So did the Spirits! XD

Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins! He's only ***3 Feet taaaaaall!***

I understood that reference! 😆

Bravest little hobbit of them all!

With a hint of a$$hole.

Bálint Fábri That too

+Andrew Levin Smug egotism I think is more accurate I think.

Ah, the smell of self importance and a superiority complex

Lavender and rosebuds actually.

Even better is that it also serves as the Fat Grandma wig

Naturally, the ring will be revealed to use the brown light of selfishness and will have an ajoiming oath that unlocks its full power.

Actually, Talking Toons did something like this with the main cast of the 2003 Justice League cartoon.

@@callianr6980 Pretty sure selfishness falls under the Orange light of avarice

@@jfdrac plus isn’t there only one orange ring and they both have slimier traits.

Hopefully not with Hal Jordan, he doesn't even know what will is

Yeah, they did. The 1930s were a really jaded time. Consider that one of L. Frank Baum's goals in writing The Wizard of Oz was actually to write a sanitized fantasy story for his daughter... and it still has the Tin Woodsman beheading forty ravenous wolves, with ONE CHOP.

Not to mention the heart shattering ending of the original Little Mermaid.

Man, you think Little Mermaid was sad, try another Hans Christian Anderson story, the Little Match Girl. That one also perfectly illustrates exactly what life could be like in those times and thus helps explain the jadedness.

Oh men I fucking HATE "the Little Match Girl", so pointless sad and cruel.

Let's not even get started on Cinderella. Oh screw it! Cinderella's stepsisters were so desperate to fit in the glass slipper they actually cut off parks of their foot. And then they got their eyes pecked out by birds.... yeah.

Worlds, plural.

Compared to the critic he's a horrifying hybrid of the grinch and Krampus

Santa isn't scared of Linkara.

Even so, gandalf is with them which makes 14 doesn’t it? adding him ain’t gonna change the fact there are 13 dwarves

@@ilopominecrafter I dont believe that Gandalf was a full member using the I cant be bothered with you all the time

TPrower but then we wouldn't have Ori to write the Apocalypse journal

Funny enough I think graham Chapman King Arthur was better than any of the lotr kings.

I've actually heard some people who will admit to liking the story in Lord of the Rings, but not the books themselves.

The thing I appreciate the films for above all else, is excising Tom Bombadil for being entirely irrelevant. And better yet, the Hobbit films actually took the time to establish Bard in a sensible, chronological order, rather than skipping back several days to fill in his backstory in an exposition dump so he can show up and kill the dragon out of nowhere... Yeah, the films are better in a lot of cases.

@@Jokie155 For a kid the Hobbit book is great but looking back as an adult the flaws pointed out are noticeable.....i think my biggest problem of the mpvie where they turned it into a roller coaster atttraction at times

The Hobbit is my favorite book, but it's flawed and the film fixes a lot of the flaws

the comic/movie both look the same because they both follow the description in the book of it being a "green round door with a knob exactly in the middle" and so on

Not only that, but--like I said elsewhere--the reason there were 13 dwarves was because Tolkien was a bit of a realist and having any less on this journey would've broken his suspension of disbelief--and that of the readers at the time, possibly. It's sad that Linkara complains about this but is perfectly fine with endless comic superhero teams that have a million members, many of whom do nothing but stand around in the background or join large crowds. But its like I said earlier, just imagine the encounter with the trolls if there were only one or two dwarves instead of thirteen. They'd all be dead.

BTIsaac I was listening. The problem is that Linkara is not thinking his own complaint all the way through. If Tolkien had developed all thirteen dwarves, what we would've ended up with is a padded-ass, boring as hell book that would've fit in nicely next to modern crap like Wheel of Time and Sword of Truth which go on forever about stuff nobody cares about. But Tolkien chose to focus on Bilbo and keep things well paced. Linkara is taking the stance that more character development = automatically better, but that's something little kids who have woefully little experience with writing outside of comic books and video games think. I remember people used to love Final Fantasy VI for having 22 developed characters, but just remember: who here honestly enjoyed the parts where they were forced to spend time with Gau or Relm? Exactly. They wouldv'e been better if they had been just background dressing. Not to mention, there is such a thing as "companions in arms" and just liking people through familiarity. Even the G1 Transformers cartoon relied on that. But since Linkara only knows comic books and thinks everything has to be like comics, he didn't consider that.

BTIsaac "You can not justify one bad choice with another" entails that Tolkien made a bad choice at all, and that's my problem: The inherent assumption that he somehow did something wrong. Linkara is holding Tolkien up to standards that didn't exist in his day and, more importantly, weren't even originated in the field he was working in. So this is the equivalent of complaining that Pac-Man doesn't have DLC, unlockable bonuses, or online multiplayer. And quite frankly I don't see how Tolkien could "fix" this mistake without making the book worse. Someone like Linkara would not consider a character developed unless they had an entire spinoff comic about them, had five degrees of angst and saved the world five times--which is what counts as "character development" today. Back in Tolkien's day it was enough that you simply empathized with your travelling companions. It didn't need to be forced on you, because people were expected to have natural human empathy, not be told to feel. I also have to point out the natural hypocrisy of the complaint--if the 13 dwarves thing is a flaw, then every single JSA, Avengers, or other superhero team comic Linkara has ever reviewed has the same flaw.

