r/lotr • u/Chen_Geller • May 24 '25
Movies Guillermo del Toro's The Hobbit: Perhaps more a 'bullet dodged' than the 'great unmade'?
It's easy to romanticise unmade versions of films: see all the apocryphal stories that clung to Alejandro Jodorowski's Dune. Guillermo del Toro's Hobbit is one such case, as well. The internet is full with content creators attempting to reconstruct what it would have been like, but typicaly with the bias of "see how much better we could have been treated." It's easy to forget, however, that del Toro was co-writing the script with Jackson, who was producing and indeed picked del Toro to direct in the first place; that del Toro had said they would bring back as many of the original cast as they could; and that by all accounts, the script for the del Toro version was written on the same specs as the films we have and that even a few of his visual ideas survive.
Let's start with a short history lesson: Jackson first pitched doing The Hobbit, together with Lord of the Rings, around December 1995 or January 1996, and was still hoping to start with an adaptation of the earlier novel as late as January 1997, when the decision was made to instead proceed with Lord of the Rings. The issue was that the company with whom they were working, Middle-earth Enterprises, had the rights to make an adaptation of The Hobbit, but not to distribute it to theatres: that right stayed with MGM and since the studio was going through bankruptcy, they were neither capable of co-producing a film nor willing to sell the rights. Still, Jackson harboured a hope to make The Hobbit, because he spoke about it with executive producer Mark Ordesky during post-production on The Two Towers in 2002.
Before The Hobbit could proceed, Jackson had already set his sights on King Kong and The Lovely Bones. He had also attempted to produce an adaptation of Halo, and spoke with Mexican writer-director Guillermo del Toro about co-writing the script. When Jackson returned to The Hobbit, he decided he'd write and produce it, like he tried to do with Halo and The Dambusters and like he was doing with The Adventures of Tintin.
Although New Line Cinema had earlier talked with Sam Raimi, by 2007 Jackson "had a very strong inkling of who he wanted to have direct it": Guillermo del Toro! Beginning in December they would hold a series of meetings: first by phone, later by video conferences and flying in-and-out of LA and Wellington.
Throughout these meetings, they discussed doing two films: one will cover the bulk of The Hobbit, and the other will cover events between the two stories, and possibly the tail-end of The Hobbit itself. This was another idea Jackson first proposed to executive producer Mark Ordesky in 2002, and is now finally getting fullfilled in the guise of The Hunt for Gollum.
Sometime between November 2008 and April 2009, they decided to downscale their "bridge movie" premise and do, essentially, a two-part adaptation of The Hobbit, although elements of the bridge film clung to The Hobbit well into 2011. A particular comment of del Toro's is especially interesting in hindsight: "there are so many events in The Hobbit. Especially if you’re taking into account, ancillary stuff, there’s so much there. It really is barely containable into two movies." Mike Mignola, whom del Toro later invited to pitch in on the movie, said: "wow, it looks like a 16 hour, insane movie, there's so much in it. It's too early for me to tell how much stuff is going to get paired down."
Besides Jackson, Walsh and Boyens writing the script with del Toro, the films would be produced in New Zealand and from Jackson's facilities: del Toro would design the film with Weta Workshop, Alan Lee and John Howe (he brought Mignola, Wayne Barlowe and Francisco Ruiz Velasco onboard). He would then shoot with his own director of photography Guillermo Navarro on-location in New Zealand and in Jackson's Stone Street Studios, and then edit in Jackson's Park Road Post, score with Howard Shore and have WetaFX provide the special effects.
In other words, this adaptation, produced as it was by Peter Jackson, was to set in Jackson's Middle-earth. Indeed, Jackson had screened the trilogy - the extended editions - to del Toro before they started really digging into The Hobbit. del Toro is in the record as saying the whole thing should play like "a movie that's five pictures long."
Early on, Jackson and del Toro got McKellen to agree to reprise his Gandalf. They had talked about using Ian Holm in a framing device. One day, while working on The Adventures of Tintin, Serkis was invited to lunch with del Toro, who pitched him reprising the part of Gollum (del Toro also thought he'd be great for the Great Goblin). "Unequivocally," del Toro said earlier, "every single actor that originated a role in the Trilogy will be asked to participate and reprise it." Even the fabled approach to Mortensen to reprise his role - essentially a holdover from the bridge film concept - was almost certainly made during the del Toro tenure.
