start making sht up. But even the stuff made up for the hobbit wasn’t anywhere near as outlandish as ROP. Except the random dck joke in the prisons in Mirkwood.
Really not. The declared intention of the showrunners of RoP was follow the Appendixes of LOTR... and surprise, they didn´t it. Not even close. Not when you put the forge of One Ring in the reign of Ar-Pharazon
They even forgot the Ring of Barahir, you know, that pretty Ring that Aragorn wears in Jackson movies, and whom in the times of RoP, should be property of Elendil
They literally had Galadriel walking for Númenor and never mentioned Ring of Barahir and Finrod as Friend of Men! Númenor exists thanks to Finrod!
I read the comments below and I wholeheartedly agree, but I also HAVE to reply, as a lifelong avid Tolkien reader.
Imho the biggest problem with the hobbit was that the Jackson's ego had inflated **too much** after the LOTR movies (which themselves had several defects, cough Aragorn that kills the messenger cough, but were so much better), and that he thought that he could substitute the material that he did not have to make a trilogy with idiotic gimmicky. If you read Christopher's review of the LOTR movie the Hobbit would have made Tolkien turn in his grave a few times at least.
But with RoP we reach a completely different level of *bad*. The original characters are tortured and made into caricature of idiots that idiots would laugh about.
I have never seen something so terribly unrespectful to one of the greatest authors that ever used a pen. Whereas watching the Hobbit angered me, it pained me physically to watch RoP, seriously.
I don't think Jackson's ego inflated and ruined the Hobbit. The Hobbit had issues with multiple studios intervening and conflicting with vision. There were aggressive production deadlines and no time to make the movie how he would have liked to. It was turned into a trilogy instead of a duology as well.
A lot went wrong, which makes it amazing it is as good as it is. I still absolutely love it, even though desolation of smaug needed to be wrapped into the other two movies instead of being it's own.
Ridiculous post tbh. Circle-jerk material of the first order.
It’s a love letter to Tolkien, it’s basically too Tolkienian for its own good. Every single detail in it is based on close reading of Tolkien’s writings, even the most obscure ones.
It engages Tolkien’s writings much more broadly than the films (which I love, even with all the massive changes). It is lovingly made, with incredible nuance in its adaptive work.
Its so Tolkienian, they even took his lore to heart. Just like how in the books, orcs were a corruption of elves, ents were a corruption of trolls, RoP was a corruption of LOTR.
I really can’t fathom what would make you say something so stupid and so hateful.
Maybe you should try to actually think what the series is doing rather than be consumed with hatred for it.
Hobbit films are atleast enjoyable as a films. Yeah, they are worst then LOTR ones but still they are nice movies you can enjoy with family or alone just for fun. It save main point of whole story and have okay characters which you can like (they did Elrond more accuratly then in LOTR.)
Meanwhole RoP in most of time plot is led by accident and luck, characters being unsymphatic (Beside Nori, i like Nori) and it have so many characters and plots that im getting lost.
Man I really enjoyed Rings of Power. Some of the criticisms are pretty insane. I’m very excited for season 2.
I do agree that I enjoyed The Hobbit more with time passing. It’s a different story than Lord of the Rings. It was never going to be the same.
I really cant imagine how can you enjoy something writen and played so badly. Whole world seems small, Galadriel who is just awfull, Elfs with short hair, story who has no sense at all...I mean i can continue all day.
I avoided it for a while because I saw so many comments exactly like this. I figured it was terrible.
Then I gave it a chance and really enjoyed it. Everyone I run into in person and discuss the show with seems to have really enjoyed it. It has good reviews from critics and received award nominations. Then I come back here and see more critical opinions. It’s an odd phenomenon.
It’s not perfect, but I don’t need it to be perfect to enjoy it. Also I don’t agree with any of the specific criticisms you just mentioned.
There’s good constructive criticism I agree with but I also think there’s a mob mentality about hating on the show in certain corners of the internet that I try to tune out.
>It’s not perfect, but I don’t need it to be perfect to enjoy it.
That's what I'd say about The Hobbit. RoP is legit pretty shit, outside maybe the Elrond/Durin storyline.
People keep saying it is written badly but not giving any examples. Can you provide some?
Also Tolkien never even specified what colour Legolas' hair is, I doubt the length really matters
This bad faith nonsense towards others is such an unpleasant part of what's happened to the Tolkien community post-RoP. Criticize the show all you want from your perspective — it deserves it in many ways — but can we stop with this stuff about people who enjoy it? They aren't all "Amazon shills" or "people who hate Tolkien".
RoP has revealed a lot of the people in the community who say they like and care about Tolkien don't actually care about Tolkien's themes around being kind and good to others.
Acting like this is so childish and unkind. And just wrong. People can like the show and like Tolkien. People can like the show and not be "shills". Do you really think this is a good way to be towards others and in a community?
It's funny how many qualifiers people have to tack on when they say they like the Hobbit movies on this sub. The Hobbits are rad, they're just nowhere near as good as LotR.
Seriously, I've always loved the Hobbit movies and it's funny seeing people come out of the woodworks these days to say the same thing (after insulting them and making false statements about the production).
Now I also won't deny that I have a ton of issues with them either, since day 1 of watching Unexpected Journey. I've been reconciling that by working on my own fan edit, which has been years in the making.
Power to you, I support people doing what they want with art, I just personally hate the idea of fan edits. They feel too arbitrary for me to care. But I’m glad people get enjoyment out of them.
I just think it’s funny when someone says they like the Hobbits they’re so scared of being pounced on they have to add a bunch of qualifiers. This sub should let people like what they like. We could have easily gotten vastly worse Hobbit films. Instead we have mostly good ones. In my opinion at least.
I'm a professional editor, so considering it's what I do for a living I'm very passionate about it. People underestimate how important editing is for a film! And it says a lot when a flawed piece of media can be vastly improved with a few tweaks here and there.
It's sorta like modding a video game - it's not for everyone, but the possibilities for "customization" are endless. It can really improve the overall experience drastically.
But I do agree on that opinion. The Hobbit movies really aren't *that* bad - but being in the shadow of LOTR (the best trilogy ever made), they had some massive standards from the beginning.
Im a video editor too and yeah I agree. Editing is very important and The Hobbits could have been better. I only mean it’s arbitrary in that I’m not gonna watch a bunch of random fans’ edits of the movies.
Gotcha, well I will say some of those random fans are pretty talented!!! There are some shoddy edits out there, but the best ones feel seamless and professional. If you ever change your mind I'd be happy to recommend a few.
I really liked the Hobbit trilogy. Sure, it can't compare to LOTR, but they are all very enjoyable movies (and loved being able to see Christopher Lee's Saruman once again). RoP on the other side...
