Will The Hobbit do damage to the books?

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

Interestingly in the comments it is mentioned that according to certain DVD special features this was a line the filmmakers deliberated over at length and included, allegedly, even though they considered it to be hackneyed and cliché, which adds insult to injury when it's misattributed to the Professor himself in my opinion. This may seem like an overreaction but I think this kind of thing is both appallingly unprofessional and genuine evidence of the adverse affect the films have had by corrupting knowledge about the books.

Hackneyed and clichéd are attributes that to me the LOTR films struggle mightily to avoid in general. Where they succeed, it is in spite of the filmmakers' best efforts otherwise.
I was always irked by that "even the smallest person can change the future", that sounded more apt for a Disney cartoon.

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

And Morthoron not only is entirely correct on the linguistic point, but there is also the cultural issue as to whether any Dwarf would be versed in herb-lore. Dwarves on the whole were unconcerned with growing things, as befitted troglodytes, and never farmed if they could possibly buy foodstuffs via trade in manufactured goods or products of mining, or even manual labor of the sort thwey preferred, masonry and roadbuilding etc.

Well, there were Mîm and his sons foraging for their "root bread", which it was claimed even the Green-Elves were unaware of. That sort of behavior does indeed seem to be lacking among Third Age Dwarves in the west of Middle-earth, though.