10 Movie Sub-Plots That Were More Interesting Than The Main Story

The first film in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy begins in Middle Earth sixty years before the events of The Lord of the Rings. Adapted from Tolkien's 1937 novel and named after its first chapter, An Unexpected Journey follows Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) as he is convinced by Gandalf (Ian McKellen) to join a band of Dwarves on a quest to reclaim their mountain home from a vicious dragon.

The biggest problem the Hobbit films faced was that, while The Lord of the Rings films were each based on a single novel from a series that totals over 1200 pages, the entire prequel trilogy was based on a single 300 page book. Because of this, the main story - the quest to reclaim Erebor from Smaug - becomes stretched so thin that it really only picks up steam come the third and final film in the trilogy.

In An Unexpected Journey, reaching Erebor and the inevitable clash with Smaug seem such a distant prospect that most of what we are seeing feels like unfamiliar filler. It isn't until shroom-munching wizard Radagast the Brown turns up that we start paying real attention.

Gandalf's friend and colleague reports that a mysterious Necromancer has been corrupting Greenwood with dark magic, a concern that Gandalf conveys to the White Council.

The convening of the council was one of the film's few memorable scenes, not only because it involved characters we recognised from The Lord of the Rings, but because things actually started getting interesting. As Gandalf meets with Elrond, Galadriel and a pre-heel-turn Saruman, we come to realise that this Necromancer is actually Sauron, and even the shadow of this great villain is enough to make you lose interest in Erebor(e).