The Hobbit: 8 Blunders That Ruined The Desolation Of Smaug
4. Incongruous Franchise Tie-Ins
Oh but its meant to be a kids film! Its not meant to be looked at in the same way as LOTR! cry the defenders, and as much as Id like to get on aboard with that ideology, The Hobbit keeps thwacking me over the head with references to the original films. From Elijah Woods Frodo cameo in part one, to casting an older Ian McKellan to play a younger Gandalf, to Legolas darting around the screen in a CG-blur and randomly mentioning Gimli for the sake of an elbow-nudge recognition, thematically The Hobbit doesnt know what its trying to be. For the sake of box office figures and perhaps Jacksons own love for the silver screen vision hes created, there are an abundance of tie-ins to the much more serious Frodo-fuelled brethren that do a disservice to what hes half-doing with the new films. Feel free to make a Hobbit trilogy out of one of the finest fantasy books of all time, of course, but if youre going to take another tone with it that mirrors the more childlike nature of the book itself and have the characters running to and fro every five minutes, you cannot attempt to have the same actors, aesthetic and overall feel of the original trilogy. All that does is serve to remind us how much more seriously the world of Middle-Earth and its creatures were taken in those films, and illuminates exactly why something like a dwarf flying down a mountainside in a barrel as he takes out a platoon of orcs is more of an eye-rolling moment than something that would otherwise be celebrated in a film that knew its demographic.
