10 Changes That Would Have Saved The Hobbit

10. Not Making It A Prequel

The Lord of the Rings was released some 20 years after The Hobbit, and although it expanded the world of Middle-earth, narratively and thematically speaking, it wasn't a sequel. The Hobbit was an adventure story for children, about Bilbo's quest to reclaim a mound of lost treasure. The planned sequel become something else entirely - a grand and epic tale for adults, about the struggle between good and evil. Tolkien even stated that The Lord of the Rings was not the true sequel to the Hobbit, but to the Silmarillion.

Although Bilbo's Ring later turned out to be the One, this is irrelevant in the Hobbit, the same is true of the Necromancer being Sauron. Tolkien just used these plot points to tie his two stories together, but the central conflict in the Hobbit has nothing to do the central conflict in The Lord of the Rings. In his expanded writings, Tolkien did lay out that Gandalf was motivated to help the dwarves slay Smaug - because he was afraid Sauron would recruit him to his cause - but again this was a supplementary piece of information, rather than a key plot point in the Hobbit story.

Instead of Peter Jackson treating The Hobbit like the standalone story it is, he shoehorned in all these aspect, to make it seem like Sauron's bid for world domination was intrinsically linked to Bilbo's story - and it just wasn't.