generalfrevious said:

RicOlie_2 said:

I think the movies do a reasonably good job of it. At least a large amount of the material he's using to supplement the Hobbit movies is from other works of Tolkein, if not The Hobbit itself.

Scouring of the shire.

I don't think mixing the Hobbit source material with other middle earth stories is exactly the best route to go in hindsight (LOTR and its appendices work better though). And isn't Evangeline Lilly's character in the Desolation of Smaug a completely made up person that never existed in Tolkien's books?

True. Among my favourite chapters in The Lord of the Rings was the one about the scouring of the Shire, and I hated the addition of the girl elf falling in love with a dwarf and Legolas's interest in her. However, there wasn't a whole lot else I didn't like. The movie dragged a tad at times, but I didn't mind much. The book isn't much different, and I'm a book guy, not a movie guy, so I have no problem with long, slowly-paced movies.