🐉 Reevaluating "The Hobbit" Trilogy 10 Years Later

Has time changed my initial judgment of the lesser of Jackson's Tolkien trilogies?

Credit: New Line Cinema

I have a confession to make.

Though I write weekly here in this newsletter about the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and their adaptations and post daily about them on social media, up until last week there was a major Tolkien adaptation that I had never seen.

That’s right, until just a few days ago I had not seen The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, the final entry in Peter Jackson’s second and lesser Tolkien trilogy.

I went to see An Unexpected Journey in theaters, and though it was clear it was not at the same level of excellence as The Lord of the Rings films and made some choices that left me concerned for the remainder of the trilogy, I generally enjoyed it. But when I saw The Desolation of Smaug in theaters, I was so disappointed and dismayed by it that I couldn’t bring myself to endure another experience like that. As a result, I never saw The Battle of the Five Armies, either in theaters or afterwards.

But I’ve noticed a recent wave of critical reevaluations of films that were originally panned by critics and disliked by audiences. As they’ve reached significant milestones since they were initially released, films like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace or Spider-Man 3 have gone from being considered some of the black sheep of their respective franchises to being counted as beloved entries.

Could the same be true for The Hobbit trilogy?¹ It’s been almost ten years since the final entry in the trilogy was released in theaters. Has the passage of time revealed that they had been judged too harshly by their initial audiences? Is a new era dawning for Hobbit fans?

To find an answer, I rewatched the first two Hobbit films and then watched Battle of the Five Armies for the first time.

In a word, the answer to all of those questions is ‘no.’

“No!” Credit: New Line Cinema

Though the cast, the music, and the visuals are still generally excellent, The Hobbit trilogy remains a deeply flawed product that struggles both as an adaptation of Tolkien’s original story as well as a work considered on its own merits.

This children’s story spread across three films feels thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.

Things start off on a solid enough foot in An Unexpected Journey, which I still am generally favorable towards. But things go off the rails in The Desolation of Smaug and somehow sink to even lower depths in The Battle of the Five Armies, which has a few glimmers of brilliance but also what I consider the worst third act of any Tolkien adaptation I’ve ever watched. 

As a whole, the trilogy shines brightest (though perhaps not as brilliantly as the Arkenstone) when depicting events that actually either occur in Tolkien’s The Hobbit or are at least described in some detail elsewhere in Tolkien’s writings. Bilbo’s encounter with Gollum in the depths of the Misty Mountains is captivating, in part because of Andy Serkis’ dynamic performance in his return as Gollum. Smaug and Bilbo’s encounter within Erebor, though different in many ways from Tolkien’s version, is similarly arresting and suffused with dramatic tension. And the portrayal of Thorin’s gift of the mithril shirt to Bilbo deftly balances notes of their deep friendship, Thorin’s rising paranoia, and the dramatic irony of his trust of Bilbo while the hobbit holds the very prize he seeks.

Credit: New Line Cinema

Even the White Council facing off with The Necromancer and the Nine Ringwraiths in Dol Guldur, expanded from just a few lines of description in the appendices of LOTR, is one of the highlights of The Battle of the Five Armies. The designs of the Nazgûl—distinct from each other and more detailed than their appearances in LOTR—are excellent, and the entire sequence just worked for me in a way that the majority of the rest of the movie didn’t.

But these highlights are the exception in these films, even though the movies themselves average runtime is over two and a half hours each. Not surprisingly, it is the additions to and departures from Tolkien’s tale that mostly sag in quality. 

The ‘love triangle’ between Legolas (not in The Hobbit book!), Tauriel (not an original Tolkien character!) and Kili (not canonically hot!) is the chief offender among these fan fictions. The orc-cheiften Azog’s resurrection (the appendices of LOTR inform us he died before the events of The Hobbit) and elevation to major antagonist for Thorin makes a kind of sense on paper, where you need a villain who will appear in each of the three movies. But the error here is to have committed to a trilogy in the first place when a pair of films at most is what the adapted material can support. You aren’t solving a problem in the original narrative so much as one you’ve invented for yourself by splitting the story into three. And the resolution that is required by Thorin and Azog’s new rivalry takes over the climax of the final film, overshadowing the titular Battle of the Five Armies itself and taking far too much runtime.

Yes, Peter Jackson was dealt a losing hand when he took over as director after original director Guillermo del Toro departed the project due to long delays in beginning production. He inherited a movie project that was not wholly aligned with his vision and had very little time to rework it before production began. But the circumstances can only explain away so much of the end result and do not account for every choice that didn’t work in the final product.

Ultimately, these films remain a fascinating and frustrating what-if. The final versions are neither the original vision that del Toro had conceived nor the movies that Jackson would have made if he had been at the helm from the start. Instead they are an amalgam of their two visions, as well as an alloy of Tolkien’s original story and their additions. Both these fusions weaken the end result instead of strengthening it. Unfortunately, time has not changed that.

I’ll no doubt revisit these films again in the future to see whether that’s changed. Perhaps in another ten years.

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To Discuss:

Do you feel similarly about The Hobbit trilogy? Have you grown to appreciate them more? Or have you always loved them?

There and Back Again

Wherein I share highlights from previous years of Jokien with Tolkien

In June of 2023 I shared the first of what has become a semi-recurring and favorite feature here at Jokien with Tolkien, Tolkien versus Lewis! In this first entry, they bicker about whether elements like a lamp-post belong in a fantasy story:

Appendices

• I finished my rewatch of The Hobbit trilogy just in time: this coming weekend I’m seeing The Fellowship of the Rings in theaters! Though I can’t see all three, I’m excited to see my favorite of the trilogy on the big screen once more. Any of you all seeing one or more of the movies in theaters too? There may still be tickets available at the Fathom Events LOTR page.

• Special shout-out and thank you to Emily R, who upgraded to a paid subscription to the Jokien with Tolkien: Extended Edition this week! This edition of Jokien with Tolkien is free to read but cost time and effort to create, so if you’d like to support it, consider a paid subscription here on Substack, Patreon, or throwing some change in the tip jar.
  
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1. Even just typing the phrase “The Hobbit trilogy” pains me.