Why The Hobbit Trilogy Wasn’t As Successful as Lord of the Rings
When Peter Jackson brought J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy to the big screen, it was a monumental success. The movies earned a combined total of 17 Academy Award nominations and won 17 Oscar statuettes. They also grossed over $2.9 billion at the international box office.
However, when Jackson shifted his attention to The Hobbit, a prequel to Lord of the Rings, the results were far from the same. Critics and fans alike were left underwhelmed by the trilogy, and it struggled to recapture the magic of its predecessors.
One major reason for this disparity is the change in tone. The Hobbit, which was meant to be a lighthearted, more humorous adaptation, had a harder time finding its footing than the more serious Lord of the Rings trilogy. The darker, more mature themes that permeated the latter trilogy helped to create a sense of gravitas and urgency, whereas The Hobbit’s attempts at humor and whimsy came across as forced and heavy-handed.
Another factor at play was the departure of producer Carolynne Cunningham, who had been the right-hand woman to executive producer Robert Zemeckis and had played a key role in shaping the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Cunningham left the project after The Hobbit’s first installment, and her departure left a power vacuum that Jackson struggled to fill.
Furthermore, the production itself was plagued by a number of issues. The original director, Guillermo del Toro, dropped out of the project due to creative differences, and Jackson had to step in to take over. The film’s budget ballooned, and the ballooning costs led to a sense of uncertainty and disarray on set.
The trilogy also suffered from a lack of new material from Tolkien’s original work. The Hobbit, which is 300 pages long, was stretched out over three movies, leaving the filmmakers to fill in the gaps with material from other Tolkien works, such as The Silmarillion. This resulted in a sense of disjointedness and a lack of focus, as the story jumped from one plot thread to another.
In the end, The Hobbit trilogy, consisting of An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Desolation of Smaug (2013), and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), earned mixed reviews and failed to recapture the magic of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. While it still performed reasonably well at the box office, it was a far cry from the critical and commercial success of its predecessors.
