‘The Hobbit’ Did Not Come Out The Way Peter Jackson Envisioned It Apparently
By George Robbins
There have been plenty of movies that have released over the years which have been based on books that have been adapted for the big screen. More times than not, people end up complaining that the film adaptations of their favorite books don’t meet the expectations they had for the movie to begin with. This isn’t all that surprising though because movies cannot go into the same depth that novels can go into with their limited runtime. Novels are capable of going into every possible minute detail that the author wants to make available to the reader if it suits the purposes of their story. In order for authors to get people to experience their novels the way they want them to, they have to give details which describe exactly what is going on and what the scene looks like so readers can imagine it properly.
Novels are a medium that is difficult to understand by the general public because it is a medium where we have to interpret what the author is trying to tell from their story. Just what is meant with every single detail we have read in a novel needs to be interpreted by the reader in a way that the author’s meaning could not be misinterpreted. Unfortunately, this will never not be an issue because people have a habit of taking stories and twisting them how they want them to be for the sake of their own argument or imagination. However, there are also plenty of opportunities that have shown that people can correctly interpret what an author was going for in their novels and people can appreciate the work that went into putting those words on a page. Plenty of authors have managed to make this possible by writing out every detail of what they imagine would be important to their stories.
When an author writes a novel, they often times include as many details as necessary to get the scenes across in their novels since we can’t see these scenes directly play out in front of us. One of the most important things that an author needs to do to get people interested in their novels is to draw them in with scenes that people can play out in their heads in extravagant ways. Needless to say, there are reasons why fictional novels usually sell more copies than non-fictional stories since they can take people to entirely different worlds and give them a lot to imagine. That being said, their are plenty of non-fiction novels that people have fallen in love with over the years because they tell an interesting story about something that happened in our own world. It is harder to capture interest with non-fictional stories, but they are much easier for people to get used to.
If a person can read something in a novel which has happened in this world, they can much more easily adapt to this and put themselves in the shoes of the characters better. Still, while this may not be the worst type of story to be told in a movie format, the most common type of film to be made is obviously going to be a non-fiction movie. More times than not, those novels which have been adapted to the big screen ended up being fantasy or science fiction novels that have captured people’s imaginations over the years. The popularity of a novel can immediately make people think about ways that it can be adapted to the big screen, but it is not an easy discussion to be had in the end. If someone wants to make a live-action or animated version of a film, there are a lot of hoops that must be jumped through to make that a possibility.
When a movie is being considered for a chance to make its way to the big screen, there are a number of factors which must be considered before a movie can even be put into the works. This is done when they storyboard for a movie and they plan out just how that film would end up turning out without even really going into detail until later. Sometimes a film could get most of the way through and they realize that it just wouldn’t make much sense to make a movie out of a certain novel. Other movies can get past this stage and they can begin working on a script that will fit the movie while also trying to adhere closely to the story of the novel. If the story of the novel cannot be adapted as well as they originally thought, they will either scrap the movie in storyboarding or they’ll make an entirely new movie with the same name.
Obviously, people are not going to like the fact that a favorite book of theirs was taken and changed in order to adapt it to the big screen so that a studio could go on and try to make money off of it. Usually, the movies that end up doing this end up failing in theaters and it ends up coming off as a surprise that people didn’t like it that much. Movies that do try to closely adhere to the original story can only end up doing so much to try and stay on track though. As stated already, books are the perfect place for an author to give all of the details they feel are necessary to make the story feel even more real. Obviously a lot of these minute details cannot be adapted to the big screen in a way that can get the audience to understand why they are there to begin with. Also a lot of details are given to set up the scene whereas in a movie, the scene can very easily be seen on screen.
While not having all of the details from their novel counterparts, people immediately become disappointed that the reasons for certain things happening on screen were never explained properly like in the novels. Inversely, the exact opposite can end up happening and a single novel can end up being turned into a couple of different movies instead of just a single movie. Much of this comes from books that filmmakers believe would not be able to show off everything that happened in the book or they felt there should be more to the story. The latter is what ended up happening with the ‘Hobbit’ trilogy of films as they were adapted from a single book by author J.R.R. Tolkien. The end result of the whole affair with the ‘Hobbit‘ films was that they ended up being much more inferior to the ‘Lord of the Rings‘ trilogy that came before them.