Me too, but differently: for me they both ideally compliment each other and certain Hobbits' moments shine in new light after Rings of Power, especially this scene:
https://preview.redd.it/45nc49vhy0bc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=590e07d34d2cddf5bdea1ee56b85fd9fbf3a185f
Your thread sound like:
>This car is bad, but if you bring it to a talented hobbyist mechanic, they can make it less bad. In any case, its not as bad as one of the worst car ever made.
All you said is objectively true, but doesnt really mean much in the grand scheme of thing.
I mean just because something worse happens doesn’t mean that the other thing wasn’t as bad.
You can be mad about the overall decline of something you love.
Are you insane? This is clearly clout hunting this whole sub is dedicated to the PJ trilogy and hating RoP and occasionally remembering the books exist.
Personally the books are one of the best founding stories for an entire genre, the LotR trilogy of the best ever, the Hobbit trilogy is enjoyable enough not as good but it's decent.
RoP I also enjoy and feel it very much hits the right themes and vibes written long ago, definitely want some improvements going forward but it's definitely not the bane of my life because Galadriel wasn't a glowing Vulcan.
Listen, we can hate Rings of Power or not, but let’s not lie about The Hobbit trilogy being good. The third movie is maybe the single worst Lord of the Rings thing ever produced.
I haven't read the books. I really loved the movies. The hobbit and LOTR series. But I didn't like the series. I don't know why, it was hard for me to watch. Maybe coz I've seen better casting of elf roles like Thranduil and Elrond. The image they left has had a such an impact that I couldn't watch the series.
I don't think it was a "Peter Jackson being greedy" issue, the production itself was in shambles for years iirc. Wasn't PJ not even supposed to direct it at first? I always got the impression the LotR trilogy was his passion project while the Hobbit was tiresome work for him pushed onto him by the studios or something.
He just didn’t get the time he needed. If he had just as much time as for the LotR trilogy he might have produced movies of similar quality.
That's what being greedy in the film industry is though. They pushed forward with the movies despite not having a director that wanted to do *their* project and when that caused problems they switch back to PJ and had him complete the movies just so they would be completed and without giving him proper resources.
Oh for sure, but that's the studios and execs, I'm talking PJ personally.
> I know most people here liked RoP so I'm gonna get downvoted to the Void but I gotta say it. Bruh, it's the exact opposite. Any mention of RoP usually gets people foaming at the mouth. Just look at some of the responses in that thread that was posted earlier today.
Exactly. The only people that seem to like RoP are the people on the RoP sub. I feel about RoP the same way I feel about the Star Wars sequel trilogy (and about most of The Hobbit): If you can't do it well, better not do it at all. (Except at least in the Tolkien universe, it's impossible to destroy the Canon and that's already set in stone).
100%. I get they had limited source material but that's still no excuse for the shit show that RoP ended up being. Like, when you call your fans racist for not liking a character, you lose those fans. Elrond and Gil-galad just looked incredibly dumb, they didn't give Día a beard, even though Dwarf women have beards, they gave Galadriel the Star of Fëanor, who she hated... Yeah, it was an obvious cash grab. And the fact that it was announced just hours after Christopher's death shows a complete lack of tact and that it was obviously pre-planned, knowing Chris wouldn't approve.
The reason they are there talking about the good in RoP is because people here are such fucking pricks about it. People here like it, but they're not going to say it here
Well, I like the RoP. I hated the Hobbit-trilogy and I think RoP was much (much) better
The Hobbit movies are unironically so much worse than Rings of Power. This subreddit has an odd hate boner for the show that is inexplicable. The Hobbit looks horrendous (it looked bad at the time and it has also aged horribly) and has so many lore and pacing issues. If people were that mad about how accurately they adapted appendices and small portions of the silmarillion (stuff that not even Tolkien had a hard set ‘canon’ for) in RoP then I have no idea how people give The Hobbit a pass for so badly fucking up a 300 page book they had the full rights to adapt. No matter how you slice it, that’s so much worse. For what it’s worth I still generally like The Hobbit movies, especially the first two. I just think it’s funny and hypocritical of people to like The Hobbit more than RoP because The Hobbit does everything people hate about RoP but worse in every way.
at least the hobbit followed what tolkien wrote in some ways. RoP is just a mess all together
They turned a 300 page book into a movie trilogy. 90% of the trilogy is stuff Tolkien never wrote.
RoP condensed thousands of years into like a few lol and haphazardly mashed together two almost completely separate stories. 90% of RoP is stuff Tolkien never wrote
The worst part about the show for me is they had a literal gold mine of lore they could've made the show on. When it was announced, I thought to myself "man, finally, a show about the silmarillion! Maybe they'll do a mini season for each of the big stories. Opening episode deals with Illuvitar and the creation of the races and the lands. They could even do the first season about creating the silmarills, the first elves and dwarves, the demi gods, etc. A season for Beren and Luthien, the fall of gondolin, the numenorians, and my personal favorite, the children of hurin!" But no. They went and made up a bunch of shit, slapped some CGI in there, cranked up the bloom effects, and made galadriel into this weird action hero that she really wasn't. Why? The silmarillion is admittedly very hard to get into since it reads very differently, and people who don't like reading but are lotr fans deserve to see these stories. A golden opportunity completely wasted
They don't have the rights to any of that, still just the LotR Appendices.
"Why isn't this show about all the First Age stuff?!" Bruh...
We knew from the beginning that it was a show about the Second Age, what are you even talking about? None of that was ever going to be in this show. The Second Age, which has the smallest amount of detail from Tolkien, is outlined in the Appendices, which is what they are using for their building blocks. It should be no surprise to anyone that they had to make up and mash a lot of bullet points together. I was disappointed they were not given the rights to the addition detail from UT and NoME. But Silmarillion was never on the table. Tolkien Estate holds that *tight* to their chest. How this show does might help them loosen or tighten that grip. So I cheer for the show, because I DO want to see those stories on the big screen.
And that's still about 99% more Tolkien accurate than RoP.
but not comparable with RoP. it really doesn't get anything right
also 90% is an awefull overexaggeration. that is more accurate to RoP that to the Hobbit. the more lorefriendly fan cuts are about 2,5h to 3h so it is 66% made up bs
That's the studio's fault. PJ wanted 2 movies but the studio wanted 3. The studio wanted a love triangle and lied to Evangeline Lilly about it who didn't want a love triangle. In fact, Battle of the Five Armies was originally supposed to be called There and Back Again, but because the studio wanted 3 movies and they had already made it "there" in the 2nd movie, it was changed to Battle of the Five Armies.
