The Drinker Fixes... The Hobbit Trilogy

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]So, a few weeks ago, I ran a bit of a poll here on my channel, asking people to vote on my next drinker fixes subject. There were a few strong contenders for sure, but it soon became obvious who the winner was going to be.

[00:00:12]And well, never let it be said that the drinker isn't a man of his words. I come before you today with the task of fixing the Hobbit trilogy.

[00:00:22]>> You sure about that?

[00:00:24]You sure about that?

[00:00:26]>> Oh god, I'm going to have to put in some overtime on this one. Now, in order to fix this thing, we first have to understand what the main problems are, which is handy because I actually made an entire video on this very subject way back in 2021, and I'm not going to replay the whole thing here, obviously, but I do want to recap the main issues I had with these movies.

[00:00:49]The plot for The Hobbit could best be summed up like this. Bilbo Baggins gets recruited by Gandalf to accompany a group of dwarves to the lonely mountain where they plan to kill a dragon that drove them out of their homelands. They make it to the mountain, but then the dragon leaves to blow up some [ __ ] and gets himself killed. So now everyone wants a piece of the treasure inside the mountain, but the dwarves don't want to share it. But then a bunch of orcs show up and there's a big battle and the good guys eventually win. Oh yeah, and Bilbo finds a magic ring that can turn you invisible. I'm sure that one will never come up again. Now, if this little summary seems a bit short for a movie trilogy that's almost 8 hours long, then you're beginning to see the problem here. The Lord of the Rings novel came in at nearly 1,200 pages, which is what I like to call a target-rich environments. In fact, the biggest challenge they had with the movie trilogy was deciding what to cut out of it. But The Hobbit barely scrapes in at 300 pages. It was basically a children's book with none of the dark themes, complex relationships, and extensive world building of the sequel. So, how the [ __ ] do you spin something like that into three entire movies? Well, if you're a lazy screenwriter of dubious ability, you pump your script full of more filler than a Twitch streamer's bra. Such as extended flashbacks and chase sequences for a pointless side character that was barely mentioned in the book and has no impact to the larger story. introducing entirely new characters and cliched romantic subplots that make no logical sense in the context of the universe. Singing a generic antagonist with a manufactured grudge against the story's hero fumbling attempts to tie this story into the Lord of the Rings. Shameless fan service.

[00:02:31]More singing. Those [ __ ] eagles again which dump our heroes hundreds of miles from their destination for no obvious reason. obnoxiously long CGI action sequences that go on forever and destroy any sense of tension. The point I'm making is that at least 50% of this trilogy is nothing but pointless filler.

[00:02:50]And like anything that doesn't add to the story, it all just feels empty and unsatisfying, like you're watching someone play a video game instead of a well structured movie. Damn, man. I sounded even more [ __ ] back then than I do now.

[00:03:04]Now, as anyone with a decent knowledge of the books will tell you, the biggest and most obvious problem with The Hobbit trilogy is that it was never supposed to be a trilogy in the first place. There's nowhere near enough source material to fill three entire movies. So, the writers had to pad the runtime with everything and anything they could think of. Meaningless romance subplots, extended and totally overblown chase sequences, cameos from characters who were never supposed to be there, and lifeless CGI battles that go on forever.

[00:03:33]Needless to say, this is not conducive to a positive viewing experience. Now, some of these problems were a result of the trilogy's notoriously rocky production process. Galler Del Toro was originally meant to direct the whole trilogy, but eventually dropped out because of production delays and various other frustrations, meaning Peter Jackson had to step in at the 11th hour to try to salvage it. The result was an unhappy production where Jackson was short on time and had to make a lot of compromises to get things done. All that being said, there is a [ __ ] ton of things I'd change on a purely production level if I could. For a start, I'd banish this [ __ ] abomination to the deepest pits of the minds of Moria and bring back actual prosthetics and makeup effects for the orcs. Characters like Lerts from Lord of the Rings look infinitely better on screen than this bland, soulless piece of [ __ ] I'd remove or at least massively tone down some of the most egregious action sequences like the escape from the goblin mines or the barrel chase down the river or the fight against smog which are so laughably overdone and cartoonish that they destroy any sense of stakes and consequences. Give us action, sure, but at least make it feel somewhat believable. If you can't manage that, then there's nothing at stake and so there's no point in even watching it.

[00:04:48]I'd also give the emotional tone a bit of an overhaul because I'm not going to lie, it's all over the place. I've read The Hobbit several times in my life and clearly it's more of a light-hearted kids adventure story than the dark, complex, and philosophical work Tolken would eventually write. But one of the trilogy's biggest problems is that it tries to be both of those things. It tries to have goofy characters and comedy prat falls, usually at the expense of the dwarfs. But it also wants tragic romance and dark psychological trauma. And well, those things go together about as well as cheeseburgers and chocolate sauce.

[00:05:23]Ideally, I would want to even out the tone so it's more serious and grounded.

[00:05:28]Not that I'm saying every single moment has to be a House of the Dragon episode because Lord of the Rings absolutely had moments of levity, but it really pisses me off when the dwarves are first introduced and right off the bat they're depicted as [ __ ] jokes. You're supposed to empathize with them and cheer them on, not laugh at them for how [ __ ] they are. On the subject of the dwarves, though, the other big problem that's more difficult to solve is the sheer [ __ ] number of them. There's 13 in total, plus Bilbo and Gandalf, which is a lot of characters to juggle at the best of times. And unlike the Fellowship of the Ring that only had nine members instead of 15 here, most of them don't really have unique origins, personalities, skills, or motivations.

