There are a number of fanedits of the Hobbit Trilogy that just edit the stuff from the book together and cut out most of the added in stuff. The Cardinal Cut, for example.
>The story wasn't superb and I imagine the books do that way better
To be fair there was a lot of Tolkien-mandated stuff that was going on at the same time as the Hobbit, but it's mostly explained in like a few sentences and outlines. The stuff at Dol Goldur is basically "canon" for example, just hugely elaborated upon.
Well, there's that... but they added a romance if I'm not mistaken, added Legolas (which could be neat if it was only as a cameo, but afaik, they gave him a rather significant part)... and then there's a lot of really pointless action scenes, like the barrel escape.
Even decades before, Walt Disney himself opted to buy the rights to the book to make an animated feature, which never happened, so we ended up with Bakshi's animated films and a couple Rankin-Bass specials. Yea, a Disney-LoTR is a bad idea.
They're actually better than that, since they were animated by Topcraft, the studio that later went on to become Studio Ghibli, although it's pretty surreal to hear the voice actors from Scooby Doo voicing characters from LOTR. I'd say the Rankin Bass Hobbit is a pretty decent adaptation of the book, since it's brisk and sticks very closely to the original work. It's more aimed at kids, though, than adult nerd fans.
Rankin-Bass' cartoons are great. They are worth watching for the soundtrack and the weird but creative visual decisions alone.
Sure it doesn't capture the dark existential dread of the book, but that song is so damn catchy!
>men bullying inferior manlet races
One thing that most interpretations of Orcs in later fantasy settings including Tolkien adaptations seldom get correct is that Orcs are supposed to be smaller than men. I guess the exception is goblins in general, but goblins being small predates Tolkien.
When your CGI looks dated when people are watching it in the theater then you have a problem. The extended versions of The Hobbit films feature arguably even worse CGI. The third film in particular has some gruelingly and agonizingly long CGI filled sequences that look truly awful.
What, you didn't appreciate this totally awesome scene from the Hobbit?