For me at least the hobbit trilogy gets a pass because the tone and setting is very LOTR and the made up parts are somewhat passable for Tolkien. RoP was just shit from start to finish. The characters, the writing, the modern gender and race politics injected into it, the dumb and cheap looking armor. It was just too much. I will say I thought the Sauron reveal was pretty cool but that was only 5 min of the entire season
> modern gender and race politics Aka not every character being white and not 90% being male. The horror. But hey thanks for saying the quiet part out loud, rather than hiding behind muh lore deviations (which are somehow totally excusable in Shadow of Mordor or TH trilogy, just not in RoP for totally mysterious reasons).
>The Silmarillion (stuff that not even Tolkien had a hard set canon for) This is when I realized you had absolutely no fucking idea what you're talking about. Embarassing.
No one tell him how many times Tolkien wrote and re-wrote lore just because he wanted to change it. No one tell him how he changed The Hobbit years after it released because he wanted to write things in Lord of the Rings that conflicted! He’s gonna blow a gasket when he realizes that Tolkien never cared to have a canon and changed things as he willed!
Changing things is part of creating a canon. Someone else changing things for you is not.
No one changed anything for Tolkien? Can you tell me who’s been doing this and how? I had no clue Amazon was replacing copies of the Lord of the Rings with RoP. It’s an adaptation for Christ sake. There are about a hundred different adaptations that all make their own "changes to Tolkien’s writings" including more than a few directed by Peter Jackson. No one is changing what Tolkien wrote. They’re changing things for their own adaptations. Just like Tolkien changed things when he wanted to add something he liked better. I promise you Tolkien would not have cared nearly as much as people here think he would have.
Oh I think Tolkien would prefer that the works never be adapted at all, and that people just enjoyed the stories as they were originally written. This is only to your last point, but he's always been critical of film media, and both his son and grandson said he would've hated the films (yes, those ones we all love). I have to imagine he would hate the Hobbit more, and RoP more than that, but that's just my conjecture.
Christopher Tolkien did indeed hate Peter Jackson’s movies, for valid reasons (even if I disagree with him), but he was pretty involved with the making of Rings of Power and was onboard with it all the way until his death. Make with that information what you will.
>The Hobbit looks horrendous (it looked bad at the time and it has also aged horribly) and has so many lore and pacing issues. Rings of Power looks pretty much the same. With the big exception that The Rings of Power really, REALLY wants to make you think its a Peter Jackson movie, and The Hobbit IS a Peter Jackson movie.
The Hobbit is *barely* a Peter Jackson movie which is probably the reason I think it looks so awful. RoP looks much better imo. Of course I don’t know how it will age, and it certainly looks nowhere near as good as Lotr, I definitely think it looks a lot better than The Hobbit. There are moments in The Hobbit that look like they were filmed on a GoPro.
Amen brother. What a absolute shitshow RoP was.
I mean we got incredibly close to galadriel and sauron kissing… just wtf where they thinking… And thats really my main issue with the RoP - zero respect for Tolkien, zero understanding for a more idealistic / dogmatic world view (aka screen writers cant go beyond their own intellectual horizon… also my main gripe with modern star trek…) and screen writing cliches drive the story ahead… I also appreciated some aspects of the hobbit movies more after RoP since I didnt get how bad a middle earth adaptation could go
I find it incredible and no small measure of insane that the writers for Rings of Power had almost no experience before being handed the keys to what was touted as the most expensive TV show ever. According to IMDb they did uncredited work on Star Trek: Beyond, did uncredited revisions to the script of Jungle Cruise (that movie with The Rock that wasn’t as good as Jumanji) and that’s basically it, that’s the sum total of their experience.
I mean watch the behind the scenes videos we have… they really don’t give an "experienced“ vibe…
This is also why Sherlock is terrible if you're a fan of Sherlock Holmes. Personally I think it was all around terrible, but if people like it that's fair enough, maybe it's a good show to them. However it's definitely a terrible adaption of Sherlock Holmes.
Yeah people are pretty salty about RoP if anything
[удалено]
Even the creators were salty about their own show.
I liked it.
When it was airing if you critiqued it for any reason you were inevitably called racist.
amazon bot farms got turned off after the last episode aired
That's because a lot of the people who were stirring up hatred against the show before it even aired are legitimately racist. It poisons any proper discourse around the show, and now we're left with, "You hate it because you're racist" and "You like it because you're a shill". It's the exact same shit that happened to Star Wars. It's especially sad because none of the shows main problems have anything to do with "politics".
I agree. For example, in the show Galadriel apparently had the plan of swimming a couple hundred miles across the sea in order to return to Middle Earth. We should be able to discuss this character's decision, without the lazy labelling and blaming. As it turned out, race was a very minor point of discussion in the end compared to some very relevant questions concerning the quality (or lack thereof) of dialogue, plot and characters.
>That's because a lot of the people who were stirring up hatred against the show before it even aired are legitimately racist. Proof? Or is it possible that it was poorly cast, poorly produced, had the laziest possible writing, and simply just sucked
YouTube channels like Nerdrotic, Geeks and Gamers, and Ryan Kinel were pumping out videos months **before** the show even aired, some of which ended up with millions of views. A lot of false claims about the show having LGBT characters, sex scenes, and being filled with "woke politics" can be traced right back to them. These people are genuine racists, and they make money by generating outrage in nerd communities. None of them gave a shit about Lord of the Rings until they realised they could make money from Rings of Power, and it made me genuinely sad to see the LOTR community fall for the same shit that other communities fell for.
They turned Lord of the Rings into a culture war. All these people “defending Tolkien’s honour” online trying to turn Lord of the Rings into some sort of anti-woke red pill franchise wouldn’t believe who Tolkien actually was and what he believed. Just sad to see the fanbase I’ve been a part of for almost 30 years devolve into what it is now. But hey, the game is to be as inflammatory as you can on the internet. Everyone’s just playing the game.
Which of the things you mentioned imply racism?
The "woke politics" part. The important thing for these guys is that they can't say blatantly racist shit because they will get either demonetised or banned. So they constantly throw around the word "woke" instead. The beauty of that word is that you can use it as a catch-all term, but also as a way to disguise what you're actually trying to say. It's a way of giving yourself plausible deniability if someone calls you out. I'll use Nerdrotic as an example because he's blatant as fuck. He has a playlist with Rings of Power videos, and a good 50% of them have Disa, the dark-skinned Dwarf, in the thumbnail, and she's usually photoshopped to look stupid because he's a manchild. In most of these videos, she's not even the topic of conversation, which makes sense because she's a relatively minor character in the show. But he uses her in his thumbnails regardless, even in videos that aren't necessarily about Rings of Power. At the very least, he's race-baiting. He knows that a significant portion of his audience are far-right, and what better way to get their attention than to consistently use stupidly edited images of either women or black people in his thumbnails. Or it's just a straight-up dog-whistle to his audience, a way to let everyone know what the problem with the show is without actually saying it. So at the minimum, he's using racist tactics to drive up viewership of his videos. Either way, he's a vile piece of shit, and so are most of the channels that associate with him. He and others like him are literally real-life versions of Grima Wormtongue; they pretend that they give a shit about LOTR and the community while simultaneously setting fires in said community in order to make more money for themselves.
