The Hobbit of the Ring

The jury is still out on The Hobbit, so I guess that means, in my world anyway, that I am pretty much "meh" with it.  I was pretty okay with the way that Jackson tried to tied in the LOTR with it at the beginning, having Bilbo and Frodo have a little discussion then whoosh, flashback.  It certainly didn't make me want to start screaming and tear my hair out.  He did a kick ass job with the Unexpected Party, although I thought that the original details about Bilbo's feelings were a lot better than the new and improved Jackson ones.  The trolls were done pretty well, but again, I thought that the original method of keeping the trolls talking until the sunrise would have worked better. Radagast was good, he did get a couple of tiny mentions in the books. Rivendell was okay, I didn't even mind pulling Sauruman and Galadriel in for a conference, as the kid pointed out the non-reading audience members kind of needed some back fill of information.  I was okay with Riddles in the Dark, because really, who would have wanted to watch that entire transaction take place in pitch black...that wouldn't have been good movie fun. 

Things that picked my ass a bit though, and were wayyyyy over the top, were the stone giants, the fall into the goblin's basket from the front gate, the gratuitous killing of a billion goblins as they were trying to escape, the fall down the mile long shaft, and that new fucking character, Azog, on the big white warg. WTF is with that?  There is no need to add shit like this...it adds zero to an already excellent story line.  Jackson could have spent more time introducing all of the dwarves, and perhaps doing a bit of a back story on them if he wanted to fill in the time. 

I'm also a little bit unimpressed with the way he was trying to give it that "children's story feel" but also make it another version of the LOTR, all it seemed to do was make the kiddie lines seem really cheesy.  So the Old Shoes and Tea Society rating team has given The Hobbit six shoes laces out of ten. 

Hubby also would like to point out that the eagles should have taken everyone straight to the Lonely Mountain and saved everyone a whole whack of time just as they should have flown Frodo and Sam straight to Mount Doom.  So I guess he is speaking for the non-Hobbit-reading public. I told him that in the book the eagles are kind of crabby-assed and are not all that fond of dragging dwarf, hobbit, wizard, man, or elf arses around and they told them that in no uncertain terms.  Perhaps a detail that Mr. Jackson could have mentioned.