Adaptation by Vague Recollection

[Leaf]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

Oddly enough, "The Lord of the Rings" was almost certainly the more ambitious and risky project - Peter Jackson was not an established director at the time to nearly the extent he is now, and a complete film adaptation of the notoriously "unfilmable" text had never been really tried before - and yet the story in many respects and in terms of details arguably survived "intact" to a greater extent than in the case of "The Hobbit".

That's an interesting point. Yes, the initial risk was most certainly higher. New Line Cinema had no real evidence that a story like The Lord the the Rings was a financial viable film project. They couldn't know, for a fact, that these movies would be successful with a current general audience. However, they took this leap of faith, if you want to call it like that, based on the (reasonable) assumption that one of the most popular modern novels has created a lasting public demand for such films, which would thusly create a good profit.

The necessary threshold for the success of those movies would be, in this constellation, the story of the novels itself, since that's what The Lord of the Rings (as a brand, if you will) is, so far, publicly known and loved for. So it is only consecutive to tie these movies as closely as possible to the novel, while still keeping the films as attractive as possible for a person who hasn't read the books. They had to balance these things out.


The situation of "the Hobbit Trilogy" was entirely different. This time, the threshold for the success of the films was not the novel "The Hobbit", written by J.R.R. Tolkien, but the mind-blowing success of the previous Lord of the Rings films. They knew, for a fact, that there's a huge demand for movies like this (!). And, I think, that's what leaves the admirer of the original Hobbit novel necessarily unsatisfied. We, ironically, had the misfortune to not be in the main target group, so to speak.




* To be clear: This is, of course, my assumption and interpretation. I don't have any insider knowledge about the motivation of the producers to picturize The Lord of the Rings, or The Hobbit.
** I didn't consider previous adaptations (Bakshi etc.) in this train of thought to reduce complexity, to a certain extend.