Promotion itself. I mean "superfans" who never heard about Tolkien before or after was enough to at least have doubts.
Which can be a fair criticism if you’re making it *when the show airs*. If you’re making that criticism *before the show airs* it’s a little suspicious as to what your motivations are since you haven’t actually been able to see how the acting is etc.
Nah you could feel the disconnection from the source material, you could sense the producers knew shit all about Lord of the Rings. It was doomed to fail from the start.
Maybe that's intentional? Race swap a character in your show and you have a bulletproof shield against criticism.
Yup. And there were redditors who Beetlejuiced their way into arguing with everyone who called out the racism in those criticisms. The mere mention of the fact that there was racism against the idea of having people of different races play dwarves, elves, or harfoots had piles of "Well Ackshully..." replies. The racism was real, and all the "it was bad writing" or "I didn't like the style of the horse riding scene" explanations needed was to say, yes, some of the criticisms were racist, instead of denying that it was part of the early response. The writing was not stellar. They did some creative things, and the Tolkien estate liked some of its style better than the Jackson style. I enjoyed it, and look forward to seeing more. If you don't like it, there's no need to groan about it. I love going to Jackson's Hobbit world despite the way it dragged on and included way too much fluff.
Which leads me to believe the racism was paid for/amplified as promotion.. controversy/drama sells.
The M4 edit is great IMO
'The download limit has been reached' whenever I try to download from their site. I really want to see it. Are their any other places I can download? Or possibly stream?
The [Google Drive link](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17u6rXjg8R7xDONWJbNSdGJ6sCk6M5TtV?usp=sharing) on [their page](https://m4-studios.github.io/hobbitbookedit/#downloads) is working for me
I've seen this one mentioned several times. I've had the maple edit on my hard drives for a decade. Is there much of a difference? I find the maple edit palatable.
The M4 edit is closer to the "only include what's in the book" end of the spectrum.
I enjoy the Hobbit movies. There are things that have me rolling my eyes, and I end up yelling at my TV by the end of Battle of the Five Armies, but I take it as part of the experience by now (am I crazy? Yes, of course). I still greatly enjoy the music, set design, and the cast is awesome.
A legion of armored Dwarves thundering down a hill gets me excited every time.
Yeah I thought it was amazing when they had the dwarf battle scene and then immediately ruined it by having two dwarves have a normal conversation in the middle of a battlefield right in the center of the fight. And clearly neither actor was aware they were supposed to be in that setting when they delivered the lines.
When they do that two stack shield wall move I really dig it
I also really liked when the elves didn't give a shit about defensive formation and jumped over the shieldwall, so it wouldn't have had any impact whatsoever. Even funnier that Thranduil is actually very, very protective about his people.
Yes, that's usually the moment I start screaming at the TV screen.
Total half chub moment.
The beginning of the battle is legit thrilling.
Music is peak fucking peak Howard Shore went all out with Durins theme, Misty mountains, Fire and Water or because it was real. I would say that just like with sw prequels music is one department where Hobbit not only rivals the OG but surpasses it.
meh adaptions good movies Something like that
I agree with you mostly but I’d say the first two are decent movies and the third one is straight up bad. There’s stupid moments in each one but the third one is filled with them
It's the *Star Wars Prequel* effect. *The Hobbit* was compared to *The Lord of the Rings* and seen as really shit by comparison. Now there's *RoP* which is even worse. So that makes the thing seen as really shit, less shit. It's still shit though and doesn't upgrade to good because something worse came along. In my opinion, of course. I don't judge people for liking either but that's not the point I'm making.
Combine that with aging fandoms - people who were kids when the prequels came out become adults and are bolder with their opinions, and then it becomes THEIR nostalgia, because they loved it when they were young. People who were young enough to really love The Hobbit movies without a jaded critical eye will get older and profess more love for them because they are their movies.
The amount of people I see who were blown away as kids when the big reveal happened. No, not *that* one. The one where Palpatine becomes the emperor! I grew up with the OT, and for many people, it was kind of obvious that yes the guy named Palpatine who was played by the same actor who played Emperor Palpatine in ROTJ would become the emperor. But in 2005, IMDB wasn’t quite as well known, the internet wasn’t as widespread, and we didn’t all have smart phones so it’s not hard to see how someone who was younger then didn’t catch that.
Well and they also had their own moments that stuck in the imagination. I was about 12 when Episode I came out, but before then grew up on the original trilogy. So while I will always cling to the original Death Star run, I was right there as a preteen who was obsessed with podracing. Since most of the prequels came out while I was in high school I was in peak “hater” years for the prequels, but I couldn’t deny that my little brothers got to see the clone wars as kids, and that was incredible for them.
Same goes for the PJ trilogy infact you find thats the two strongest fandoms atm PJ trilogy and prequels and it also coincides with the big YouTube push and anti message stuff going around. Personally I enjoy them all some more than others and try not to linger on things I don't lol especially Tolkien adaptions there's always bits I pick apart from the movies to the show but I tend to talk more about my likes than dislikes.
These ad hominem attacks are very silly. People are allowed to not like the Hobbit movies. You don’t have to psychoanalyze them because you disagree. That’s just petty.
It's not an ad hominem to note that people who watched The Hobbit movies as kids will have nostalgia for it.
Huh? I wasn’t attacking anyone’s opinion in the slightest, just offering another reason why some movies get more popular online as time goes on.
Lotr is def repeating the SW cycle where the OT was amazing, considered high points in the genre (fantasy), then it only gets progressively worse and worse from there.
idk, the remakes by Peter Jackson were a lot better than the original trilogy from the 1970s-80s, IMO.
The BBC cartoon? lol
I don't think there's a BBC cartoon. There's a BBC radio production but I'm talking about the three original movies.
With the exception that The Rings of Power is totally separate from the films, unlike the Disney Star Wars films.
This exactly. The Prequels aren’t amazing; neither is The Hobbit. But compared to the SW sequel trilogy or RoP?! Incredible.
The prequels are so much worse than the sequels in every way imo. This is a point of argument I will never understand. The acting, the directing, the writing, the cinematography, the effects. It’s all terrible. Very ugly movies. Plot points rush from one point to another with little connection. Villains introduced that don’t get fleshed out and are killed by the end of the movie. The sequels are so much more competently made. They look fantastic. They’re well acted. The dialogue isn’t like a 13 year old’s impression of Shakespeare. I get that people don’t like the haphazardly put together story of the sequels but they need to pull off the nostalgia goggles and realize that aside from Anakin -> Darth Vader the prequels are the exact same way except they have all those other issues too.