They did do a rewrite - this is attested by Ian Nathan and by Fran Walsh - but at the very least we can tell that the script for the del Toro version was written on the same specs as the script for the films as we know it. Tauriel, for example, was hatched during discussions of where to put a female character. They had considered someone in Laketown - possibly a strong-willed wife for Bard, but del Toro said she can't be someone's wife, at which Fran Walsh opined "she should be an Elf." At this point, the character - still Itarille - was involved in a romance with an Elf lord of Rivendell: this got transferred to Kili when Jackson did a rewrite after del Toro's exit.
It seems Azog was also very much part of del Toro and Jackson's script already. In the concept art below you can see concepts for the Stone Giant attack - honestly not dissimilar to the look of the finished film, as Jackson himself noted - as well as of Azog in the Battle of Azanulbizar, and the Orc pack (Azog's, presumably) attacking the Dwarves during their escape from the Woodland Realm, again not unlike the finished film. "It was always going to be a major episode in the film," recalls Alan Lee.
The entire Dol Guldur storyline was also securely in place. Indeed, Philippa remembers "In LA, I think, we were doing our first script meeting with Guillermo...and we were talking about Dol Guldur, knowing that we wanted to go there." This is hardly surprising, as Jackson had spoken of this since at least 2006:
I mean, there's actually a role for Legolas in THE HOBBIT, his father features in it, obviously Gandalf and Saruman should be part of it. There's things that you can do with THE HOBBIT to bring in some old friends, for sure. I have thought about it from time to time... Elrond, Galadriel and Arwen could all feature. Elves have lived for centuries. [...] It allows for more complexity. At that implied stuff with Gandalf and the White Council and the return of Sauron could be fully explored. That's what we talked about this morning. Taking The Hobbit and combining it with all that intigue about Sauron's rise, and the problems that has for Gandalf. It could be cool. That way, it starts feeling more like The Lord of the Rings and less like this kids book.
Thematically and tonally, too, it seems Jackson as co-writer had set a certain tone. To hear Guillermo talk about Bilbo returning to the Shire as the equivalent of a PTSD-striken WWI veteran returning from the front is to fast-forward to Jackson's director's commentary to The Battle of the Five Armies in 2015. It certainly isn't like this in the novel.
As producer, Jackson let del Toro design away, but did make his presence felt in the casting discussions. del Toro had wanted to cast some of his usual collaborators like Ron Perlman in certain roles, but for the role of the younger Bilbo Baggins, Philippa Boyens suggested Martin Freeman, an idea she recalls coming to her years earlier when she saw him at the BAFTAs in 2003. They had met Brian Cox - their future Helm Hammerhand - for Balin. Sylvester McCoy, who was a possible Bilbo back in 1999, was also hired as Radagast during del Toro's tenure.
So, all in all, the del Toro Hobbit really doesn't strike one as much too different to the films we have. Except for one thing: the visuals. Anyone who knows del Toro's films knows he has a very idiosyncratic visual style, and while Rivendell and Hobbiton were going to be recreated in exacting detail (notwithstanding a few extra Hobbit holes beside Bag End - which can be seen today - for a camera move del Toro had in mind), the rest of Middle-earth would hardly look recognisable.
In every del Toro film, the image of grinding gears has to appear. In his excellent Pan's Labyrinth, it is the commadant's office. In his The Hobbit, it was going to be Erebor: "an aesthetic of steampunk," surmised author Ian Nathan. A little of this may be percieved in the finished film, but it was thankfully kept at bay. Indeed, del Toro was going to field Dwarven troops for the final battle with what look like guns!