@@EdmondDantes224 That really is an invalid comparison....When you talk the JLA or Avengers they may have a larger team that does not always use everyone but we know who they are and why they are their and we know that if this storyline may not use Hawkeye or Martian Manhunter much later on he probably will...Here this is self contained and there never was an intention to ever have more tales of any of this. I do agree though with your point that we dont necessarily need to know about all of them as they were mostly inended as nameless grunts ala the military guys in a squad

@@EdmondDantes224 while it is true we have bigger standards for various pieces of media since Tolkien published these books and there’s a chance we wouldn’t have them without these books. That said even in the context of the book I only remembered like 5-6 and I couldn’t tell you the rest of their names to save my life. Now putting the fact that there’s bigger teams with more established mythos aside. In the context of the hobbit book there’s probably a bit too many character that don’t really leave any sorta impression so they might as well have not even been in the book.

I recommend DM of The Rings. It's hilarious

Fun fact, LotR inspired D&D, and the Halflings were actually called Hobbits until the Tolkein estate raised a stink.

Lord British would beg to differ.

+popc52 I know I'd go from rags to riches/if you'd only say you cared...

And though my pocket may be empty I'd be a millionaire

What child would understand them?!

Tolkien's orcs were, for lack of a better term, a first draft of orcs. He basically invented them and they were supposed to be evil, end of story. Other people took that idea and did other things with it, often resulting in better products.

+nepomusik Silmarillion adn it has some awsome scenes like Beren and 'Luthien which is liek the precursor to Aragorn and Arwen and she defeats a wewrewolf and makes Sauron his botch in order to help her man and brings him back form the underworld

+KTChamberlain yeah, there's also a red wizard who wallows in feces and elves who jump off falling bridges video game style! More does not equal better. Also are we seriously gonna say that a man raised on brainless splatter flicks somehow told a better story than an Oxford Professor who was a scholar of literature and mythology? Next people will be saying my six-year-old-niece's crayon stick figures are better art than the works of Da Vinci.

You sound like those Oxford snobs that considered the book of The Lord of the Rings an embarrassment in 1954 and 1955. Even to this day there are those in Oxford University that consider it an embarrassment because a professor of Anglo Saxon excelled in something they thought wouldn't and were jealous because of it. Sound familiar? Point being, professionals don't know everything, sometimes inspired amateurs do. As much as I love Tolkien's writings even I have to admit they're not without their drawbacks and in my opinion The Hobbit has the most.

***** Even if we accept that The Hobbit is flawed (which it is even by The Man's own admission) Jackson's movies weren't an honest attempt to fix it, they were just padding it out so they could make extra money off of it because they knew this was the last time they'd get to ride in Middle-earth, since Tolkien's own son is offended at these movies and refuses to license out The Silmarillion (which honestly, Silmarillion would not work as a movie anyway). Incidentally, there's a fine point of difference between my snobbery (which I'll admit is totally what it is) and that of Oxford professors in 1955--they weren't at all considering the author, just the subject matter. They were just saying "poppycock, a grown man writing about Elves!" whereas I'm looking specifically as the man's chops. And the fact is, Tolkien has serious credentials, and had them at the time. I spelled those credentials out in another comment here. Jackson has never once demonstrated he has any true storytelling chops. Indeed many film critics and Tolkien scholars far better educated and equipped than myself (such as Janet Brendan Croft in her excellent essay "Mithril Coats and Tin Ears" and David Bratman in his "Summa Jacksonica") have pointed out that Jackson shows every sign that he's a terrible storyteller. Moreover while Tolkien studied storytelling, Jackson has openly declared his ignorance of same. Not to mention some of Jackson's own comments on the DVD commentaries show him saying some utterly bafflingly stupid things. This, of course, is before we even acknowledge the fact that Jackson would be practically unknown if he weren't riding Tolkien's coattails. Seriously, name ONE non-Tolkien movie of Jackson's that people are still talking about today. Even he knows this, thus why The Hobbit became a trilogy.

You do realize Peter Jackson didn't solely write the screenplays to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films, right? Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh wrote the majority of the screenplays for Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and they've read Tolkien since they were in their teens. You don't need a professorship to be a good storyteller, and even then it's all very subjective. As filmmaker Kevin Smith once said: "Instead of living a life of 'why?', live a 'why not?' life. Take the shot. The shot is always fucking worth taking." Care to know about another novel that translated into three films in part because of other writings from the author? The Godfather by Mario Puzo! And don't give me any of that "But Puzo co-wrote those screenplays so it don't count" I don't care.Oh and to answer another one of your question regarding Jackson: Heavenly Creatures (1994) King Kong (2005), and The Lovely Bones (2007).

