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This Scene Encapsulates Everything Wrong With The Hobbit
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Mar 31, 2025
When Peter Jackson's The Hobbit Trilogy was finally announced, we knew going in it would be hard to recreate the magic of the original Lord of the Rings Trilogy. And after seeing the first Hobbit film released, audiences knew it wouldn't. There is a lot to dive into as to why The Hobbit Trilogy failed to connect with audiences, but this scene in the first Hobbit movie encapsulates everything that's wrong with the Trilogy and why it was never going to come close to the original Lord of the Rings
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I'm going on an adventure
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This is the Hobbit movie trilogy. A trilogy of action-packed fantasy films
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directed by Peter Jackson might sound pretty good, but the Hobbit trilogy actually has a lot of problems
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And there's no better way to talk about those problems than to see them in action during the barrel scene
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in 2013's Desolation of Smaug. Based on the beloved children's fantasy story
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of the same name, the Hobbit movie trilogy dominated a large chunk of nerd culture
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between 2012 and 2014, made a dragon's hoard worth of money, and enraged quite a few Tolkien fans
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Leading up to Unexpected Journey's release in 2012, we already knew that production had been
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cursed with studio interference, the loss of a director, and intense pressure to deliver a
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finished product within an impossibly short amount of time. What was originally pitched as
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a two-movie deal directed by Guillermo del Toro eventually snowballed into a trilogy of films
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more akin to The Lord of the Rings in terms of scope. Oh, and Peter Jackson was back to direct
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Jackson did pull off the greatest book to film adaptations of all time
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with his Lord of the Rings trilogy, so why couldn't he do the same with The Hobbit? Well, for starters, The Hobbit is a single book
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made for children, one with 95,000 words. The Lord of the Rings novels are a more mature trilogy
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weighing in at a little over 480,000 words. To put it bluntly, the decision to make The Hobbit
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into three movies, each with a theatrical runtime of over two hours, was completely asinine
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According to Peter Jackson, the decision to chop up and overstuff The Hobbit into a trilogy
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was a creative one made in order to give Bilbo's unexpected journey the same amount of respect
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and time as Frodo and the story of The Lord of the Rings. Though if you're a tinfoil hat theory
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crafter, you may be more keen to think that the studios pressure Del Toro and later Jackson to
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bring out as much money as they possibly could from this multi-million dollar endeavor
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It's ours! But the fact that the Hobbit movies are a trilogy
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instead of a duology is only the beginning of their problems. And to address them all, we've got to talk about the barrel scene
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Bilbo Baggins and his band of dwarves are captured by elves after getting lost in Mirkwood Forest on their way to the Lonely Mountain where Thorin Oakenshield aims to reclaim his home and kill the dragon that guards it After Thorin and Thranduil get into a Where Was Gondor type of argument
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the dwarves are imprisoned, but Bilbo's quick wit and magic ring help him invade capture
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He formulates a plan to smuggle the dwarves out in old wine barrels, and the adventuring party floats downstream towards Lake Town
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That much is in both the book and the movie, But Desolation's version of the barrel scene takes things a little further
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Once Bilbo and the dwarves start heading down the river, it becomes clear that we're in for a lot of action
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First, we're introduced to some Disneyland-level rapids and waterfalls as the elves fight to recapture their prisoners
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The elves close a gate, blocking the only path Bilbo and the dwarves had to freedom
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and draw their sword for a fight. But they are interrupted by a group of orcs who growl directly into camera
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This is where the real fight begins. It becomes a mad dash to open the gate and escape further downriver
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while tens of orcs flock to the scene with the movie-only character of Bolg leading the charge
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The elves, dwarves, and Bilbo must fight together against this new threat
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that kills multiple faceless extras. Keeley is shot with an arrow but ultimately saved by yet another movie-only character
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Tariel, the lowly Sylvan elf. Legolas arrives on the scene as well doing what Legolas does best
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while the rest of the party remains unscathed. Shockingly so at times
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We get to see more whitewater rafting with some weirdly out-of-place GoPro shots
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as well as more elven action. And then this. Arguably the most cartoonish and baffling sequence
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in the entire trilogy. And yes, that includes Legolas' fancy footwork a mere 15 seconds later
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Eventually, Legolas does away with the remainder of the orcs and watches Bilbo and the dwarves float away
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So in the interest of fairness, let's address the elephant in the room
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There is a lot to critique about the Hobbit trilogy, and that doesn't mean that they're all bad
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There is some great stuff in these movies. Pretty much everything about Gollum, for example
