The Idea of an Essay, Volume 2

50 the movie’s quality (pars. 2-5). While all these voices praise The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug , I disagree and insist that the movie was disappointing. As I sat through the showing of T he Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug , I could almost hear the s nip, snip, snip of Peter Jackson’s scissors as he cut apart Tolkien’s masterful work. The first reason Jackson’s production disappointed viewers was its poor rendering of the book it supposedly portrayed. He made his first mistake by changing the plot. Sometimes producers may find it necessary to adapt a plot when they illustrate a book as movie, but Jackson made changes in terrible places. He removed several of the most exciting and character-developing scenes in the story. For example in Tolkien’s novel, the main character, Bilbo, is alone when his companions are caught by spiders, and he must combat the spiders and rescue his friends. This is a key moment in Bilbo’s character development because throughout the book he learns to become independent and courageous, but Jackson condensed Bilbo’s role in defeating the spiders through cunning tactics and replaced it with unimportant characters driving away the spiders and saving the dwarves. Jackson cut meaning from The Hobbit . Another major plot change Jackson introduced to his version of The Hobbit included the group of dwarves with whom Bilbo is traveling entering their old mountain home which is inhabited by a dragon named Smaug. Apparently Jackson did not think logically when he shredded The Hobbit because the point of Bilbo going on the journey with the dwarves was to be the burglar to sneak into the dragon’s lair and steal back the coveted treasure of the dwarves. In the Tolkien’s novel Bilbo is the only one who can slip past the dragon because he discovers a ring that makes him invisible, and even then he barely escapes Smaug’s lair alive. Jackson clipped out logic from The Hobbit . These were just a few of the changes made to the original tale which made the plot illogical and shallow. Peter Jackson not only drastically changed the plot, he also added bland characters. Owen Gleiberman in the article “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” published in Entertainment Weekly explains that Jackson risked the quality of the movie by adding his own character, Tauriel, but also declares that by infusing romance into the story the risk yielded reward (par. 3). I agree that Jackson’s move was a risk, but I do not think that his decision