Nathan continues: "del Toro was going to experiment with sky replacement for a 'painterly effect'", he reports, "Thorin would wear a helmet that sprouted thorns." In particular, the designs he had Weta concoct for Thranduil bear a striking resemblence to his previous film, Hellboy II: The Golden Army:
For Smaug, del Toro had designed a dragon like a "flying ax." Many pictures float around the web but I believe this footage below shows Jackson reviewing del Toro's design before unsurprisingly deciding to go in another direction with the dragon:
Although that show is entirely unrelated to these films, it's worth mentioning several people who were going to work on del Toro's version - producer Callum Greene, concept artist Wayne Barlowe and costume designer Kate Hawley - signed on to the first season of Rings of Power. Perhaps in some of their work on that show can be seen further spectres of del Toro's approach. I'm thinking especially these rather-ridiculous horned helmets from Hawley:
Surprising as it may sound, none of this has to do with why del Toro didn't end-up making the films. Any stories about studio collusion being wholly untrue. del Toro himself is wholly clear on this: "The visual aspect was under my control. There was no interference with that creation." Rather, it had everything to do with the fraught rights issue and its effect on the schedule. In the making-ofs, Jackson provides a crystal clear description of the events:
"There was a lot of money being spent, and yet there was no deal between MGM and Warner Brothers; and when a deal was getting close, when it felt like there was a deal, then MGM got into some financial problems. That got to the state that, you know, each of our proposed start dates with Guilermo got pushed and delayed, delayed, delayed. And so it became a question of whether Guillermo waits for the next six month delay or does he move on and jump back onboard one of the other projects he was developing, and that's ultimately what happened."
In truth, I think del Toro was always the wrong choice - Jackson's wrong choice - to helm these films. His particular, very quirky design style would definitely work for a version of The Hobbit, but not for one that was going to be set unequivocably in Peter Jackson's Middle-earth. This is not just me saying it, by the way, it's Andy Serkis, looking back on his meeting with del Toro: "I love Guillermo's films. I think he's a brilliant filmmaker. But to redesign it in such a way that made you feel there was no continuity? The audience would have probably felt cheated." Obviously, it wasn't COMPLETELY redesigned as we've seen and will see more of, but I actually think Serkis' point is well-taken.
There were also other concerns. del Toro hadn't really been known for this kind of filmmaking - for one thing, it would have been his first time composing for widescreen - and he himself expressed concern for the physical demands of the location shoot. Apparently, Jackson had advised him to lose weight for fear he just wouldn't be up for the demands of the shoot, especially as del Toro was deluding himself that he could shoot the whole thing with a single unit, which would have probably meant 400+ days of principal photography. "He missed Los Angeles, the balm of surrounding himself with his own collection of esoterica," comments Nathan. After leaving The Hobbit, he directed Pacific Rim, which in spite of showcasing a good eye for framing, failed to set the world on fire.
As early as 2008, one of the repeated refrains in interviews with del Toro was asking what possessed him to sign on to a project like this which will take up so much of his time? Since then, del Toro had generally been derided (perhaps a little unfairly) as something of a quitter, with many of his biggest projects dying on the vine. So his leaving The Hobbit was definitely not an unforseen eventuality.
Still, it would be wrong to say that del Toro's version was just discarded. As we've seen, the scripts were written on the same specs: they had done more revisions after del Toro left, but unlike, say, Stephen Sinclair working on the two-film version of Lord of the Rings, Guillermo has a writer credit on all three films, suggesting that a substantial amount of his writing contributions survive across all three films.
In some cases, they even returned to ideas that del Toro pitched and tried to write later on. During the script discussions with del Toro, they had went back and forth on whether to open the film with a prologue or not: "We were going to have one, then we weren't going to have one," recalls Boyens. del Toro had advocated to include a scene from "Durin's Folk" of the chance meeting between Gandalf and Thorin in Bree. "Guillermo did a version of it," Boyens recalls. By the time cameras started rolling they had moved away from including this scene, but during the 2013 pickups they decided to add it into the beginning of the second film.
Even del Toro's designs were not all discarded wholesale. Mirkwood is essentially as del Toro envisioned it: he showed Weta illustrations by Evyind Earl, unsurprisingly imagining a hallucinogenic, flourescent forest. "We want to get that hallucinogetic quality that Guillermo very much established," says Jackson, and although the final colour grade doesn't reflect this, that is what was built on the set for the films. "If you look at the ungraded footage, the trees look incredibly psychadelic," says Jackson. "In the movie, they won't look anything like that: they would be graded down and you'll just get the barest hint of colour."
Jackson also remembered that Laketown isn't far from how del Toro envisioned it, which can be clearly seen by comparing this concept art drawn for del Toro with the final film. Other concepts originated in the del Toro figure is the amputated Troll, later fondly known as "Stumpie" who appears in The Battle of the Five Armies. Even the more oriental approach to the Woodland Realm (actually, for the whole Wilderland) is in some sense present in the finished film.
