Poll of the Day > The Extended versions of The Hobbit trilogy are not as good as Extended LotR

(+) Yeah! (+)

Firstly, when I saw the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I immediately noticed the new/extended scenes.
And the new stuff were actually meaningful and added so much to already great movies.

Cant say the same about the extended Hobbit movies, as the movies themselves were kinda boring to begin with and the new stuff was mostly pointless fluff like people just standing around and staring.

What do you guys think?
Post your thoughts in the comments below and dont forget to Like and Subscribe for more content.
---

LeetCheet posted...

Post your thoughts in the comments below and dont forget to Like and Subscribe for more content.

You sound like one of those mainstream YouTube blokes what make videos partially for a living.
---

Wait, you're telling me they made extended versions of the Hobbit films? I thought the ones in the theaters WERE the extended ones...

---

EclairReturns posted...

You sound like one of those mainstream YouTube blokes what make videos partially for a living.

I make GameFAQs posts for a living

Zareth posted...

Wait, you're telling me they made extended versions of the Hobbit films? I thought the ones in the theaters WERE the extended ones...

Yeah the extended versions are about 13 to 25 minutes longer than the theatrical versions.
---

Zareth posted...

Wait, you're telling me they made extended versions of the Hobbit films? I thought the ones in the theaters WERE the extended ones...

This. The theatrical versions were already 5 hours too long.
---

Could you please describe a little more about the Extended versions on The Hobbit movie?

---

They need to cut The Hobbit series down to three hours and it might actually be decent.

I actually like the extended Galdalf scenes and the discussion of the lore of the different rings and he third film adds back in the much missed and weirdly cut funereal for a certain character but there isn't much else that's added that nt able. The problem with the Hobbit is the 3rd movie drags on and the while thing should have really been 2 3 hour films.

---

Zacek posted...

Could you please describe a little more about the Extended versions on The Hobbit movie?

Ok I'll try to elaborate.
In the first movie, its mostly just some scenes being slightly longer with more talk.
And I remember the opening and the flashbacks being way longer.

But the extended scenes arent doing much for this movie. They couldve given characters such as the dwarfs more personality but instead most of them are just there and you forget most them even exists.

They really shouldve scrapped half of them in favour of making the remaining ones more memorable and active.
They usually change things from the books when they make a movie adaptation and they really shouldve changed things for it to fit a movie.
The second movie had the most additions and is the longest out of the trilogy.
Smaug alone makes this movie the best of the three but the movie still ends in the middle of the third act for some reason.
I have no idea why the film makers did this and its really weird.

Thankfully, the third movie is the shortest but its still feels unnecessary and even moreso with the extended edition.
There really shouldnt have been three movies. They added so much shit in these movies that werent in the book.
---

they added too much crap in the hobbit.

dwarf x elf.....
how smaug was killed
etc
---

Krazy_Kirby posted...

they added too much crap in the hobbit.

At least some of it was from the Appendixes to LotR, or "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age" from The Silmarillion, so at least it was stuff Tolkien actually wrote, that WAS actually occurring at that point in the timeline, even if the story told in The Hobbit doesn't mention it.

What's more annoying is the stuff they just completely made up and pulled out of their asses solely so they could have a romantic subplot, or throw in a Legolas guest-appearance, or otherwise pad the hell out of something that was already stretched way way way too thin.
---

The White Orc guy was in the lore but never appeared in any scene of the Hobbit

---

It feels like they wanted Hobbit to be grand and epic like LotR.

Hobbit couldve been a great movie(or two movies tops) if they made it more personal and if theyd focus mostly on Bilbo and the Dwarfs(and Gandalf).

Its fine with short cameos though.

Not all movies has to be super epic to be great.
---

LeetCheet posted...

Not all movies has to be super epic to be great.

Honestly the reason I liked the Hobbit more than the LotR trilogy itself was because it was such an easy-going story. Even when "epic" things are happening, the reader is just seeing Bilbo's perspective. And he's knocked unconscious for most of the Battle of Five Armies lol

---

Im very surprised to hear that the longer versions of a trilogy are not as good as the longer versions of a much better trilogy

---

I see that the Hobbit trilogy remains so completely misunderstood.

