7. Bilbo Tricks The Stone Trolls, Not Gandalf
In The Hobbit, it is Gandalf who tricks a trio of Stone Trolls into staying out in the open until the sun comes up and turns them into stone, when they have captured Bilbo and the dwarves. He impersonates one of the trolls and confuses them by offering tips on seasoning for their upcoming dwarf meal, and they lose track of the sun coming up. In the film however, Jackson chooses to make Bilbo the trickster, having him berating the trolls for their choice of seasoning and offering cooking instructions to the dismay of the dwarves who believe he is a traitor. He says the dwarves are riddled with parasites and shouldn't be eaten at any cost, and he stalls the trolls just long enough for Gandalf to reappear from his solitary sojourn (he gets sick of the dwarves) to move some landscape and reveal the rising sun, that turns the trolls to stone. This has obviously been changed in order to reinforce the idea of Bilbo as the hero, and to give him a chance to endear himself to the dwarves and Thorin in particular who doubts him from the outset of the adventure, but in hindsight, given the finale of the film and Bilbo's saving of Thorin from Azog, it seems like overkill that Bilbo would have to prove himself twice. The trolls themselves are well-designed and well voice-acted, and the combat sequence between the part of dwarves and the trolls is arresting - though the scene in which one of the trolls blows his nose on Bilbo accidentally feels a lot like a hangover from Peter Jackson's more gorey career history.