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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TrippyHippy" data-source="post: 7733053" data-attributes="member: 27252">I agree with that. The idea of naming a movie "The Desolation of Smaug" while leaving the actual desolation till the next movie made no sense to me. I'd have been quite happy for The Hobbit to have been split into two, leaner, two hour movies - which was the original plan - and cut out an awful lot of the extra stuff that they added to the story. For me, as an example, one of the charms of Gandalf in The Hobbit was the way in which he kept disappearing and then popping up again. In the movies, they tried to include all his activities taken from LotR appendices and, in my mind, just made the tone less upbeat. The Hobbit movies weren't a complete disaster, but they were at their best when they actually had a bit of a romp like in the book, and spent less time trying to get a load of unsolicited backstory into the mix. The confused tone permeated into a lot of extra things like fight sequences - which had a more cartoony feel (killing orcs with single shots, headbutts, etc) but we were also meant to feel sad when characters died. So, yep, lots of problems. It does provide some pointers to how to do a good D&D movie though.</blockquote>