9. The Stone Giants Play A Much Bigger Part
Despite having a blink and you'll miss it part in The Hobbit book - they amount to around three sentences - the Stone Giants play a signficant part in a sequence of The Hobbit movie. When the party are on the mountain pass, they encounter a storm, only to discover that they are in fact caught in the middle of a Stone Giant conflict, and the terrain they were traversing is in fact alive. This leads to a dramatic sequence in which the party attempt to stay alive as the Stone Giants battle to the death, jumping from cliff to cliff and avoiding falling avalanches of rock. The effects are good here, and the Stone Giants themselves look lifted out of a Guilhermo Del Toro production, but the sequence feels a little close to the Mountain pass sequence in the Lord of the Rings, despite its impressive effects. All-in-all it feels like WETA flexing their muscles to bring to life a tiny piece of Hobbit lore for the sake of showing off.