9. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
I enjoyed
The Hobbit when it came out last Christmas. I found it pretty entertaining, and I'm looking forward to the sequel. But for all the bits I enjoyed, I can't deny that it really could have used a trim. Even without having seen the next two parts, we can all agree that this comparatively simple story did not need to be so thinly stretched. Many people would blame this on Peter Jackson losing his sense of discipline after
The Lord of the Rings. First there were the extended cuts of these films, then came the remake of
King Kong which was twice the length of the original (it just missed out being on this list, even though I really like it). Alternatively, you could blame it all on New Line Cinema, who demanded the change from two films to three for financial reasons. In fact, the problems with
The Hobbit stem from Jackson's creative approach to the story. Even when the project was being helmed by Guillermo del Toro, there was talk of linking up the later storylines of
The Hobbit with the beginning of
LOTR. This intention has survived, but in Jackson's hands this desire to connect everything has resulted in a film which is not just
The Hobbit, but "
The Hobbit plus the rest of the history of Middle Earth which we couldn't fit in last time." The film is too long because it's trying to cram in so much stuff to tie up the chronology, and it isn't always necessary to tell the story that it's meant to be telling.