Anyway, I noticed all the new scenes immediately when I first watched the extended editions. But I also watched the theatrical editions a ton

---

rexcrk posted...

I see that the Hobbit trilogy remains so completely misunderstood.

Anyway, I noticed all the new scenes immediately when I first watched the extended editions. But I also watched the theatrical editions a ton

Do you mean that WE are misunderstanding the movies?

I havent seen the Hobbit that many times, so it was harder for me to notice them. I did notice some parts every now and then though.

I dont really like Kili and Fili. They doesnt really look Dwarf-like like the others.

And the forced romance between Kili and Tauriel was just bad.
---

I do enjoy the Hobbit movies, and I enjoy the extended versions, too, but I agree: The extended LOTR movies are better.

---

rexcrk posted...

I see that the Hobbit trilogy remains so completely misunderstood.

Mostly misunderstood by the people who decided to turn one relatively short book into a series of three movies.

When you're stretching a story that is shorter than the shortest volume of The Lord of the Rings to be as long (or longer) than those three books combined, you dun goofed son.
---

To be fair you have to posses a very high IQ to understand the hobbit film trilogy.

---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Mostly misunderstood by the people who decided to turn one relatively short book into a series of three movies.

When you're stretching a story that is shorter than the shortest volume of The Lord of the Rings to be as long (or longer) than those three books combined, you dun goofed son.

Except that The Hobbit is made for children, the majority of the dwarves have no character at all and things happen randomly with no set up or explanation. I love Tolkien but a straight adaptation of the book would have been terrible. That being said there were many mistakes the movie made but the argument that the book is short so the movie must be short too is very silly.

---

But...the twirly whirlies...

---

I wish the old rankin bass animated hobbit movie got more recognition. It did a good job of focusing on Bilbo's story and cutting out the extraneous subplots.

---

VincentVega posted...

Except that The Hobbit is made for children

Yes. Which is why you can't stretch that plot to 8+ hours long and not make it painfully obvious just how little substance you're working with. Or have to staple all sorts of things to it that don't actually belong and cause jarring tonal shifts.



VincentVega posted...

I love Tolkien but a straight adaptation of the book would have been terrible.

Rankin-Bass did a pretty good job, on a phenomenally inferior budget, with 1970s technology, and still got the whole story in at under an hour and a half.

Granted, it was compressed, but you could just as easily double the time and still come in under just one on the live-action movies. And arguably more coherent and better paced.



VincentVega posted...

but the argument that the book is short so the movie must be short too is very silly.

To be fair, that's not even the real argument most people usually make. It's closer to "They took something short, and expanded it ineptly and unnecessarily, under the supervision of a producer/director who didn't really want to be there and who was sort of in the middle of a nervous breakdown because of it, out of a callous desire to exploit an audience, regardless of whether or not the material actually warranted the expansion."

This isn't a case where they needed three movies to tell the story they wanted to tell, this is a case where they decided they wanted to make three more movies worth of money and then tried to figure out after the fact how they could do that. It was open knowledge at the time that they'd even originally started out planning to do two movies and the studio basically asked them to stretch it.

The real shame is that they somehow spent three times the budget on a story that was about 1/4th as long, and a lot of the CGI still winds up looking worse than it did a decade earlier. And which manages to feel less epic, exciting, or interesting than the actual original story in spite of all the extra stuff they shoehorned in to make it feel more epic, exciting, and interesting to LotR fans.
---

The riddle scene and the scene with Smaug in the hall of Thror were well done (though they left out some of my favorite lines in both scenes). And in my opinion Martin Freeman was A+ casting for Bilbo.

I would have had no problem with them showing some of what Gandalf was doing during those stretches of the book where he took off. It was most of the other padding that really killed it for me.

---

I watched the first movie in the trilogy with spanish dubs one time and I really recommend in

hearing all the dwarves run around saying stuff like ah seor Gandalf! is really funny

---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Mostly misunderstood by the people who decided to turn one relatively short book into a series of three movies.

When you're stretching a story that is shorter than the shortest volume of The Lord of the Rings to be as long (or longer) than those three books combined, you dun goofed son.

lord of the rings is technically one book. it was intended to be one book, but a friend convinced tolkien people wouldn't read a book that long. it's seperated, but the page numbers still continue right where they left off
---