10 Biggest Mistakes That Completely Ruined The Hobbit Trilogy

9. Unnecessary CGI

There's a lot of CGI in The Hobbit, plain and simple. That isn't in and of itself a big issue - don't forget that a lot of The Lord Of The Rings, particularly the latter two movies, had copious moments of (now obvious) computer enhancement. The problem with Weta's effects in the prequel trilogy is that they're used to the nth degree when it's all rather unnecessary. Minas Tirith, Helms Deep et al were achieved by a mix of gargantuan miniatures (affectionately nicknamed bigatures by their creators), life-size sets and visual enhancement, but for The Hobbit the likes of Goblin Town and Thranduil's castle were all just built in a computer. Sure, some sets were built (see Laketown), but there was so much CG augmentation it was almost a fools errand. Add to it that the effects aren't as photo-realistic as Jackson appears to think and you've got something that doesn't look too dissimilar from a Shadow Of Mordor cutscene. Most egregious is that in several cases practical effects were actually done over with computer effects, probably because they now stood out against the flawed realism of the CGI. Bolg, the main goblin antagonist in the book, here reduced to snarling henchman to father Azog, was originally going to feature one of the series most inventive orc designs (above left), but come the finished film this was tempered to a poorly executed computer version (sigh, above right). For a series made famous for its incredible location shots and faithful realism, this world-building is more on the visual level of Minecraft.