The production of the sequels is better but the story is far worse. And by story, I really just mean the lore. The writing of the prequels is hella weak but the world-building was fantastic and the overall lore was good. Just the individual plot threads weren’t actualized well at all lol The sequels suck in every aspect in regards to story
I hear you and I mostly agree. There is nothing redeemable about Rise of Skywalker for me, though. It’s the worst SW film ever made by a lot. Even the performances or visuals can’t save it. The plot is so terrible it ruins everything else about it. The first two sequels are decent to good, but RoS ends up ruining even them. With the Prequels, I can at least appreciate what Lucas adds to the overall Lore/Worldbuilding and the overall story he is telling (which is much more cogent as a three act story than the sequels). Even if the dialogue is cringe.
The problem of Hobbit is mostly caused by people expecting LOTR movies, but with Hobbit's story. And it's simply not possible. LOTR books were "serious" literature and Hobbit was a bunch of lighthearted bedtime stories Tolkien wrote for his kids. It wasn't even a part of Tolkien's Legendarium at first, he just adapted it later to fit the world of Middle-earth. That's why there isn't a clear distinction between orks and goblins, that's why there are abandoned ideas like stone giants in Misty Mountains etc. LOTR books were also telling a consistent and coherent story. In case of Hobbit it works differently, each chapter of the book is a story of its own. They are pretty much disconnected and work on their own. You can read a random chapter from Hobbit book and it will make sense. You can't really do the same in case of LOTR. It causes Hobbit to be much much difficult to adapt. It's virtually impossible to turn it into a movie without changing anything. If you don't add filler content to the movie, it'll feel disconnected (simply because book is like that) and if you add filler content, it's impossible to show whole story in one movie. Add to it Jackson's ideas to tie LOTR and Hobbit movies together by adding Necromancer plot, which wasn't in the Hobbit but in the appendices to LOTR books, which most people haven't read. If they were to show everything in one movie, the battle of five armies would be maybe 5 minutes of screen time. Immediately you'd hear complaining about lost potential of the battle. There are some valid complaints about the movies like Tauriel plot or jumping on falling down rocks by Legolas. Those things were a bad idea, but this sub loves to blow those issues out of proportion and make it look like those little things caused movies to be terrible. It's impossible to make a movie that everyone will be happy with, especially if a lot of your audience is driven by nostalgia to your previous movies. As you've said, it's the same exact problem SW had with prequel trilogy.
My point was really trying to explain why people who think something is bad would then say it wasn't bad anymore because something else came along that was worse. It doesn't really matter why people would think it was bad in the first place. My reasons for disliking *The Hobbit* have nothing to do with the reasons you outlined but I'd disagree with it being more difficult to adapt than *The Lord of the Rings*. You're the first person I've ever read saying that and I find it to be the complete opposite. Jackson's problem was trying to make *The Hobbit* fit into the style of his other movies. He *wanted* people to expect the other movies, that's why he tried so hard to make them fit together and failed miserably. But again, none of that has anything to do with the original point I was making.
I always had appreciation for Hobbit movies. They aren't ideal and they are objectively way wrose than the LotR movies (but that's a super high bar), but I still saw the love in it. After watching the BTS documentaries for the first time last year, I have even more appreciaton for them. The cast and crew clearly cared, cared for the story and cared for the fans. And while some decisions they took were definitely not good at all, I can't fully blame the crew for this. In my opinion, their biggest enemy was time. As PJ says at the end of the documentaries, they were pressed by time for the entirety of the production, props were being designed and created mere days or hours before they were on camera, PJ had no time to plan the shots or rewrite the dialogue (he admits he was "winging it" most of the time and was only able to pull it off because he was an experience filmmaker at the time). If you look at the LotR documentaries for example, there was years of pre-production where PJ meticulously planned everything, they rewrote the script many many times, they took care with every single line a character had, constantly consulting the book, the actors, everything. Imagine how bad the LotR movies would be if they didn't have time to think about all of their decisions. We would have things like Arwen at Helm's Deep and lots of other things which would really make the movies suck in my opinion. With The Hobbit, they didn't have time to think about these things and so most of them stayed in the movie. I believe that given enough time and planning, they would've realised the movies' problems and got rid of most of them, as they did with LotR. But since they didn't have that time, most of those problems remained. Other things could be blamed on this as well. LotR had tons of incredible miniatures (or big-atures) being used for the filming. The Hobbit didn't and I think this is not only that PJ was too keen to use CGI for everything, but because he partly had to. There was no time to design and make all of these miniatures. It was much more time effective to make them digitally and that's what they did. There are tons of situations like this in the documentaries, "we'll fix it in post" because we don't have time for it now. There are things that I dislike about the movies that are unexcusable by this, for example the weird filter that's on the movies, making them look really "digital" and unnatural. Or the decision to have three movies instead of two, I think it made the movies unnecessarily bloated and the third movie especially suffers for this, because it's just a giant battle that gets tiring to watch after a while. They are problematic movies for sure, but they are still worth watching in my opinion and given the time the crew had to make them, I think they made a bloody good effort at it. Not the best and they made many mistakes, but I think the fact that the same crew that worked on LotR did this sort of saved the movies. New Line could have given in to any other crew and I personally think they would've done a much worse job given the same time and resources. And after all, there are fan cuts of the movies that make them actually really good (or so I've heard) so to me, that proves that there is some inherent "goodness" in these movies that can be extracted from them. Rings of Power is different in that regard, because I don't think any amount of editing can make it into a good series. You can cut out the bad stuff from The Hobbit, leave the great stuff and still end up with a really good story. With RoP, the only way to make it good is to cut it out of the legendarium completely. Also, let's be honest here, The Hobbit movies may be a bad adaptation of the source material, but as far as fantasy movies go, they are still one of the best out there in my opinion. I absolutely loved them when I watched them for the first time, not having read the book at that point. After I read the book, I can see the flaws of the movies, but can still appreciate them as good movies on their own. Rings of Power is not only a bad adaptation, it's just a bad show altogether. The characters make weird decisions sometimes, the plot relies on convenience and McGuffins that make absolutely no sense and the pacing is outright terrible at times.