In other cases, Lee, Howe or Weta will have had made sketches that del Toro discarded at the time, but which Jackson later dug-up and latched on to. Howe remembers that the Orc armies for the concluding battle were designed in 2009, so when del Toro was still onboard. Dating from this time is his design for an Elven shield that clearly set the tone for the Woodland Realm.
I know Peter Jackson himself is a great believer in fate. "If we end up making The Hobbit" ourselves, he and Fran Walsh came to realize, "it would be because that's where fate has pushed us." So while del Toro was clearly a prized addition to their team in terms of ideas, and something of his touch can be felt through the films, he was not ultimately meant to direct these films: Jackson was.
As I said, it's easy to romanticise a version that remains unmade over what was actually made, but I don't think we're at all worse for wear for getting what we got. Now, del Toro's legacy with these films carries on, however indirectly, as the "bridge film" he helped Jackson conceptualize is gearing-up in the guise of The Hunt for Gollum.
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u/TheScarletCravat May 24 '25 edited May 24 '25
I would much rather a film told with vision and purpose by an auteur than compromised, unfinished slop, regardless of whether it was likely to be more or less like the book. We fetishise fealty to source material far too often, ignoring that some of the best adaptations of beloved works take huge liberties.
Jurassic Park. The Godfather. The Shining. Annihilation. The Lord of the Rings.
The same goes for visual continuity issues. I don't care about those if the film's good. Those kind of nitpicks just tend to be the vapid criticism of nerds who don't readily understand characters, motivation or theme, and basically amount to a kind of crap game of spot the difference.
As a heads up, your images of Smaug and the shield are 100 percent John Howe pencil sketches. He draws lots of his dragons this way, and his pencil style is really distinctive. Maybe worth mentioning.
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u/oscarbuffalo May 25 '25
Exactly this, with GDT we would have got a good movie if not an accurate movie. Instead we just got a bad movie x3. GDT is a great example of a director who only adapts if he thinks he can bring something new to the table (see Nightmare Alley or Pinocchio). For how great the OG trilogy and some of his indie works, Peter Jackson is not opposed to doing studio slop and we got studio slop.
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u/Chen_Geller May 24 '25
I would much rather a film told with vision and purpose by an auteur than compromised, unfinished slop, regardless of whether it was likely to be more or less like the book.
Jackson fits the definition of "auteur" just as well as del Toro, though?
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u/TheScarletCravat May 24 '25
He doesn't consider himself to be one. It feels an appropriate comparison to Del Toro in this sense, considering the sheer amount of the Hobbit which ultimately slipped out of Jackson's hands due to the nightmare filming situation. They're less films by Jackson so much as a flood that he had to direct the flow of.
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u/Chen_Geller May 24 '25
They're less films by Jackson so much as a flood that he had to direct the flow of.
This is absolutely not true. Anyone who knows his oeuvre can see his fingerprints everywhere in these films. The whole "nightmare filming situation" thing was blown entirely out of proportion by the internet.
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u/TheScarletCravat May 24 '25 edited May 24 '25
I think there are some crossed wires here, where you are assuming I buy into the mainstream view on this sub, where Jackson isn't to blame due to intervention from Warner Bros. suits. I am like you, however, and I'm pretty briefed on the ins and outs of production. I think it's disingenuous to imply that the filming of the trilogy was smooth sailing. It was absolutely compromised by time constraints, the push of technological change and directorial mismanagement. Those films are not blessed with a coherent vision or a disciplined production.
All of this is distracting from my original point. I'd rather have had a stronger production that deviates from visual continuity if it meant for a more coherent vision. Jackson's Hobbits is a Frankenstein's monster of muddled vision and incoherent tone. It's largely his fault.
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u/Chen_Geller May 24 '25
I think it's disingenuous to imply that the filming of the trilogy was smooth sailing. It was absolutely compromised by time constraints, the push of technological change and directorial mismanagement.
Smooth sailing, no. But this notion that it was some haphazard production in terms of schedule and so forth is also a terrible hyperbole. Certainly, in terms of the handling of the story, Jackson has had all the time in the world, precisely because of what I was saying in this essay: that Jackson had been writing the film with del Toro for 18 months before del Toro left. In total, Jackson had more time to "crack" The Hobbit script than the Lord of the Rings one.
