This whole thing was bloated into a disaster.
The last thing it needs is more footage.
“This whole thing was bloated into a disaster.
The last thing it needs is more footage.”
Ditto. The first film was excruciatingly boring and badly made. I had no desire to see any more of the films.
“The Hobbit” was a normal sized children’s book. There was no need to bloat it into three films except to make money off of people who enjoyed the “Lord Of The Rings” films.
I used to have that opinion about most Extended Editions; but, in some areas the additons for The Hobbit help the movie. In The Desolation of Smaug, there was an entire sequence of Gandalf going to Dogal Dur (sp?), and there, finding Thrain alive (Thorin's father). It filled in the time when Gandalf abruptly left the Company, and what happened there. It also showed Thorin as being correct in his belief that his father was not dead.
Also, longer scene in The Prancing Pony between Gandalf and Thorin in which you learn that Thorin walked the battlefield looking for his father, and that he "looked into every face on that battlefield and his father was not there".
I thought that these scenes, and others, helped make the movie more understandable. Perhaps they just edited out the wrong things.
And its not Tolkein's fault. The Hobbit is a very slight tale that simply was never fit to be expanded into a three film extravaganza.