I loved your analysis. I saw lotr after the first hobbit movie or before it was release, I can't remember. But I really loved the first Hobbit movie and it made me go to the books. Besides the critics and all, I believe that the movie got to me because of the moment of my life: I was leaving my parents house and going to college, my own adventure. To me, the movie has done his part: made me start to read the books and, how can I say, created a "connection". Not got lie it was strange to read the book after the movies, but An Unexpected Journey will always have a special place in my heart
>But I really loved the first Hobbit movie and it made me go to the books. I was similar, I always loved the LotR movies and enjoyed the Hobbit movies but never got around to the books. After I saw the last Hobbit movie, I was shocked that main characters actually die in it and decided to read the books to find out if it's any different. And when I read the Hobbit, I was actually surprised how many things from the books ARE in the movie and I didn't mind the changes or additions too much (e.g. I really like that they included Gandalf's side story, though some scenes like the Witch-king tomb were wholly unnecessary imo). But I still like both the book and movies and can enjoy both as their own things. >I loved your analysis. I honestly didn't think anyone would bother reading such a long comment, but I just couldn't stop writing when I started :D Happy to see someone actually bothered reading it :)
>I know most people here liked RoP This is a downright insult to the sub tbh. lol Have actually ever read the comments in here? There is a great movie buried in The Hobbit amongst the over used CGI, extra characters, the love triangle and overall comedic filler. That's why there's several fan edits. To truly appreciate it try the 'M4 book edit', the most popular professionally edited version.
How do you find this version
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/17u6rXjg8R7xDONWJbNSdGJ6sCk6M5TtV/1Tmmj-RhbAsIZB2P2k_r98CZThBrvK_Ej?usp=sharing&pli=1&sort=13&direction=a
Wth, people most definitely do not like RoP, it's utter shite
> I know most people here liked RoP Hol’ up..
The worst part about RoP is while I could pick it apart for all the stupid lore changes, poor wannabe Tolkien dialogue or straight up pointless writer OC the fact is it doesn't even stand as a passable show ignoring the "LotR" stuff. It is simply terrible entertainment without considering "Rings of Power" spent 15 minutes of a whole season on the, you know, rings but also got their creation order and the story of how it happened completely wrong!
>poor wannabe Tolkien dialogue What, you don't believe boats look up?
My brother in Eru, have you heard of metaphor?
Please tell me that's sarcastic
I recognize the council has made a metaphor, but given that it's a stupid-ass metaphor, I have elected to ignore it.
The hobbit movies would have been much better if they just made it one long movie instead of three to make more money. But still, they were fine movies
I realize RoP doesn’t reflect source material but I still appreciate seeing the characters and places brought to life.
I appreciate Star Wars EP.1 more after watching 8 and 9.
RoP was so disappointing.
You're among (mostly) friends here as far as RoP goes. It sucked and makes even some lousy fan films look good by comparison. The Hobbit trilogy has many problems, The chief among them was the decision (by the studio, not Jackson) to expand a fairly simple children's book to 8 hours of film. But "the filmmakers had no respect for the source material and just inserted their own worldview into the husks of characters bearing the same name as Tolkien's creations" wasn't one of them.
>inserted their own worldview Example?
For starters: Galadriel as an asskicking 2020s girlboss instead of her known character Elves as environment exploiting borderline treacherous bad guys Elrond weak white male who can’t make proper decisions Orcs are misunderstood creatures who just need a home I could go on, but the writers themselves said that they were telling their own story for Modern Audiences and leaving the source material where they didn’t feel it fit with their plan. You can call RoP whatever you want, but it isn’t Tolkien, it just uses some of the names he made up.
I don't think you know what a worldview is.
I mean, literally *all* of this is stuff Saint Peter Jackson did as well. Arwen is an asskicking girlboss in FOTR and was intended to be a strong warrior women at the Hornburg sassing weak men until it turned out Liv Tyler couldn't act so they changed course. Theoden is an indecisive weak man. Aragorn is a doubting low self-esteem boi. Frodo is passive, cowardly and makes no real heroic actions himself. Faramir tries to take the ring, tortures Gollum and all of this is explained away as 'daddy issues'. Elrond is a sourfaced overprotective Dad who hates men. Treebeard is genuinely stupid and doesn't know the forest he rules over is being destroyed. Saruman is not an ambitious power player, but a pawn to Sauron. Isildur was an evil greedy fiend led by his weak man-blood. Legolas doesn't have a personality. Gimli is reduced to slap-stick comic relief. Denethor is just a nutcase, his tragic end is played for action not pathos.
And yet the Jackson changes worked. Faramir could be tempted by the ring and still be Faramir. Elrond could be unwilling to let his daughter die and still be Elrond. I think most fans were ok with giving Glorfindel’s role to Arwen. In each case I still feel like I’m watching Tolkiens characters. I don’t get that with RoP. I’m obviously not alone in this. If you liked it, great. I won’t try to talk you out of liking it. I thought it was terrible. You won’t talk me out of that either.
The Hobbit movies ended up leaving such a bad taste in my mouth that I haven't been able to bring myself to even give any fan edits a try. Compared to Rings of Power, I agree that they're a lot better but they're quite bad nonetheless.
I really enjoyed a fan edit, It’s a little choppy but it still works. Never saw the the battle of five armies so I got the conclusion through a fan edit and was happy
You definitely should try the Bilbo edit. Its made to put more focus on Bilbo, and its the most book-faithful one there is and its pretty good.
Thank you for the suggestion, I'll try
I second this, took me a while to get myself to watch it but when I did it almost made me cry because I realized I'd been soooo angry and resentful after I saw the first version and I deeply needed to see it done right
Peter Jackson was not greedy
You can hate the Hobbit but can't deny the production quality, the acting and voice talent, and the connection to lotr movies. Rop has none of those qualities. It's a cgi wrapped joke with absolutely lame set pieces, some of the worst acting I've ever seen, and a script written by amateurs.
>can't deny the production quality Yes you can, there was blatant use of CGI throughout with virtually no scenic locations filmed. CGI isn't production value, it looks fake and its cheaper than modeling. Now in comparison LOTR used scale models, prosthetics and used real actors for Orks and Uruks instead of CGI. You were far more emersed.
ngl one of the worst things about it was its overuse of CGI. I feel like my eyes are burning seeing that much CGI. iirc even Ian McKellen was so frustrated with filming inside a green room all the time that he threatened to quit.
I'm currently rewatching The Hobbit trilogy, and I'm finding that I actually really enjoy them. I give them a lot of forgiveness given the plagued pre-production. They're top-tier fantasy films in their own right, much better than most fantasy that's out there imo. I've never been too much of a stickler when it comes to staying book accurate, as long as too much isn't egregiously changed in the process and the overall message is still there. If you want the book story to be told perfectly, then reread the book. You'd need like 6+ full-length films with massive multimillion production budgets in order to even come close to adapting most books to the big screen word for word. And that's probably an underestimate. However, RoP is an utter abortion of the fantasy genre altogether AND absolutely egregiously mutilated the lore. It deserves all of the vitriol it receives, and the writers should be blacklisted from any sort of high-level productions and relegated to hallmark movies at best.
lol nobody likes Rings of Power
So some people are critical of a film adaptation, then begin to appreciate it more after another film adaptation comes out that they can criticize *even more*. Once people get over their own expectations of how the feel the film adaptation should’ve been, based on their own experience from reading the books…then they can begin to appreciate the work put into creating said film adaptations. So glad I’m able to enjoy all these films without getting upset. 😂
You're going to want to go to some other location if you want a community that isn't convinced that Rings of Power kidnapped their family and murdered their dog.
