4 Reasons Why The Hobbit Shouldn’t Become A Trilogy

Turning The Hobbit into three films will mean that the quality of the movies will suffer.

Peter Jackson confirmed at Comic Con this week that he hopes to film new footage for his epic two-part adaptation of The Hobbit, which has fuelled rumours that Warner Bros might decide to split the second movie; "The Hobbit: There And Back Again", into two parts. Thus making The Hobbit a trilogy. While this would be a great financial move for the studio, I can€™t help but feel that turning The Hobbit into three films could mean that the quality of the movies will suffer. Here are four reasons why I believe The Hobbit shouldn€™t be made into a trilogy...

1. The Middle Film Problem

While I personally consider The Two Towers to be my favourite of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I can appreciate the criticism of a few who believe that it is a story without a true beginning or ending. I can only imagine that this problem would be amplified in a proposed middle movie of a Hobbit trilogy. At least with The Lord of the Rings, the final shooting script was written with the intention of there being three separate movies, with the Two Towers having the resolvable plot arcs of Helms deep, the Council of the Ents, Saruman€™s downfall and also Aragorn€™s personal journey into accepting his heritage as heir to the king. The Hobbit would not have this luxury, firstly because it was not written in this way and secondly because they are adapting from a book that has only one major story arc. It is because of this that a middle part to a Hobbit trilogy would struggle to find any resolvable plot threads and, as Prometheus has taught us, this is likely to frustrate audiences.
Contributor
Contributor

I'm a 20 year old law student with a passion for film and television. I aim to not be too cynical about film and to approach writing as a speculative fan and not as a critic.