I love the LOTR books and movies, but I have to say I agree with some of the people that posted here. Three movies is way too much. Two movies was pushing it, but three is ridiculous. I don't care wether it was for money reasons (which I think is likely, reguardless of what other people in this topic have said) or because the people making them really wanted to make 3 movies, it makes no sense to make a book that was probably half the size of the other books into 3 seperate movies. I blame Harry Potter. They got away with splitting #7 (which I actually thought worked) so now everyone is cashing in on what they did. That doesn't mean the Hobbit movies won't be good, I'm sure they'll be great, and i'm sure I'll see them if at all possible.
Still, I think its stupid to make three movies, and probably very hard unless they just make up half the stuff. I'm prepared to have the first 50 minutes of movie one just deal with bilbo's history from age 0-whatever age he was when he went on the adventure, or maybe they'll tell the untold story of Gandalf's childhood and how he became the Wizard he was during the LOTR's books (my guess is that Radagast teased him mercilessly
).
Why on Earth do you feel this way?
Do you often read books and film's of said book?
Because if you do you would realize that a ton of material is cut out of film adaptions. While some of that is due to the visual nature of film, the majority is done strictly to get a film between 2 and 2 and a half hours. Artistic reasons are almost never used to decide that one film isn't proper length for one book.
Even at nearly twice the length of an average film the extended editions of Lord of the Rings left out a ton of material (some again for artistic reasons, others due strictly because they only could get a one film per book commitment.
How do you feel about tv movies or miniseries. They are frequently based on books, usually far more faithfully and are split into multiple parts.
I have made several examples on this thread of long form adaptions of various books that are considered the best version of those releases. And they tend to be close to the same length as the Hobbit and what 3 ,2 hour 2 and a half hour films would take up.
Ever watch Band of Brothers on HBO? Its a great miniseries, great. Better then most films released each year. And guess what its based on one book. Its 14 pages longer then the Hobbit and was made into an 11 hour miniseries. Its one of the highest rated tv productions of all time.
There are numerous examples of long form release of books, there are also numerous high quality short stories (that are a quarter of the length of the Hobbit) that were made into full length award winning films.
Now just to be clear, I am not saying the Hobbit is going to be good (though I am hopeful of that), I am saying that books have plenty of material for multiple films, we just don't normally see them at the movies we normally see them on the television. But that doesn't mean that there isn't enough in the books. Because that is absolutely false.