The original novels written by fiction writer J.R.R. Tolkien are widely regarded as some of the most incredible high fantasy novels to have ever existed. Tolkien had done something that almost no other author had been able to do and he handcrafted an entire universe which he wrote out on paper with incredible stories that people have fallen in love with over the years. He wrote countless novels all based within the same universe that went into incredible depth to explain exactly how that world came to be and what was happening in that world. Among those novels were a certain trilogy known as the ‘Lord of the Rings’ Trilogy which told a very specific story about a group of heroes doing what they could to save the world. What would follow was a long period of time where studios were trying to get their hands on the rights to make movies based on the novels.
The studio that would eventually end up getting the rights to work on the movie was Warner Bros. who would wait until a time where they knew they would be able to make the movie properly. While they were figuring these things out, they had to decide who would end up taking up the helm when they started working on the movies. That lucky soul ended up being director Peter Jackson who had taken those famous novels and adapted them in such a way that those movies are now considered among the best fantasy films to ever exist. Jackson easily created a set of films that became beloved not only by fans of the original novels, but also the general public at large. He made his vision of those films become reality on the big screen and people fell in love with all of the work that went into the making of the films.
The wild success of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies gave the idea to the studio that they could definitely continue to make movies based out of that universe. After all, Tolkien created such an incredibly diverse universe that they had a ton of additional content to play off of if they wanted to make a future film. The only issue presented to them was that there was not really a story left to tell after ‘Return of the King‘ and thus they had to go back in time. For those that didn’t know that there was another novel that served as a prequel but had seen the trilogy, they were given a jump-in point near the start of the first film. They explain at the start of the first film and at the end of the third that Frodo’s father figure and family, Bilbo, was an adventurer that was a part of a big adventure of his own when he was younger.
Bilbo’s story was the story of ‘The Hobbit’ which was mentioned as being the basis for the story “There and Back Again” in-universe. This journey was one that saw Bilbo going on a journey with a group of dwarves so that they may finally find their way back to their kingdom which was taken over by a dragon. The original novel, as already stated, was originally just one novel that told Bilbo’s story, but this did not fit well with the version of the film that Jackson wanted to adapt. Thus, he decided that he was going to turn the novel into an entire trilogy which would have shown off his vision of the novel’s story to the world. In the end, the prequel trilogy ended up being considered simply inferior to the original ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy that people loved.
We now know that the reason as to why the films probably turned out the way that they did was because Peter Jackson was not able to make the movies that he originally wanted to make. This could have easily affected the work because it made it difficult for Jackson to make something that he would be proud of making. According to actor Jed Brophy, who played dwarf Nori, Warner Bros. interfered with the prequel trilogy while it was under production which led to Jackson not being able to do the things that he wanted to with the film. It isn’t all that surprising that the studio ended up interfering with the production since it was such an important property to be adapting to the big screen. However, they shouldn’t have done that since they already knew that Jackson would have done a good job with directing the film from how he handled the original films.
This is not the first time that Warner has done this as they have been pointed at recently by a number of different directors who have said they have interfered with productions they were working on. Director David Ayer has been doing his best to make this apparent to the general public as of late with information that Warner was responsible for how ‘Suicide Squad’ ended up turning out. Apparently Ayer was only able to put one part into the final version of the film while everything else was left out or changed by the studio. While it hasn’t been stated exactly what was interfered with in the ‘Hobbit’ movies, it can be assumed that it was a fair bit of the films that ended up being dictated by the studio. This would mean that most of the film would really be worked on by the studio and not the director they chose to be in charge of the films.
Jed Brophy admitted recently that the studio did not allow Jackson the freedom to do what he wanted with the film which led to him not being able to really change things on the fly. He said that when Jackson worked on the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies, he was able to shoot a scene and then think about how he wanted to work on the next scene to make it all flow together. Unfortunately, he was not afforded the same opportunity when he did the ‘Hobbit’ movies as the studio had a much more set schedule that they did not want to deviate from and they wanted it all done as quickly as possible. There is no telling if the movies would have really ended up better if Jackson was able to do things the way he wanted to, but it still would have been much more interesting to see. What’s done is done though so we can only imagine at this point how differently the movie would have turned out.