@aholejones

Lovely name by the way... Yes, these movies are overrated... The appeal seems to be for fantasist who love seeing orcs and gnomes and such... They really do work for them, but if you're not a huge fan of Hobbits and elves, then these movies are very weak as the drama falls flat and the "action" has no consequence...

i wouldn't go so far as utter garbage, but they are very messy and bloated.

Not really garbage, LOTR is waay better for me. As said many times by readers of the book, should have been a single film and not a trilogy.

I haven't seen it but someone posted before (not sure if here or on IMDB) like someone edited the 3 films into 1 and said it was the better version. Will post if I find it.

From here: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/122917-the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies/discuss/58ad3e56925141078a00395f

http://www.maple-films.com/downloads.html

Yep. I really, strongly disliked the direction that PJ took them. I have the utmost respect for him as a filmmaker and the LOTR movies are some of my all-time favorites. But the fact that they stretched and already thin novel out to the breaking point in three films, the massive overuse of CG, the ridiculous "romance" added between--was it Gimli?--and an elf, and numerous other problems I have no interest in ever watching any of the movies again.

I dearly wish he'd just filmed one, or a maximum of two, chapters and had done so with a minimum of CG--as he did with the LOTR films. The project was a mess from the start, though, with Guillermo Del Toro jumping ship forcing PJ to rush into production. They should have taken more time.

Now, PJ COULD redeem himself by doing a limited TV series--ala GOT--with the Silmarillion..

The Hobbit trilogy is a series of films dictated by greed, the short story that it is could of easily of been one movie and all the better for it.

Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh may have gotten away with adding new content to the far superior Lord of the Rings movies but here the added content and new characters just seems so off and disrespectful to Tolkien with the amount of changes they made.

@AlienFanatic said:

Now, PJ COULD redeem himself by doing a limited TV series--ala GOT--with the Silmarillion..

It will be many years before it happens but I'd rather a new set of directors tackle tales from the Silmarillion, after the Hobbit I'm sick of PJ and his wife ruining Middle-earth, I want him well clear of it but he'd probally be too old by then anyway.

I wouldn't call them utter garbage, but completely forgettable.

They could've told the story of the Hobbit in two films. It was bloated. Unlike the Lord of the Rings films, which were trying to tell a very big story with a lot of characters in three films.

Could never bring myself to watch them. At least one is in the IMDb Top 250, though.

It was just too heavy on CGI. I remember being in the theater about 3 years ago watching the final Hobbit film and EVERYONE laughed when that guy hopped on the falling steps. The room was dead silent up to this point in the film. Really puts it into perspective.

Thanks God, I'm not alone with this

You know, of all the problems in this film, I just can't get over that Gandalf uses his wizardly powers maybe once or twice in the whole film series. What was his function in the trip or even in the film? They might as well have brought a plumber or a botanist for the trip and they would've been equally useful, or, more accurately, useless.