[00:06:09]They're just kind of there filling up the scene with no particular reason for existing. The movies partly tried to solve this problem by giving one of them a romantic subplot with an elf, but all that really did was add a lot of screen time for a pretty marginal payoff. The best way I can think to get around it is to have them split into subgroups or factions with tension between them. Like some of them are closer friends or they've got more of a history together or they have different perspectives on the quest. And all of those things start to cause tension within the group. It's not perfect, and it would still mean a lot of them don't get a huge amount of development. But [ __ ] man. Even Tolken himself struggled with this problem.

[00:06:46]This is all just surface level stuff, though. To really fix the trilogy's biggest issue, we need to get more drastic with our changes. We need to turn the Hobbit trilogy into a duogy.

[00:06:57]>> Oh man. Oh god. Oh man. Yeah, I know that means losing a lot of content, but considering most of that content is [ __ ] pointless in the first place, I think that's probably for the best. With that in mind, Tyriel and her romance subplot is gone. Legolass and his fanervice appearance is gone. Radagast and all his pointless goofing around is gone. This [ __ ] here gone. All of that being said though, not everything these movies added into the lore was a mistake. Some of it was actually pretty useful, expanded on stuff from the books that was only vaguely hinted at because the ideas hadn't fully formed in Tolken's mind yet. Now that we know the full story, there's a chance to work in more connective tissue between these two narratives, like the return of Sauron and the ominous danger of the ring that Frodo recovers from Gollum. This stuff's actually pretty good. It helps to tie the story more closely to Lord of the Rings and makes the transition between films feel a bit less jarring. So, with all that in mind, let's see how we can condense this story into two movies and cut out some of the [ __ ] shall we?

[00:07:58]The first film will see Bilbo recruited by Gandalf to join Thorin and the other dwarves on their quest to reclaim the lonely mountain. Just like before, they can travel through the wilderness, have their encounter with the trolls, and make it as far as Rivendell, where Elron delivers troubling news to Gandalf. The orcs in the Misty Mountains are multiplying again. Wars are flaring up in the south, and there are troubling rumors of a shadowy presence growing.

[00:08:21]across Murkwoods. Gandalf fears that Sauron might be growing in power again, but he doesn't yet understand how or why. So, he leaves the group to consult with Saraman and the White Council.

[00:08:31]Bilbo and the others are left to carry on the quest without him and eventually get captured by the orcs in the Misty Mountains, where Bilbo recovers the ring from Gollum and uses it to rescue the others. Eventually, they make it to Murkwood, where they get captured by the elves, who are now wary of outsiders because of increasing orc attacks against their borders. But before they can decide what to do with the group, the elves get attacked by a large force of orcs that track them there from the Misty Mountains. In the chaos, they're able to escape and reach Lake Town in the shadow of the Lonely Mountain. And this right here is where the first movie ends, setting up the next adventure and getting us ready for a bigger confrontation. The second movie follows the group as they make their way inside the mountain where they encounter Smog for the first time, who realizes they came from Lake Town to rob him and leaves to destroy the place in revenge, only to get killed by Bard, just like in the books. With Smog dead, the dwarves take possession of the mountain and send word for reinforcements while they fortify the place. Meanwhile, Gandalf and the White Council debate what's to be done about Sauron's return. Sarroman tries to downplay it, but Gandalf's convinced he's returned because he's looking for something. They investigate his old stronghold in Merkwood and discover a massive army of orcs has been assembling there and is now marching towards the Lonely Mountain. Realizing the danger, Gandalf hurries there to warn Bilbo and the others. At the Lonely Mountain, the dwarves find themselves confronted by two separate armies. The humans led by Bard and the elves, who all demand a share of the dragon's treasure. Thoren becomes increasingly paranoid and defensive, obsessing over the treasure horde and refusing to negotiate with anyone. What nobody realizes at the time is that Bilbo's ring is already starting to eat away at his mind, using his pride and doubts against him. A third army of dwarves arrives to reinforce Thoren, and it seems like a full-scale battle is about to break out when Gandalf suddenly shows up, warning them that an army of orcs is on the way to kill them all and take the mountain for themselves. With no choice but to fight, all three factions band together to see them off and eventually win a major victory. But Thoren himself dies in the process. In the aftermath of the Battle of the Five Armies, Bilbo returns to the Shire, but Gandalf is still troubled by who sent the Orc army and what they're looking for at the Lonely Mountain. He believes that the true battle is still to come and advises Bilbo to keep his ring hidden and avoid using it while he leaves to find some answers. I mean, yeah, he's going to be gone for the next 50 years, but what can I say, man? It takes time to do these things. Again, none of this stuff that I've done here is revolutionary because it doesn't really need to be. My point was to bring the narrative closer to the source material, to cut out as much pointless filler and unnecessary side characters as possible while working in a few more narrative connections to Lord of the Rings, and deliver an emotional tone that doesn't feel like a goofy kids show set in Middle Earth. Is it a perfect solution? [ __ ] no. But does it improve on the movies? Well, I'll let you decide.

[00:11:26]Anyway, that's all I've got for today.

[00:11:30]Go away now.