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and the riddles in the dark sequence, Benedict Cumberbatch's smug, and Bilbo's first interaction with him
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and of course Martin Freeman portrayal of Bilbo Baggins Absolute perfection You don have one at home It was taken from you But I will help you take it back if I can But the bad is really bad
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One of the worst and most obvious problems with the whole Hobbit trilogy is its inconsistent tone
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What might have been a duology tone in a more traditional fairy tale style under Del Toro was transformed
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It had to chase the success and grand tone of the Lord of the Rings movies
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while trying and mostly failing to inject some sort of childlike whimsy of the Hobbit book
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Just in Desolation's barrel scene, we get moments where Legolas and Toriel are fighting off leagues of orcs single-handedly
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Alongside Bouncing Baby Bomber, it's total chaos. Had the movie stuck to the original feel of the book they were based on
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this might have been a fun scene. Taken out of context, it is
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It's well-choreographed and imaginative, but then you remember that this is part of a self-serious trilogy
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intended to mirror the epic tone of The Lord of the Rings. The whole trilogy had moments of tonal dissonance like this
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but the barrel scene is particularly guilty. That's not to say these movies shouldn't have jokes or lighter moments in them
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Jackson's Lord of the Rings managed to find the balance. What's this
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Potatoes. Foil them, mash them, stick them in a stew. But it's a matter of what, and especially when
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Which brings us to our next pervasive issue, weird pacing. The barrel scene spans nearly 10 minutes of Desolation's 2-hour and 41-minute runtime
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and the fast-paced action is kept up for the entire duration. But while the scene itself may be paced well, it's emblematic of the trilogy's pacing problem
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because it's an entirely needless addition to the movie. Remember when they killed off Smaug in the prologue of the third film and then spent
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entirely too much time giving us slow-mo Thorin Oakenshield going mad from dragon sickness
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or the long plot pause we got to watch Kili flirt with Tariel in Desolation
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The barrel scene is just another example. Did we need 10 minutes devoted to a completely unnecessary action scene
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that did nothing to advance the plot? No. Actually, throughout the entire series
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so much attention is paid to big action set pieces that character development and story gets totally sidelined
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And when we do get character development, it usually from a character that shouldn have been there in the movies in the first place Except for Bard Making Bard an actual character was a good move even if he spends a lot of time with Alfred who is one of many unnecessary characters that
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make an appearance in these movies. Rome, it's the master's business, which makes it my business
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Desolation's barrel scene is absolutely chock full of characters that should have not
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been in the Hobbit movies, or at least not in their current forms
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Toriel, Bolg, and yes, even Legolas take up so much screen time and bring
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little to nothing to the actual story. Apparently there was some form of the script which had a lot
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more to do with the dwarves and their individual personalities. But that idea was shelved somewhere
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along the way, which is a pity as in their stead we got an awkward love triangle, a cowardly assistant
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and orc daddy issues. A more cohesive story and fleshed out characters definitely would have
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helped the trilogy, but it wouldn't fix its reliance on misguided special effects or its
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strange aesthetic. The trilogy was mostly filmed on a camera designed to shoot in 48 frames per
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second rather than the industry standard 24. It makes the world of The Hobbit look unnaturally
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smooth and blurry. That, along with some extremely fake-looking moments and the unreal overall style
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of the movies, makes those low-quality GoPro shots in the rapids that much more jarring
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Peter Jackson announced that two movies would be split into three on July 30th of 2012, just
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months before the first film was set to release in December of 2012. Since the next two movies
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were slated for 2013 and 2014, this meant some dramatic reshoots, rewrites, and reworks. Jackson
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was literally writing the script of each movie while on set. Sets, costumes, and props were being
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finished on the day they were needed. Compare that to the years of pre-production that went into The
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Lord of the Rings, and it's easy to see why The Hobbit movies ended up the way that they did
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While the creative minds behind the project were largely the same as those who worked on The Lord
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of the Rings, there just wasn't enough time or consideration put into The Hobbit to make it truly
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great. The world is not in your books and maps. It's out there. Now, none of this is to say that
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they should have followed the book by the letter. The Lord of the Rings trilogy made changes to its
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source material, and they're better for it. But The Hobbit movies swung so far in the wrong direction
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that they are almost unrecognizable
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