10 Biggest Mistakes That Completely Ruined The Hobbit Trilogy

10. Splitting It In Three

Let's get the most obvious point out of the way first. The Hobbit is a single narrative and, while it is incredibly episodic, it doesn't merit an annual pause to take in the basic plot. Ignoring the effects of it becoming a mammoth trilogy, simply having it be three movies is a fundamental flaw; there's a solid three hour movie hidden in there just begging for a fan-edit. No individual Hobbit movie has its own enclosed story, making the whole thing feels painfully disjointed - a TV miniseries released in a bizarre manner. An Unexpected Journey is a film with countless beginnings, The Desolation Of Smaug is a never-ending middle and The Battle Of The Five Armies is a protracted end. This could work when presented in one go, but over three years it's ponderous. Compare this to the original trilogy, where each movie left you with a sense of satisfaction. The original plan since early in pre-production was to have two films, with one telling most of the story (probably up to Smaug) and the second tying the events into The Lord Of The Rings (Dol Guldur, the Battle of the Five Armies and beyond), and while it started the journey from the sheer logic of The Hobbit being one film, it's not really a terrible idea. Things changed through the movies' development, but up until the decision to make a trilogy, the multi-movie concept was still pretty solid. During shooting, the intended bridge point was going to be just after the barrel sequence, with the introduction of Bard. Now that kinda makes sense - you have one movie where the dwarves amble through the inconsequential adventures, then a second that draws the whole thing into the broader scope and traditional epic action of Middle-Earth; narrative cohesion in both individual entries and the broader scope.