by davepoobond » Fri Jan 02, 2015 11:04 pm
the production definitely changed gears because it was supposed to be Guillermo del Toro doing it, but instead Jackson had to do it when that arrangement fell through.
i think when Jackson took over he felt like people were expecting grandiose battles, etc, and when they only had these movies as the last time they'd ever be able to make money off the Lord of the Rings, they stretched it out to 3 and this is what we got.
a Del Toro version of these may have been better movies, but probably would have had sucky action, as you can see with his Hellboy movies he doesn't really do action very well, but he does fantasy very well.
personally I sort of never really cared for the individual character story of Bilbo Baggins -- i was more interested in the larger scale geopolitical status of the world leading up to the Lord of the Rings, so i feel they are more "supplemental" in that regard than anything I'd care to watch on their own.
its like Extended Editions for the Lord of the Rings, sort of.
we'll probably see some sort of fan edit come around that condenses it to 1 movie, and it'll be interesting to see. I also wonder if there will be a studio "1 movie" cut they just sell on video as a way to diversify their offerings and charge more for the 3-movie boxset