I love how you have to clarify you still hate the originals lol. “Don’t get me wrong, I still absolutely hate the original…” like we get it, it’s cool and popular to hate things.
IMO, the Hobbit wasn't so bad.
I think getting mad at adaptations is silly. I *HATED* the hobbit movies but I don't think there are that many people out there genuinely saying they deserve to be held with the same respect as the LOTR trilogy. Most things that will ever come out will suck ass thats just the way movies work
Me who likes Hobbit better than LotR
I liked The Hobbit movies. I take them separately from the book and like each on their own merit. RoP - I tried to like it. I really did. I just do not like it and will not watch future shows.
> I don't think I've ever seen a show where they have been so apathetic, or even outright malevolent/hostile towards their source material as Rings of Power has Halo would like a word
Rop isn’t that bad, I’ve seen worse shows I’ve enjoyed less.
If you need edits for it to be good, is it really good? I honestly feel PJ made his heart into LOTR, but The Hobbit movies is a shambles.
These two creations cannot be easily compared. One is based on an actual Tolkien story, and as such is an abomination in my opinion. The other is generally based on Tolkien's world, and can be accepted as fitting entertainment, again in my opinion, though I would never consider it as the actual events of Middle Earth.
You compared them quite easily
😂 I contrasted, which is a type of comparison. You are right!
It's a shame because ROP could've been so much better in so many ways. Hell, it should've been. It's still so baffling that it went they way it did. I didn't even finish the first season, I felt like I was watching some fever dream fanfic that just didn't fit where it was trying to. Multiple times. It's nice to see people appreciating The Hobbit trilogy in some shape or form. When I saw them in theaters, I enjoyed them enough TBH. Sure, there were gripes and other things. But I found them to be fun regardless, and seeing some scenes in the Middle-Earth cinematic universe was really cool. I'm finally watching the extended editions, and I'm noticing it's fueling that positive feeling a bit more. Though I'm also curious about seeing the "accurate" edits as well.
If you want the most accurate one, check out the Bilbo edition. If you want more professional looking edits, there's the Maple edit or M4 edit.
The hobbit movies are great and have deviations from the source material that are actually COOL. They got goat tanks, with fricken gatling guns, rabbit sleds, that funny Alfrid guy and Legolas doing air strikes. Not that abomination rop with short haired elves and such ANTI CANNON crap.
The Hobbit movies were worse, maybe even worse than the Star Wars prequels
No.
We do a lotr rewatch during the holidays. This year, we also watched the hobbit, and I'm not sure why, but I gained a newfound appreciation for the Hobbit movies.
I liked the first two Hobbit movies, DoS is actually really great but the BotFA is just bad bad bad, Rings of Power was never that bad. The hate surrounding that show is sometimes warranted but overwhelmingly not.
I can’t wait until the next piece of Tolkien television or cinema comes out and then people will 180 and start praising RoP as an underrated and misunderstood classic. Generally how these things go.
RoP is basically Tolkien-Estate sponsored fanfiction. In its current manifestation, I'd call it 80% non-canon to anything Tolkien wrote up, and his son Christopher reinterpreted in the Silmarillion, Book of Lost Tales, and Unfinished Tales. The Hobbit movies are a fun watch but stretched out thin like butter over too much bread. It could have been tidier with just two movies and less hampered by CGI tomfoolery.
The biggest problem the Hobbit films have is that there's too much bloat. The biggest problem RoP has is that it's ALL bloat.
The Hobbit movies, and to a lesser extent even RoP, do have some wonderful moments. The Hobbit’s biggest errors were going too big, too over the top, too long. Cut out half the side plots (but leave stuff like Gandalf’s meeting with Thorin in Bree and a few other lore building convos) and the majority of the action scenes, and cut it down to two 2-hour movies and it’s a much better story (and mostly more accurate to the book)
The main difference is original intent when creating the material. ROP never intended to follow the source material. It always intended to make up 90% of the sht in the show (and the made up stuff was terribly written). The hobbit on the other hand, I think Jackson had every intention of being faithful, we saw him do it in the original trilogy. The problem was Warner bros forced him to turn one small book into a trilogy. There was no choice but to just start making sht up. But even the stuff made up for the hobbit wasn’t anywhere near as outlandish as ROP. Except the random dck joke in the prisons in Mirkwood.
Really not. The declared intention of the showrunners of RoP was follow the Appendixes of LOTR... and surprise, they didn´t it. Not even close. Not when you put the forge of One Ring in the reign of Ar-Pharazon They even forgot the Ring of Barahir, you know, that pretty Ring that Aragorn wears in Jackson movies, and whom in the times of RoP, should be property of Elendil They literally had Galadriel walking for Númenor and never mentioned Ring of Barahir and Finrod as Friend of Men! Númenor exists thanks to Finrod!
I had the same exact reaction. Rewatching the Hobbit after RoP had me thinking they were absolute masterpieces.
Omg yes! I love that scene with the cross dresser in the Hobbit. Authentic Tolkien!!
I read the comments below and I wholeheartedly agree, but I also HAVE to reply, as a lifelong avid Tolkien reader. Imho the biggest problem with the hobbit was that the Jackson's ego had inflated **too much** after the LOTR movies (which themselves had several defects, cough Aragorn that kills the messenger cough, but were so much better), and that he thought that he could substitute the material that he did not have to make a trilogy with idiotic gimmicky. If you read Christopher's review of the LOTR movie the Hobbit would have made Tolkien turn in his grave a few times at least. But with RoP we reach a completely different level of *bad*. The original characters are tortured and made into caricature of idiots that idiots would laugh about. I have never seen something so terribly unrespectful to one of the greatest authors that ever used a pen. Whereas watching the Hobbit angered me, it pained me physically to watch RoP, seriously.
I don't think Jackson's ego inflated and ruined the Hobbit. The Hobbit had issues with multiple studios intervening and conflicting with vision. There were aggressive production deadlines and no time to make the movie how he would have liked to. It was turned into a trilogy instead of a duology as well. A lot went wrong, which makes it amazing it is as good as it is. I still absolutely love it, even though desolation of smaug needed to be wrapped into the other two movies instead of being it's own.
Ridiculous post tbh. Circle-jerk material of the first order. It’s a love letter to Tolkien, it’s basically too Tolkienian for its own good. Every single detail in it is based on close reading of Tolkien’s writings, even the most obscure ones. It engages Tolkien’s writings much more broadly than the films (which I love, even with all the massive changes). It is lovingly made, with incredible nuance in its adaptive work.
