Will The Hobbit end up "rotten"?

[Eraserhead]

It's currently at 74% (average rating: 6.7) with only 19 reviews in. Early reviews for these sorts of movies are usually more positive than the ones that drop later on. What do you think?

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_hobbit_an_unexpected_journey/

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Only among top critics.

[Leftbehind]

I hope not; been wanting to see this film for years.

[DemPGH]

I'll say no - I'd be surprised if it did. The Hobbit milieu and subject matter are right now popular, escapist fun, and I'm sure it will be predictable. And it looks like the same people from Lord of the Rings, so I don't know why it would tank there or elsewhere.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The project has been rotten from the start and has only become more so. The first rule of a good adaptation is to show respect for the spirit of the source material. It might actually be the only rule. This project, however...

[Psychic Octopus]

I doubt it, but like the Star Wars Prequels, it will never match the Original Trilogy.

[Barnes]

I never really expected it to be great, but I'm sure it will warrant viewing at least once.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

How the hell are they going to make this into a trilogy? Not only is it just one book, it's shorter than any of the Lord of the Rings books.

[Barnes]

How the hell are they going to make this into a trilogy? Not only is it just one book, it's shorter than any of the Lord of the Rings books.

Precisely.  I suppose they want to milk as much more cash as possible from LOTR in general, even if they have to bastardize "The Hobbet" to get there. Not all that surprising once you think about it...

[John Dibble]

Probably not. My guess is that it'll hover around 75%.

The project has been rotten from the start and has only become more so. The first rule of a good adaptation is to show respect for the spirit of the source material. It might actually be the only rule. This project, however...

Meh. It still looks like the Hobbit. Have you seen the World War Z trailer?

[Mr. Morden]

How the hell are they going to make this into a trilogy? Not only is it just one book, it's shorter than any of the Lord of the Rings books.

True, but The Hobbit tends to move from one event to the next at lightning speed.  In the book, many of the dwarves get no character development and barely speak, many events happen with very little dialog or elaboration on detail.  Events that would be big action set pieces in a film happen in about two pages in the book.  The movies will also add a bunch of stuff with Gandalf's side adventure.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

True, but The Hobbit tends to move from one event to the next at lightning speed.  In the book, many of the dwarves get no character development and barely speak, many events happen with very little dialog or elaboration on detail.  Events that would be big action set pieces in a film happen in about two pages in the book.

And in adding such padding you ruin the spirit of the thing utterly, turning it into yet another piece of derivative Fantasyland trash.

[Zanas]

They are really going to make The Hobbit in three movies ? I thought it was just this one...

[5280]

I expect it to be good, and I've been waiting for a few years on this.

[Eraserhead]

Still hanging in the mid-70s for now. The reviews are dripping in really, really slowly though. We'll see how it does when the flood hits.

[7,052,770]

How the hell are they going to make this into a trilogy? Not only is it just one book, it's shorter than any of the Lord of the Rings books.

Apparently they're adding in a lot of things that were only referenced in the LOTR Appendices that were going on at the same time, like Galadriel's battle at Dol Guldur, and Saruman's turn evil.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

What I would like to see is a film of The Children of Húrin.

[King]

I gave up on expecting this film to be good when I heard Peter Jackson stretched this one book to three movies by writing his own material based on events only referenced in the book.

(1) Don't make 1 book = 3 movies, especially when 3 better books were each only given 1 movie

(2) Don't add your crap fan fiction to a classic book to pad out the source material to said three movies

This is pretty much going to end up like Twilight.

[Smid]

I gave up on expecting this film to be good when I heard Peter Jackson stretched this one book to three movies by writing his own material based on events only referenced in the book.

(1) Don't make 1 book = 3 movies, especially when 3 better books were each only given 1 movie

(2) Don't add your crap fan fiction to a classic book to pad out the source material to said three movies

This is pretty much going to end up like Twilight.

You have very neatly summarised all my fears about this.

[Lief 🗽]

Jackson isn't adding his "fan fiction"; he's incorporating other stories Tolkien wrote that take place around the same time canonically as The Hobbit.

There was already a fair amount of "fan fiction" in the Lord of the Rings trilogy anyway, like that elf army that showed up at Helm's Deep for some reason or when Faramir brought Frodo, Sam and the ring back with him to Gondor. It hardly ruined the films.

[Cobbler]

It's at 70% now. How disappointing.

[King]

Jackson isn't adding his "fan fiction"; he's incorporating other stories Tolkien wrote that take place around the same time canonically as The Hobbit.

There was already a fair amount of "fan fiction" in the Lord of the Rings trilogy anyway, like that elf army that showed up at Helm's Deep for some reason or when Faramir brought Frodo, Sam and the ring back with him to Gondor. It hardly ruined the films.

All film adaptations differ from their source in some way, but adding enough to make the movie a trilogy seems like overkill.   Even if Tolkien wrote most of the short stories that make up the padding, won't all these added stories make the movie seem disjointed?

Add in that this movie is only going to tell the first third of the book and is three hours in length, that means the 300 and some page Hobbit will be told in nine hours screen time.  I could probably read it faster than watch this film series without even rushing.

[John Dibble]

It's at 70% now. How disappointing.

It's back up to 75% now. The average can sway pretty easily when there's only a small number of reviews in.

[Хahar 🤔]

Some of the stories that were published in Unfinished Tales may have been contemporaneous with The Hobbit, but they were so different tonally that reconciling them would be an impossible feat.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Xahar gets it.