7. Azog The Defiler - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
The first film in The Hobbit trilogy, Jackson's attempt to replicate the success of Lord of the Rings, left us with fantastic moments embedded deep inside a bloated film. The existing storylines outside of the books were condensed, adapted, reshaped or retold to fill out what will amount to another nine hours of cinema. That's all for a story which, quite frankly, could have been over and done with in four. However, seeing as Peter Jackson doesn't yet have enough cash to stuff a king-sized mattress with, we are left with the prequel saga's bogus secondary baddie: Azog, the one-armed pale Orc. Mentioned twice (twice!) in the Hobbit as being killed fifty years ago, he has been upgraded to a fully-fledged antagonist, pursuing the Dwarves throughout the film(s) and has been given an all-new backstory involving losing an arm to Thorin. As well as providing needless filler until the gang can reach the dragon, the difference between Azog and the Orcs of Lord of the Rings is that the Defiler is a computer-generated, motion-captured construction instead of a man in makeup, and I can't help but see Thorin fighting a man in a wetsuit covered in ping-pong balls. It's Star Wars syndrome: with the advance in effects, the two movies just don't match up side-by-side. With his son Bolg (the real antagonist of the Hobbit) scheduled to make an appearance in part 2, Azog should have been left in the past.