Peter Jackson's The Hobbit Trilogy is quickly gaining a reputation as the director's version the of the Star Wars prequels; that is, a hugely divisive set of films that have as many detractors as they do defenders. The balance between love and hate may shift more favourably in a particular direction at any given time, and that's a good thing, because the Hobbit trilogy deserves to be recognised for what it got right just as much as for what it got wrong. Everyone knows by now that Jackson and the writers behind the Hobbit trilogy took more than just a few liberties when interpreting Tolkien's book for the cinema screen, and while many purists out there were disappointed with some of the more drastic changes made to the live action Middle-Earth, not every single diversion from the book was a bad one. The biggest, and one of the most hotly-debated changes, came in the form of Gandalf's repeated detours throughout the Hobbit narrative and Jackson's decision to actually develop his solo adventures instead of explaining away his absence with no visual back-up. There is no single change, tweak or complete re-write of a story element that makes Jackson's trilogy unwatchable for certain fans though, and it's the sweeping changes that the director made to certain elements of Tolkien's book that some simply can't forgive. Just like everything in life though, there's always two sides to the same coin and here is no different. Jackson's Hobbit films will be continually dissected and scrutinised for many moons to come, but there's no better place to start than here to get an idea of the good and the bad that Jackson achieved with his Hobbit trilogy.
Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.
