10 Reasons You Should Give The Hobbit A Second Chance

4. The Songs

One element of Tolkien that The Lord Of The Rings, if anything, skimped on, was the songs. Aside from Pippin's The Edge Of Night any songs only form stylistic entries in the soundtrack, whereas in the books, particularly Fellowship, there's all manner of songs, jaunts and ditties. Being a lighter story (and needing more content to add to the run time), Jackson decided to feature more tunes in The Hobbit, with An Unexpected Journey seeing the dwarves break out in a tune twice before we even leave Bag-End. This did attract a fair bit of criticism, seeming a purely superficial addition to the film, but while they may be a little inconsequential to the plot, the poems do help build the tone of the film; these dwarves aren't warriors and showing them sing their way through the washing up not only highlights that, but get's across their general good nature. An essential part of the world Tolkien created, if anything having more songs links Jackson's Middle Earth closer to the literary one (which is handy given how other changes risk distancing the two versions of the story).