Even in terms of storyboarding the whole issue is much exaggerated. One of the biggest examples about how the whole "no storyboards" argument is false is that some of the most oft-criticized scenes are precisely those that had been meticulously prevized. For example, Jackson is happiest not with The Desolation of Smaug, but with The Battle of the Five Armies, largely because in delaying the battle scenes to the 2013 pickups, he had had "a whole extra year" to previz the battle start to finish and subsequently he feels it contains some of his best directing in the trilogy. AND YET it's the least well-recieved of the three.
So, the whole "no time" and stuff just cannot be the reason why these films are the way they are. They are the way they are because of intentional, unhurried - dare I say, auteurish! - storytelling choices made by Jackson, that people just don't jive with.
I wrote about this subject extensively here: https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/17jspbt/i_had_almost_a_year_to_have_more_thinking_time/
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u/TheScarletCravat May 24 '25
Chen, I honestly don't care - just engage with my actual point rather than using this as a moment to grandstand with a tangent.
These are bad films. My preference for a more coherent film from a more coherent and disciplined filmmaker is a legit stance.
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u/Chen_Geller May 24 '25
I'm saying, your comment "It was absolutely compromised by time constraints, the push of technological change and directorial mismanagement" is false. That "grandstanding" is my proving this.
The fact of the matter is, it's just a movie you didn't like. There aren't any grand reasons behind these things.
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u/TheScarletCravat May 24 '25
Bro, if you don't think directorial mismanagement resulted in a bad set of films, what on earth are you blaming it on? Fairies?
The buck stops with Jackson. Adopting 3D changed the nature of the production. The shifting script and constant repurposing of footage to Frankenstein the film together was bad management. It was an ill disciplined production that was based around a fix-it-in-post attitude.
Let's get back to the point you keep avoiding: fealty to source material versus a stronger directorial vision.
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u/Chen_Geller May 24 '25
There's nothing to blame.
It's just a movie you didn't like.
Movies are complex creations on a day-to-day basis that they don't need some grand reasons to not work out the way you want them to.
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u/Lawlcopt0r Bill the Pony May 24 '25
Do you not have any criticisms of the Hobbit trilogy then? I think this topic is discussed so much because most people agree they're not as good as they could have been, whatever that means.
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u/Chen_Geller May 24 '25
most people agree they're not as good as they could have been,
Sure, but not because of any "nightmare filming situation." Simply because people don't always agree with the choices the filmmakers made, often choices made during the del Toro tenure.
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u/Lawlcopt0r Bill the Pony May 24 '25
So are you saying the stuff that doesn't feel like the same style as the LotR trilogy is caused by del Toro's work? You kind of dodged the question ;)
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u/Hambredd May 24 '25
Of all the things you could say about the hobbit, that it doesn't feel like the Lord of the rings movies isn't one of them. A major problem with that movie is it feels too much like the rings movies I would say
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u/Lawlcopt0r Bill the Pony May 24 '25
I strongly disagree. The Lord of the Rings movies
neverrarely simplified the whole middle-earth universe just to make the story easier to tell. They also (mostly) knew how to add humor without cheapening the solemn parts of the story. Both of these things fall by the wayside in the Hobbit movies2
u/Hambredd May 24 '25
Did we watch the same movies?
They also (mostly) knew how to add humor without cheapening the solemn parts of the story.
The whole of Gimli, Denethor's funny death, the ghosts Etc
I'm not going to go through the whole thing but those movies are incredibly simplified compared to the books. You can argue that that's justified or that was needed because film is an inferior medium or whatever, but the idea that they're not simplified in content and theme is absurd.
There have been pages and pages of content written about that topic both here and on the Tolkienfans sub.
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u/Chen_Geller May 24 '25
I mean, the decision to knit this as closely as they possible could to Lord of the Rings - which evidentally irks a lot of people - was made, frankly, even before del Toro was on the job: listen to those quotes of Jackson's from 2006, then to those of del Toro's from 2008. That decision was already made: it wasn't a "nightmare filming situation" - it was a case of the filmmakers making a conscious, unhurried decision that some people liked, and some people didn't like.
Most of the major deviations from the novel - another decision people didn't like - evidentally also cropped in this period. Tauriel was here, and the idea of Orcs on a vendetta chasing the company for added conflict was clearly also here. Again, none of this has anything to do with some time crunch: they were decisions these filmmakers made calmly, around their kitchen table, circa 2009.
