The Hobbit: 10 Times Peter Jackson Ruined A Character

10. Bolg's Entire Story

Bolg was certainly imposing, but in terms of his character there wasn't much going on...

In the book, Bolg was the leader of the orcs at the Battle of Five Armies (Azog was long dead by this point). The fact Jackson adapted this significantly is not the issue, he just went about it in a piss poor way.

The character certainly required some fleshing out, Tolkien only mentioned him briefly in the book, ascribing his demise to the furious skin-changer, Beorn during the final battle. The character design indicated that Jackson was aware of this plot point, though. Bolg certainly looked like he'd had a history with the skin-changers; he wore bear claw trophies on his shoulders, and that head wound looked like it was inflicted by something big... With Beorn mentioning the orcs were responsible for the death of his people, it seemed Jackson was setting up some big showdown between the two.

Sadly, that didn't happen, Bolg merely served as punching bag for Legolas to practice his combat acrobatics on. He had almost no significant impact on the plot... There's that prolonged boxing match with Legolas in the second movie, and he took part in a version of Middle-earth: Total Wipeout in the third, but apart from that what other point did he serve?