+KTChamberlain Screenplay writers have pretty much no power in movie production--even if they write a script on their own, when it comes time for production its all about what the director wants to film. Look into the history behind Ridley Scott's notorious Robin Hood film for an example. Its all subjective? Ah, so the stories my six-year-old niece makes up stream-of-consciousness are objectively no better (and no worse) than something an Oxford Professor spent his life on. If the meaning wasn't clear enough, let me put it like this: People are very hypocritical on the whole "subjective" thing, because they take it to mean there is no standard of measurement. And yet there is, and they implicitly admit it if, for example, they've ever compared a writer's writing to "something a child would come up with" or used terminology like "this is basically a fanfic." I'm a long-time video gamer, and yet I do not wince when people claim a story is "like a video game" because I understand that video game stories are usually bad when divorced from the context which excuses or necessitates them. And frankly, the idea that being an Oxford Professor who spent his life in both work and study somehow bears no weight whatsoever just smells a BIT too much of anti-intellectualism to me, no different than the people who claim that qualified doctors don't know medicine any better than a teen who reads a bunch of WebMD articles. Yes, we're all human and we all make mistakes, but the whole reason we HAVE education and training is to help us AVOID those mistakes. Speaking of which, your citing of Puzo shows you don't even understand where I'm coming from. Puzo was not (as far as I know) any sort of well-educated author who put mounds of knowledge and effort into his work. Ergo he is completely irrelevant. My defense of Tolkien was NEVER from a position of "he wrote books ergo he's automatically better" which is what you seem to think--though I'm not sure how I can focus on aspects like professorship, folklore background and the sheer amount of effort he puts into his writings (as compared to many franchise authors who simply publish first drafts) and somehow still be pigeonholed as a guy who will defend every book anywhere. When I read people's posts, I look at what they're actually SAYING, and I expect the same in return. Finally, funny but I haven't seen all that much activity or discussion relating to those other Jackson movies. King Kong was a flash in the pan then quickly forgotten. Meanwhile Lord of the Rings is still being milked for all its worth.

I actually agree!

I still don’t get it

I just love the original book, love the movies, and love this review @@TailsFan369no2

The plot of this was likely based on Beiwulf as it was a king, his warriors and a thief raiding a dragon's hoard and the thief stealing a small item triggering the dragon's rage. If it was a few dwarves it wouldn't have cemented the beowulf connection

I'm glad you're a lot more mature than other people about these adaptations (I usually respect you, Lindsay)

Dragons, color-coded for your convenience!

+otakon17 wow that sounds kind of dickish, they have time to empty his pantry but not to let him pack his bags?

+alucardyoici he overslept and on Gandalf's word they thought him a professional burglar. If anyone is to blame, it's Gandalf really.

The look of the films is based on the art of Alan Lee and John Howe, who use art design to distinguish places and characters and give them unique personalities, often relying on historical examples to give a sense of realism. You see this with the Norse-style Rohirrim, the very English hobbits, the Hanseatic League motif in Laketown, and so on.

...That would be freaking awesome!!

At least it isnt SpOCK

He did apparently want to be Elrond in The Lord of the Rings.

bryan adkins and purple

I thought the same thing in return of the king when gollum mentioned the cave stinking of orcs.

Eh, honestly having the Hobbit split into a trilogy is just a cheap way of having thrice the box office.

Nah, it was Jackson wanting to put more and more and more into the story.

+Tareltonlives also, it allowed for Sherlock to kill Mycroft

Aka padding.

Actually they started in 2021 with the Marvel Transformers retrospective. =)

@@AT4W whoops, meant to say 2020s. Also, 2021 feels like 5 years ago

Thing is, Red shirts are there for dying to raise the stakes. And only 3 of those dwarves die, and one of them is the only one with a distinct personality, and the other two are those with the closest connection with him, and they all die in the same event. The animated Hobbit actually did kill off half the dwarves offscreen during the final battle. If you need redshirts, you need to pick them off one by one. Eg Dwalin gets eaten by troll, goblins kill Bifur, Dori gets burned alive by Smaug, etc. And you're right-the characters in Tolkien are flat and broad. Thing is, the LOTR films did the same thing with the Hobbit: they expanded the characters. Suddenly Gandalf can make mistakes, Aragon can be scared, Faramir can have a raging inferiority complex, Frodo is always out of his depth. Elrond suffers guilt and insecurity, Arwen actually has a character, etc. So it's only natural that Bard, Beorn, Thranduil and the dwarves actually get depth and distinct characters.

try skipping a few seconds beyond that.