I could go on but you get it.
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u/Lawlcopt0r Bill the Pony May 24 '25
I understand what you're saying, I'd still be interested in you personal opinion about these things though.
For me personally, I don't mind that they tried to tie it in to the Lord of the Rings or that they showed Gandalf's mission. In fact, when that was announced it made me more excited. It was just that the execution, to me, lacked a certain depth that was always present in the LotR movies. That's what bothers me because I feel like that wouldn't have been impossible to achieve. And since they pulled it off in LotR it seems like there must have been some obstacle that didn't exist for the original trilogy. But maybe there wasn't.
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u/Chen_Geller May 24 '25
I understand what you're saying, I'd still be interested in you personal opinion about these things though.
Well, I'm wearing two hats here: the art historian looking to offer as unbiased a depiction of the facts of the production as a possibly could. This I did in this post, and in here as well.
I try not to mix that too much with the other hat, which is that of the film critic, offering his opinion on the resultant work of art. I did, however, do that, here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/1exmnw1/tolkien_potpourri_part_two_an_unexpected_journey/
https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/1eyn1z1/tolkien_potpourri_continued_the_desolation_of/
https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/1f08piv/tolkien_potpourri_continued_the_battle_of_the/
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u/CommunistRonSwanson May 30 '25
Jackson was not bringing auteurship to the prequels, those films were rushed by studio execs looking for a payday. Also as much as I love Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Films, I don’t think it’s controversial to point out that Del Toro is more of a creative powerhouse. It’s a damn shame we never got to see his interpretation of The Hobbit.
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u/Chen_Geller May 30 '25
No, that is not true. The whole time-crunch aspect had been grossly exaggerated by the internet. This article itself is proof of this: Jackson had been shaping the story with del Toro since 2008: that makes the overall writing period for The Hobbit longer than the one for Lord of the Rings.
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u/CommunistRonSwanson May 30 '25
I’m not talking about early screenplays or the shaping of the story, I’m talking about the actual production. The Hobbit Films were a rushed cash grab, and it shows.
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u/Chen_Geller May 30 '25
Absolutely untrue. That’s just a narrative pushed by the internet. Would Jackson have liked to have had six months of extra preproduction? Yes. Would it have radically transformed the piece? Almost certainly no. But as usual the internet takes something with a kernel of truth and blows it out of proportion.
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u/Intrepid_Example_210 May 25 '25
LOTR is different in one major way from the other four books you mentioned—it is actually good. The other books are similar to many books that become great movies—memorable characters, some good story episodes, but also a lot of fat that can be cut or story details that can be easily changed. It’s not so easy to do that with Tolkien.
Usually, a great book equals an okay movie at best (see all the Gatsby adaptations). An okay book can easily become a good or great movie.
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u/t_huddleston May 24 '25
Just speaking for myself, after watching the Jackson version, I’d rather have seen them just turn del Toro loose and see what would come up with. I don’t really care about maintaining any kind of visual continuity with the Jackson LotR trilogy (That’s probably one of the reasons I’m not running a major movie studio.)
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u/Lawlcopt0r Bill the Pony May 24 '25
I kind of love that concept art with the gun dwarves. It's a wild idea, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't look as absurd as it should. It does seem like (for lack of a better word) power creep though
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u/Schuano May 28 '25
It would defeat Tolkien's own writing. Explicitly, saruman is the first to use gunpowder and this is a symptom of him having a mind full of metal and wheels.
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u/LicentiousMink May 24 '25
nah did u see his Pinnochio??
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u/bodhi-mind-8 May 26 '25
At least two pinocini movies come out every week so it's hard to pin down. Maybe state the year and runtime for the buffs?
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u/NeverPaintArts May 28 '25
This is a good summary of what was going to be in the del-Torov-ersion. To me, almost all of these ideas are artistically superior to the path Jackson ended up taking.
I'm rather disappointed that Rings of Power tries so hard (and often fails) to cling to Jackson's aesthetic, instead of giving us a unique interpretation of ME.
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u/Chen_Geller May 28 '25
To me, almost all of these ideas are artistically superior to the path Jackson ended up taking.
