K-SCORE: 24
Director: Peter Jackson
Based on: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Screenplay: Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Guillermo Del Toro
Starring: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, Andy Serkis
Spoiler Level: Minor
not that I'm inviting the comparison...
These are easy. The essential question: how could I, a lover of The Lord of the Rings, both in novel and film form, come to dislike The Hobbit movies? They’re written and directed by the same minds, starring the same actors, in the same style - essentially all of the non-plot elements are identical. So it’s the plot's fault. Let’s look at it semi-mathematically. (Semi is how I tend to do almost all of my math.)
The Lord of the Rings (film series) length:
The Fellowship of the Ring - 178 minutes (208 extended version)
The Two Towers - 179 minutes (223 extended version)
Return of the King - 200 minutes (251 extended version)
TOTAL - 557 minutes / 9 hours, 17 minutes (682 minutes / 11 hours, 22 minutes extended version)
**It’s important to note here that I don’t think that the 9:17 runtime is too long for the story and love those films. You’ll have to wait for a review of those for further analysis. 11:22 is pushing it, but let’s ignore that for now and go with the 557/9:17 figure.
The Lord of the Rings (book series) length:
The Fellowship of the Ring - 177,227 words
The Two Towers - 143,436 words
Return of the King - 134,462 words
TOTAL - 455,126 words
So how many words does Tolkien have to write in order to have a minute of quality cinema produced by Peter Jackson. 455,126 words / 577 minutes = (approx) 817 words per minute.
The Hobbit (film series) length:
An Unexpected Journey - 169 minutes (182 extended version)
The Desolation of Smaug - 161 minutes (186 extended version)
The Battle of the Five Armies - 144 minutes (164 extended version)
TOTAL - 474 minutes / 7 hours, 54 minutes (532 minutes / 8 hours, 52 minutes extended version)
The Hobbit (book) length - 95,022 words
Same calculation: 95,022 words / 474 minutes = (approx) 200 words per minute.
Well, there you have it. Peter Jackson’s series is four-times bloated in content. There’s ¼ (200 / 817 = 0.2447 or 24.47%) the amount of story of Tolkien’s source material for every minute of cinema you’re sitting there watching. If you’re wondering why you’re bored watching this second sojourn into Middle Earth, that’s the reason.
There are two other problems as well. One is that prequels are inherently less satisfying because you know what comes after. It’s a collective lowering of the stakes of conflicts. Admittedly this is a different conflict, but you know certain things going in like that Gandalf and Bilbo are both going to be fine, Smaug isn’t going to destroy everything, and the ring is going to leave Gollum’s hands and wind up in Bilbo’s possession. Second is that The Hobbit is just a worse story than The Lord of the Rings. It’s horribly imbalanced, it feels almost cartoony at times, and characters don’t develop over the course of the journey but rather pop in and out of relevance. So even if Jackson hadn’t fattened up his films like foie gras geese in order to squeeze every potential penny from those who loved the first series, you’d still be getting a lesser product. In fact I’d say the product is about 24.47% as good as the original.
Here’s a little inside K-SCORE work. LOTR K-SCORE: 97 x 0.2447 = 23.7359.
JUSTICE!