INCOMING TEXT WALL, POSSIBLY FULL OF POSSIBLE SPOILERS, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED
the amount of detail that they would have to lose if this was one or two movies is huge
basically, one movie would have been shit, parts of the story, such as goblin town, Mirkwood, the barrels, lake town, Erebor, the battle of the five armies, all those scenes would have had to be over in seconds
in the book, Tolkien only really made mention of those parts. he didn't really go into much detail with them, except from Mirkwood. He didn't 't even talk about the damn battle. All he said was it was epic, noted people who died, and said that bilbo fell asleep for most of it. Granted each movie is around 2 and a half hours long, but that would still not be enough time to actually put in the amount of detail that is needed to justify this book.
so we go to two movies. that seems good, should be enough time to get just about everything, except for all the side stories that Tolkien added after the book was made, along with everything that Jackson was allowed to use by the Tolkien estate themselves. One of the biggest parts included in this is the siege of Mirkwood. Without this siege, Gandalf just randomly leaving would have made shit-all sense. There isn't enough time in these two movies to add in all the lore you can possibly add which surrounds one of the biggest plotholes in this one book - where did Gandalf go?
so they bring it up to three. yeah ok, the first hobbit had a slow start, apart from them battling trolls and the goblins, there's no real threat to them. let's add azog, he's not really dead, not so much of an oversight anyway. Admittedly a lot of this story is filler, and could just be moved around a bit more to make the movie enjoyable. Not Jackson's best work, but it's still working. Since this movie is over we're able to get to the more nitty gritty parts of the story. We actually have a reason for Gandalf leaving. We have a new female character, not sure about her love story with the frickin dwarf, but maybe it'll be justified by the next film, just wait and see. we also had a returning character, Legolas, who is well justified into this time line, purely by the fact that he was well documented as growing up in Mirkwood, and that thranduil is indeed his father. then we get to the barrels, minor change here but nothing story breaking. Then there's bard. Ok, he wasn't actually there to pick up the dwarves. oh wait his story is being expanded on that's good thanks pj. three of the dwarves are staying behind? it's alright, it's gonna add up to some good plot points. We finally see the dragon, yay, he's epic, and I'll have no "ooh technikully isent hee a wyvurn nao?!!1!1!one" cause dragons and wyverns are the same damn thing.
botfa is probably gonna be smaller in plot points, but really? you want more plot points at this part? the main plots we're gonna have here is for starters a giant fucking dragon burning the laketown down. bard killing the dragon. the massive bloody battle. the Mirkwood wizard battle. Legolas and the amazing Orc chase. thranduil's change of heart. the dwarves of the blue mountains. and of course, what Thorin and bilbo and that are up to in erebor. done right, this should add up to a good movie. you've also got the journey home, but do you honestly thing they'll waste a good ten minutes on a walk home? nope, it'll add up to around two minutes, and we'll get some sort of snazzy meaningful ending at the end with bilbo back in hobbiton, maybe they'll connect the hobbit and lotr then. the namesake battle, just think of that as Minas Tirith battle number two. we'll get a couple of minutes of thranduil changing his mind and bringing his giant army of elves and shit. Legolas and the fantastic Orc car chase or whatever will eventually, this is my theory, lead them to Mirkwood, where Legolas kills the Orc, rescues Gandalf, they share a kiss, Legolas joins battle with Gandalf and the other wizards, they fight, they win, they return to laketown on the eagles, which is where they join the others in laketown. All this taking place during smaug's attack. smaug's attack will be epic, spanning a good 25 minutes, while the Mirkwood thing will be with that attack, altogether spanning a good 35 minutes overall. and apparently we don't like long drooling filler, we just want people dying, so that should be enough for all you "diehard Tolkien fans" out there. Then we'll probably get some sort of bit where everyone prepares for war. that's alright, you can stand a little less action for about five minutes, yes? big battle, everyone's dead, what's for dinner.
we're all judging the last movie because apparently the other two aren't meeting up to our expectations. what were you expecting? something so like The Lord of the rings trilogy that it might as well be an exact replica? Everything that's been said against this movie is something along the lines that "this is all mindless filler, needs to make way for more action". that's stupid. You're stupid. if you want mindless action, fuck off to the expendables 3. this is the hobbit. There's really only two things they've changed from the original. Azog being alive, and the inclusion of Tauriel. That's it. Everything else is well justified and actually happened.
Dr. Javelin said:
there was so much that could have been cut out of both movies that we honestly might have been able to just have one movie
ultimately in the desolation of smaug we didn't need to meet that bear guy, or travel through the forest with the spiders. that was just filler. they also probably could have sped up the rivertown parts tremendously, and we'd have a much shorter, much better movie that still keeps the good parts (barrel escape, meeting smaug) intact
you could also cut a ton out of the first movie, i mean all you really need are bilbo deciding to go with the dwarves, misty mountains, like one scene with the orcs chasing them, and meeting gollum. you'd probably have to retcon finding sting to fit in one of those scenes to save on time, but it would still work
a lot of the shit you just cut out was in the books and would be rather unfaithful to the story itself. while jackson adds in parts to the stories, the general consensus is that you follow the story. That means the old forest is a bloody big part of the story. So is meeting beorn.
when you want to reply to me, because I know some of you are going to be outraged by what I have just said, please don't quote this, just say @neptune or something. It's gonna suck for us to have to avoid 250 quote blocks, and it'll be painful for you to try and remove the Great Wall of text.