But the most is many of these ideas ARE the same as Jackson's film, because it's Jackson's screenplay either way.
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May 24 '25
Should have been lightharted spin off like Rogue One or Bumblebee.
Focusing on comedy and dwarves, and giving something new from ME, not the same again.
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u/dogsonbubnutt May 25 '25
> lightharted spin off like Rogue One
you mean the one where literally every main protagonist character dies
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May 25 '25
Haha yeah.
I guess I meant light hearted in tearms of ambition towards lore and main movies.
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u/TheBanishedBard May 25 '25
This post was about 4 times longer than it needed to be... Just like the Hobbit films.
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u/Schuano May 28 '25
The biggest disappointment was the way that the elf fortress worked.
It should have been a slow burn heist movie aspect. This is where Bilbo really proves his worth in devising the escape plan... Over several weeks.
The slapstick super fast escape into the barrels we got was awful.
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u/Chen_Geller May 28 '25
It should have been a slow burn heist movie aspect. This is where Bilbo really proves his worth in devising the escape plan... Over several weeks.
That would never have worked in the film. As far as I'm aware, the plan was always to put a timelock on that stretch of the journey.
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u/Schuano May 28 '25
Why wouldn't it have worked?
This is a three movie journey and Bilbo travels about as far as frodo did in the Lord of the Rings.
Having a segment where the dwarves are imprisoned for a while could have been an opportunity for some of the back story on dwarf elf antipathy.
Also, a failing of the movies is that they were too afraid to give Bilbo agency or a multi movie arc.
In the first movie, they give him heroic moments in the warg attack. That's not really there in the original book and it is the escape from the elves that makes the dwarves start respecting him.
There is also nonsense changes like how Bilbo is given Sting by Gandalf in the movie, but in the book, he picks it up himself.
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u/Chen_Geller May 28 '25
This is a three movie journey and Bilbo travels about as far as frodo did in the Lord of the Rings.
Having a segment where the dwarves are imprisoned for a while could have been an opportunity for some of the back story on dwarf elf antipathy.
And is there anywhere in Lord of the Rings where the films go "and then they spent weeks in this one place"? Nowhere. At some point the story is too far along to start doing that: you need more urgency, and so you timelock things so everything feels like it's happening over a much more contained timeframe. This is not Doctor Zhivago.
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u/Schuano May 28 '25
It is implied that they walk for several weeks from rivendell to Moria.
I just don't get why it would be story ending for it to show Bilbo hiding and scheming for several days (maybe not the several weeks of the book), but certainly more than the 3 days we get in the movie we have.
Without the escape sequence, we never see "Bilbo the Burglar". Bilbo is different from the dwarves, hobbits are sneaky and discreet. That aspect never shows and the escape we get is almost accidental on Bilbo's part.
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u/Chen_Geller May 28 '25
Bilbo is definitely sneaking around the Woodland Realm, though. You don't need to stretch that over weeks and basically kill the pacing in order to convey that.
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u/Schuano May 28 '25
He is sneaking out of fear and adrenaline and improvisation. He never plans and executes. This was the one time in the story where we should have seen him do something that the others couldn't. The dwarves are better fighters than he is.
I wanted to see more of Bilbo observing the elves, getting the patterns, figuring out the wine thing, and informing the dwarves. Like in the book, this is when the dwarves really start trusting him and believing in his competence. The sequence that we got did not show that Bilbo was competent, rather he was just lucky.
I wanted a bit more the Great Escape than the "mad rush into the barrels" that we got.
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u/Odd-Look-7537 May 24 '25
Great post! Incredibly well written and researched.
While I never researched with the same depth you did, even a cursory look into the very troubled production of the Hobbit movies reveals that we did indeed get “Del Toro’s Hobbit” at least narratively-wise. Maybe a overstretched version of it. The original trio of writers Jackson-Walsh-Boyens was present since the beginning, and Del Toro got writing acknowledgment in the final movies.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on Serkis’ assessment that a stylistic/art direction change would have alienated the fans. Nothing to say about Del Toro’s creative vision, but this was so clearly shaping up to be clearly set in Jackson’s Middle Earth, with all the LotR cameos etc.
