[William Cloud Hicklin]

Urrrrgh.

It seems very clear- to me at least- that what was good about PJ's Rings trilogy were precisely those scenes where he stayed very close to what Tolkien described and, if possible, using actual Tolkien dialogue (in fact it's miraculoous how much the tone elevates with a passage of Genuine Tolkien Text(tm)).

Where OTOH the movies generally suck harder than a Phattaya Beach transvestite hooker is where PJ & Co simply inject their "low-grade fan-fic" (perfect phrase). It's as if some accident had wiped out half of the Sistine Chapel, and the Vatican hired Frank Frazetta to replace the missing parts.

So what is there to anticipate from little Mr Baggins inflated like the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man? It's pointed out that there is material in the Appendices which lets on some of what happens- but not really, not much more than a skeletal framework. There are no scenes, no dialogue, no narrative: none of the solid Tolikien foundations which propped up the non-crappy segments of PJ's Rings.

Instead we will get unending made-up invention regarding the White Council and the Necromancer, with Saruman looking evil and Legolas looking hawt for the fangirlz. Expect lots of gratuitous zapcasting, and comic-book-grade "character" material as puerile as the film-Denethor vs film-Faramir travesty. Certainly expect PJ, the most selof-indulgent and incapable of self-eiiting of directors, to give us lots and lots more of the sort of silliness added back into the RK EE (cascading skulls, hammy death-by-arrow.

More than anything, expect this low-grade fan-fic to be set in the world of the Battle For Middle-Earth video games, because if there's one thing proven irrefutably by the Rings trilogy, it's that Boyens may have read Letters and HOME but she never, ever understood them, nor Tolkien.

Hobbit trilogy = 1/3 Tolkien, 2/3 PJ filler (which almost by definition is always crap).