12 Movies That Were Ruined By One Dumb Decision

9. Splitting The Book In Three - The Hobbit

Strip away the made-for-film subplots and needless action set pieces and there's a good film in The Hobbit Trilogy. It wouldn't be perfect - the overuse of unconvincing CGI has seen to that - but a competent editor could take Peter Jackson's officially released movies and turn out a version running less than three hours in total and much more faithful to Tolkien's novel.

The decision to split the the book in three was allegedly done for creative decisions, although we never saw any evidence of that. Not just three movies, but three long movies, the attempts to eke as much cash from the property as humanly possible mean there's been so much stuffed in to justify the length that it all feels aimless. One less touched on effect of the divide is that the individual parts don't get a proper narrative structure. All three entries of The Lord Of The Rings felt like self-sufficient installments despite being part of a bigger whole, whereas An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation Of Smaug are essentially painfully long episodes in a TV serial with a protracted release schedule; the cliffhanger may be cool, but the second film does just stop.