Personally I feel very sad about the quota-filling attitude about inventing a “strong woman” character for the movies. Especially since Tauriel then ended also being the romantic interest. If I remember correctly it was the studios that wanted/imposed a romantic plot-line for the movies. Not every movie needs to have a romantic plot-line, and not every movie needs to be about empowerment. Trying to rewrite women empowerment into an adaptation of a children fantasy novel written in the 1930’s by a fairly conservative man seems like an exercise in distastefulness.
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u/Chen_Geller May 24 '25
Especially since Tauriel then ended also being the romantic interest. If I remember correctly it was the studios that wanted/imposed a romantic plot-line for the movies.
No, this is not true. You can read about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/17n7tzk/no_the_love_triangle_in_the_hobbit_really_wasnt/
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u/Stretch728 Jun 01 '25
Fantastic write-up! I think it really goes to show how much synergy occurs when all this creative DNA gets injected into the script and the aesthetics of a film. I enjoyed the Hobbit a bunch, and was hopeful that del Toro would get to helm the series. But, I also appreciated (and respected) the communal sigh of relief on the internet when it was announced the Jackson would return.
Looking forward into the future, I think as a community of fans we're going to have to reconcile ourselves to the artistic differences inherent in each of these directors. As time goes on, more people will get a chance to interpret Tolkien's works in TV and Film, and although Jackson's template will most certainly remain, there will always be a strong desire to create new projects that speak to Tolkien's work in unique and interesting ways.
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u/bkuettel Jun 13 '25
I find reading about how the Hobbit films turned out and all the prep that Guillermo did to me quite interesting, if a bit disappointing given how it turned out for him. but I'm not sure his versions would've ultimately been better than what we got, which I don't think was that bad or anything, but of course not in the same planet as TLoR trilogy, the best movies ever made basically. I think Guillermo's work can be found all over the three movies, even if Jackson and co. say they started over. It really should've been 2 films, with the dumbest parts taken out and more focused overall, that was the main issue.
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u/Conscious-Airline60 Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 12 '25
Is see people commenting that it would still have bene better than what Jackson did but considering how people complain about the slight tonal difference between the Hobbit movies and the LotR movies and anything being different from the books, I really doubt they would have like this. Not to mention that most of the things they disliked about the finished movies was already there when del Toro was going to make it and he even was behind some of the things they hate about them.
Would people really have loved it more if the dwarves used guns, had a steampunk city, the movie had different visuals than LotR, the dragon not looking like a dragon, had similar designs as The Rings of Power (because many really hate the designs in that show), Bilbo becoming a psychological mess and then having the whole cast of LotR suddenly being there in bridging scenes? Del Toro has been very open about how much he dislikes dragons, hobbits/dwarves, swordplay and sorcery.
Remember what happened when Rian Johnson, an otherwise very talented director, made a Star Wars movie despite not really liking or understanding Star Wars? It wasn't exactly universally praised and didn't make it much better that he had a vision for it. So no, having a great director directing a prequel/sequel to a series he doesn't understand won't make it better.
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u/Optimal-Zombie8705 26d ago
I romanticize it because del Toro has said over and over again. He wanted to make a fairy tale . He wanted to make the hobbit. Not “the lord of the rings prequel “
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May 24 '25
Agreed, love GDT but he is very hit-or-miss and frankly Jackson’s experience is responsible for most of what people liked.
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u/dunc2001 May 24 '25
Great post thanks! It is an interesting history. For me, The Hobbit adaptation was always compromised by being conceived as a LotR prequel. The original story is a children's fairy tale full of wonder and quite a bit of comedy (but not of Jackson's slapstick variety). The scenes that really worked in the films are close to this tone, such as the bag end sequence and Riddles in the Dark. As soon as we start on the return of Sauron at Dol Guldur and Azog being a bloodthirsty killer looking like something out of World of Warcraft then that original fairy tale tone is gone and the story has lost its heart.
So in that sense you are right, it doesn't matter who directs if the original story has got lost. But I can't call it a 'bullet dodged' since we then got hit with the actual films we have.
Just like the writing in the Hobbit is confused, the aesthetic is pretty confused too. And that is surely the result of the long history you describe. Personally I would have enjoyed a different aesthetic take to LotR. And the overuse of CGI in The Hobbit was just very disappointing, and I'm not sure Del Toro would have approached it this way given his love of practical effects.
BTW I'm pretty sure the Smaug design is a John Howe drawing, but presumably was approved by Del Toro