Dear Mr. Jackson,
I am writing to inform you that you have sufficiently proven yourself to be a gigantic turd and my left nut is now available. Really, quite dry...
You have embellished single line references into whole scenes, acts and subplots in your most recent film. Yes give Spike Jonze a run for his money; who turned a 48 page children's book into an 104 minute pile of garbage [I need a mathematician to verify the word to minute ratio but Jackson's additions probably contend with "Where the Wild Things Are"]
Yes for those who are still wondering what this post is about, it is my snarky rant against the Hobbit. I know it is a bit like telling people not to vote for Romney in late December but it has just starting burning up inside me such that I have no other option but to spray some serious commemorative vitriol all across the blogosphere.
OK, it was a well made movie, cinematographically, I'll give it that. And it's hard to fully hate anything that Ian McKellen is in. However it made a serious attempt to butcher one of the greatest fantasy children's books of all time. Perhaps the greatest. Before you go crying foul for a number of reasons hear my arguments from a life long Tolkien nerd...
Exhibit 1. Whereas The Return of the King suffered from too many endings, this suffered from too many beginnings. Really? After an egregiously long preamble where you essentially give away some of the juiciest parts of the plot (and show the dragon!) you have to throw Frodo in there for some anachronistic nostalgia moment? I almost walked out. Frodo has NO business in the Hobbit.
2. The dwarves were not wearing their colorful caps! [minor but hey...]
3. At every turn Bilbo was made into some sort of action hero. No, he did not play the central role in saving the dwarves from the troll misadventure. It was Gandalf! Bilbo almost got everyone killed several times over.
4. Radagast the Brown had absolutely NO business being in the Hobbit. He did less to advance the plot then Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars! Less then Ron Jeremy in The Chase! Less then your own damn cameo in the bloody film! This is the line from Chapter 7 "Queer Lodgings" That spawned all the nonsense:
continued Gandalf. "I have heard of you, if you have not heard of me; but perhaps you have heard of my good cousin Radagast who lives near the Southern borders of Mirkwood?"
"Yes; not a bad fellow as wizards go, I believe. I used to see him now and again," said Beorn.
Radagast is mentioned again only few times in LOTR. Through the cryptic nature of his referencing and his mystery he became one of my favorite obscure characters in LOTR. Jackson butchers this character again by turning him into an action hero, who single handedly attacks Dol Guldur [remind me to make Dol Guldur #5]. This totally goes against the little said about Radagast. In LOTR he is described by Gandalf as
"never a traveller, unless driven by great need"
... ahem, WTF? What's more, Radagast [now not only a warrior], becomes somewhat of an idiot with bird droppings dripping down his cheek. Ultimately the whole nonsense is a waste of time. This from a film maker who omitted another small character from LOTR with arguably a much more significant effect on the story, Tom Bombadil. Jackson justified this by saying that Bombadil was omitted because he does little to advance the story, and would make the film unnecessarily long [!]. So why Radagast? There is one and only one reason and I'll get to it at the end...
5. Dul Guldor, along with the council of Elrond and Saurman and everyone else talking about none other then Sauron was totally unwarranted in this story. Jackson has a tiny sliver of justification for this. If you read the LOTR appendices, technically these events are happening concurrently to the story of the Hobbit [and was ostensibly why Gandalf kept vanishing all the time]. However it really does not belong in the Hobbit at all.
6. OK, so Jackson added, but wait! He also took away? Two of the best lines in the book don't even appear in the movie. "Who are these miserable persons?" Is the first line said by the Great Goblin. And I couldn't believe they changed Gollum's hilarious line, "Is it Scrumptiously Crunchable?”
7. The White Orc. Really? Another one liner turned into a ginormous subplot... He is referred to in a single remark of Gandalf's in The Hobbit:
"Your grandfather Thror was killed, you remember, in the mines of Moria by Azog the Goblin."
8. But what really burns is when Azog comes back to attack at the end of the film. Bilbo [of all people] has to come down from the tree and kill a warg! Seriously? Did Jackson even read this chapter "Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire"? Bilbo would never do that! So now Bilbo is some 12 year old kid's mini-Harry-Potter-fantasy... This is one of the worst things about the movie, how Bilbo goes from accidental adventurer to some sort of vertically challenged Conan the Barbarian. Tolkien is rolling over.
Which leads to the why? Well, it's the $$$, stupid. Three movies make more $ then one. And money seems to be all the gigantic turd named P. Jackson is after. Yes he is a bigger turd then Bono in South Park. A bigger turd then... oh what does it matter...
PS. And while I'm on the subject the Elves did NOT join the Rohirrim at Helms Deep. Harumph. So there.