10 Changes That Would Have Saved The Hobbit
2. Keeping Guillermo Del Toro On As Director
Peter Jackson made the decision not to direct The Hobbit based on a fear that he could never out do his masterpiece The Lord of the Rings. Boy, was he right. Originally, Jackson took on a role as producer as well as having a hand in writing the script. But Guillermo del Toro would direct.
The Hobbit is tonally and thematically a different beast entirely to The Lord of the Rings. The former is an adventure story in a fairy tale setting, the latter is an epic exploration of good and evil. So it made sense to represent this thematic change in tone, aesthetically.
Guillermo del Toro has made a name for himself putting his own spin on the modern idea of fairy tale. With movies like Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy, he's been able to conjure up magical realms that feel both gritty and other worldly, he's also a master of prosthetics and animatronics - the perfect candidate to tackle The Hobbit.
His original plan was to tell the story in two films. The first would look and feel very different to Jackson's original trilogy. It would show a more fairy tale like side of Middle-earth, less inundated by the sinister threat of Sauron as we see in The Lord of the Rings. The second movie would see a gradual transition in tone from the fantastical to the more grounded, as Bilbo is exposed to the wider world.