CP3S said:

...the universe of the LOTR films by feeling in the blanks...

Eh?

darth_ender said:

Unlike George Lucas, who obviously had things planned out from the very beginning, when the Hobbit was written

Erm...?

Akwat Kbrana said:

Insofar as the written works are concerned, there is a massive tonal difference between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Jackson didn't dissolve that tonal difference entirely (which would've been disrespectful to the novel), but neither did he preserve it entirely (which would've created significant tonal "whiplash" between the two film trilogies). Instead, he "split the difference," which IMO is probably the best approach he could've taken.

I don't know. I didn't know until yesterday that Tolkien was actually rewriting the entire book of The Hobbit to match The Lord of the Rings when he wrote that new chapter for The Hobbit. So Tolkien agreed that the story needed to be aggressively rewritten to match, and that didn't seem to him to be disrespectful to the original book. But apparently he never finished the rewrite because he had a hard time reconcilling the two and recognizing the new bits as "The Hobbit".

So whilst he wanted to rewrite it, the challenge was enough to make him give up.

Part of the rumour I heard was that Jackson & Co. had access to the partial rewrite (as far as I know, it's not publicly available) when formulating the new movies. It makes me wonder what parts of the movie come from there, especially Bilbo's reasoning with the trolls. But if he were rewriting it, why would he leave the silliness in?

At the end of the day, most of you seem to be satisfied with where the needle between 'Faithful to the 1937 book' and 'Faithful to Everything Else (LotR Books and Movies, etc.)' landed. I am not. As Awkat said, he split the difference... and I wish the difference had been split a little more to the one side. As it is, I find it frustrating.

*Note- quoted typos and oddly formed sentences posted for amusement only.