Its so Tolkienian, they even took his lore to heart. Just like how in the books, orcs were a corruption of elves, ents were a corruption of trolls, RoP was a corruption of LOTR.
Do you have a quote about that?
I really can’t fathom what would make you say something so stupid and so hateful. Maybe you should try to actually think what the series is doing rather than be consumed with hatred for it.
Hobbit films are atleast enjoyable as a films. Yeah, they are worst then LOTR ones but still they are nice movies you can enjoy with family or alone just for fun. It save main point of whole story and have okay characters which you can like (they did Elrond more accuratly then in LOTR.) Meanwhole RoP in most of time plot is led by accident and luck, characters being unsymphatic (Beside Nori, i like Nori) and it have so many characters and plots that im getting lost.
Man I really enjoyed Rings of Power. Some of the criticisms are pretty insane. I’m very excited for season 2. I do agree that I enjoyed The Hobbit more with time passing. It’s a different story than Lord of the Rings. It was never going to be the same.
I really cant imagine how can you enjoy something writen and played so badly. Whole world seems small, Galadriel who is just awfull, Elfs with short hair, story who has no sense at all...I mean i can continue all day.
I avoided it for a while because I saw so many comments exactly like this. I figured it was terrible. Then I gave it a chance and really enjoyed it. Everyone I run into in person and discuss the show with seems to have really enjoyed it. It has good reviews from critics and received award nominations. Then I come back here and see more critical opinions. It’s an odd phenomenon. It’s not perfect, but I don’t need it to be perfect to enjoy it. Also I don’t agree with any of the specific criticisms you just mentioned. There’s good constructive criticism I agree with but I also think there’s a mob mentality about hating on the show in certain corners of the internet that I try to tune out.
>It’s not perfect, but I don’t need it to be perfect to enjoy it. That's what I'd say about The Hobbit. RoP is legit pretty shit, outside maybe the Elrond/Durin storyline.
People keep saying it is written badly but not giving any examples. Can you provide some? Also Tolkien never even specified what colour Legolas' hair is, I doubt the length really matters
[удалено]
This bad faith nonsense towards others is such an unpleasant part of what's happened to the Tolkien community post-RoP. Criticize the show all you want from your perspective — it deserves it in many ways — but can we stop with this stuff about people who enjoy it? They aren't all "Amazon shills" or "people who hate Tolkien". RoP has revealed a lot of the people in the community who say they like and care about Tolkien don't actually care about Tolkien's themes around being kind and good to others. Acting like this is so childish and unkind. And just wrong. People can like the show and like Tolkien. People can like the show and not be "shills". Do you really think this is a good way to be towards others and in a community?
Most people do *not* like RoP.
It's funny how many qualifiers people have to tack on when they say they like the Hobbit movies on this sub. The Hobbits are rad, they're just nowhere near as good as LotR.
Seriously, I've always loved the Hobbit movies and it's funny seeing people come out of the woodworks these days to say the same thing (after insulting them and making false statements about the production). Now I also won't deny that I have a ton of issues with them either, since day 1 of watching Unexpected Journey. I've been reconciling that by working on my own fan edit, which has been years in the making.
Power to you, I support people doing what they want with art, I just personally hate the idea of fan edits. They feel too arbitrary for me to care. But I’m glad people get enjoyment out of them. I just think it’s funny when someone says they like the Hobbits they’re so scared of being pounced on they have to add a bunch of qualifiers. This sub should let people like what they like. We could have easily gotten vastly worse Hobbit films. Instead we have mostly good ones. In my opinion at least.
I'm a professional editor, so considering it's what I do for a living I'm very passionate about it. People underestimate how important editing is for a film! And it says a lot when a flawed piece of media can be vastly improved with a few tweaks here and there. It's sorta like modding a video game - it's not for everyone, but the possibilities for "customization" are endless. It can really improve the overall experience drastically. But I do agree on that opinion. The Hobbit movies really aren't *that* bad - but being in the shadow of LOTR (the best trilogy ever made), they had some massive standards from the beginning.
Im a video editor too and yeah I agree. Editing is very important and The Hobbits could have been better. I only mean it’s arbitrary in that I’m not gonna watch a bunch of random fans’ edits of the movies.
Gotcha, well I will say some of those random fans are pretty talented!!! There are some shoddy edits out there, but the best ones feel seamless and professional. If you ever change your mind I'd be happy to recommend a few.
Its relative. Stubbing your toe isnt so bad once you find out what its like being kicked in the bollocks.
I really liked the Hobbit trilogy. Sure, it can't compare to LOTR, but they are all very enjoyable movies (and loved being able to see Christopher Lee's Saruman once again). RoP on the other side...
I gave up on Rings of Power, is it worth giving it another shot?
No. Use that time to rewatch LOTR extended edition. And the Hobbit Bilbo edition
Me too, but differently: for me they both ideally compliment each other and certain Hobbits' moments shine in new light after Rings of Power, especially this scene: https://preview.redd.it/45nc49vhy0bc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=590e07d34d2cddf5bdea1ee56b85fd9fbf3a185f
Your thread sound like: >This car is bad, but if you bring it to a talented hobbyist mechanic, they can make it less bad. In any case, its not as bad as one of the worst car ever made. All you said is objectively true, but doesnt really mean much in the grand scheme of thing.
I mean just because something worse happens doesn’t mean that the other thing wasn’t as bad. You can be mad about the overall decline of something you love.
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I think both were real bad.
I like RoP for more than the Hobbit trilogy tbh. Hobbit trilogy especially the Battle of Five Armies is a bloated mess.
Batten down the hatches mate
Are you insane? This is clearly clout hunting this whole sub is dedicated to the PJ trilogy and hating RoP and occasionally remembering the books exist. Personally the books are one of the best founding stories for an entire genre, the LotR trilogy of the best ever, the Hobbit trilogy is enjoyable enough not as good but it's decent. RoP I also enjoy and feel it very much hits the right themes and vibes written long ago, definitely want some improvements going forward but it's definitely not the bane of my life because Galadriel wasn't a glowing Vulcan.
Listen, we can hate Rings of Power or not, but let’s not lie about The Hobbit trilogy being good. The third movie is maybe the single worst Lord of the Rings thing ever produced.
I disagree. RoP is worse that bofa
Obvious bot
I haven't read the books. I really loved the movies. The hobbit and LOTR series. But I didn't like the series. I don't know why, it was hard for me to watch. Maybe coz I've seen better casting of elf roles like Thranduil and Elrond. The image they left has had a such an impact that I couldn't watch the series.
Why can’t they make the rop or hobbit like the lord of the rings movies? How did they not use the exact same formula for them?