No - but it is killed Having been a massive fan of Tokien all my life, I can say that the LOTR whilst having a few additions to the plot, was fairly accurate. So far, from what ive seen of the Hobbit, the director has suffered from having to make a relatively short book into a mammoth three films. Tokien wrote these books as a personal mission to invent a saga history for Great Britain, since after the Romans conquered it, all pre-history of Britain was wiped out. Tokien looked at the ancient Nordic Saga poems with envy and decided to write a saga for the UK. In doing so, he invented languages and an entire genre. His wizards are not there for magical ability, but as guides of man into the next age, the age of men. They are not there to cast massive magical spells in battle, but to bring together the forces of good to defeat evil. Things like the Birds (Eagles) coming - link the books. Eagles in the hobbit, eagles in the final battle of the LOTR. Eagles rescuing Frodo from the mountain after the ring is destroyed. These are common links. "The eagles are coming" is a phrase as important to the books as the first phrase he wrote : "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort." This phrase sets up what a hobbit is, an ordinary person loving the comfort of a life lead without evil. All the books can be view as the ordinary man (Bilbo and Frodo) caught in a trap and dragged into bigger world events. This then reflects the fact that Tokien himself and his entire generation were all dragged into the first world war. The shire itself is England and for us Tokien fans when PJ missed out the entire proper ending of LOTR 'the scouring of the shire' he missed a massive point of the entire story. Friends dragged into war and the changes they faced in their home country when they returned reflect all the soliders in the first world war. For us Tokien fans the more PJ sticks to the books the better the films are. Personally i cant wait for him to take on Tokiens masterpiece,The Simarillian. It would be epic in film but I do not think it could ever be done justice. I may be proved wrong
That was some great info. I appreciate it - it's helped me to gain a better understanding of the background
Might note that the LOTR Aragon/Arwen romance was not in the books at all either. Manufactured by Hollywood to make the movies Chick friendly. Do you realize how much of the actual book was left out so Peter Jackson could fit in that cheezy romance? It's a shame how the books are ruined to cater to large audiences.
Peter Jackson is just another fat man who likes to cross breed fictional characters with fictional characters that he pretends to be in his basement.
The Aragon/Arwen romance is part of the books plot, just not as prevalent. More detail on it can been found in appendix and in other books on middle earth by Tolkien. PJ just brought it to the forefront.
LOTR -> close to be perfect Hobbit -> not close to be perfect I was suprised by the second hobbit movie, it was(ok skip the love story which doesn't fit) imo the best one of the 3. The third has no character development, there's close to no story and I don't like the (big) logical gaps in the fight and "speakafterfight,damnhowdodyoucomeupherein5seconds" scenes. Battles are best, but not if the rest of the story isn't good. Still like it, but was a bit dissapointed, especially after the LOTR movies. These were amazing.
Gotta agree with earlier sentiments in regards to magic and ****. While it can be interesting when it's used to good cinematic effect, it's often just a get out of jail free card and cgi blowoff, or not used in a situation it clearly should've been.
I haven,t seen the last Hobbit movie yet (waiting for my friend to finish the book so we can FINALLY watch the movie together!). Personally, I'm glad that Legolas was added into the Hobbit movies. He is such a wonderful character; my favorite. But it does bother me how much they changed things from the book. The Hobbit is such a perfect story. Why change it for the movie? They turned a 300 page book into three movies, each 3.5 hours long. Ugh.
Btw, everybody read the books, as bedlam said earlier, this saga, begins waaaaaay later than the earlier Tolkien material, read "the silmarillion" his finest work, hobbit n Lotr deal with the third age, the silmarillion deals with the 1st n 2nd ages, the rise and fall of morgoth, the rise of Sauron his "apprentice", and of the rise n fall of numenor, the Kingdom of men. There's much more I could say, but go get the book