If you haven't read the book or seen the movie yet, and intend to do one or both, skip this post. There will be spoilers :)
Anyway, went to see the first installment in the The Hobbit trilogy on 16 December. When I got home, I had to check up on parts of the LOTR appendices, and the Tale Of Years, to try and get a handle on the changes in timeline. There are a lot of changes in the movie compared to the book. Some were plainly necessary, given the evolvement of certain characters between The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings (that would be Gandalf).
First off, I have to say that casting was spot-on. I loooooved Martin Freeman as Bilbo, and Richard Armitage as Thorin. The dwarves were pretty well cast as well. Purely for his looks, I adored whoever played Thranduil - I so want a copy of that crown, one of the most Elvish things I've ever seen. I don't really understand why the enmity between Thorin and the Elves had to be underscored, because the only reason I can think of has to do with the massive difficulty you'd have explaining the whole business of the Nauglamir in this context. I loved seeing more of Rivendell, and being back at Back End, this time knowing that if I do go back to New Zealand, I can go to Matamata and see the hobbit houses there for real.
Most of the changes I get, and most of them don't have massive impact on the main story as I see it. For example, Gandalf calling the eagles through a bug when caught in the trees, the same way he did when imprisoned on the roof of Orthanc, where in the book, the Lord of Eagles hears the noise of Wargs and Orcs and heads off with his posse to explore, thus discovering the party in distress and carrying them all off.
Two changes continue to annoy me. One is that we see Gollum losing the Ring. This contradicts the scene shown in ROTK where we see Bilbo finding the Ring while alone, which is as written - he puts his hand on it by chance in the dark. That point is entirely lost in this new movie. It annoys me just as much as Aragorn chopping off the head of Sauron's Mouth in ROTK, which is also in direct opposition to what is written, because it is specifically said by Aragorn that Sauron's Mouth cannot be harmed due to his status as emissary.
The second thing comes at the very end, where the party has come to the Carrock and are looking across Mirkwood and seeing a very near-seeming Erebor. That scene is for me too much of an echo of the last scene of FOTR, where Sam and Frodo look across Emyn Muil towards Mordor. It made sense then - it does not now, and I thought it was a very cheap shot.
But, I am looking forward to the next movie, and to more background stuff - White Council and Dol Guldur and all that - but not the journey through Mirkwood, for obvious reasons......
