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Well, Tolkien regretted the worst excesses of the childish tone. but I don't think he ever regretted the fact that TH is a children's story, & his attempt at revision was not to make TH more 'adult' as such, merely to try & make it fit more closely with the developed mythology. That's what he couldn't do, because TH was written before the Mythology was developed (at least as far as the Third Age went).
What Tolkien would have done, had he finished his revision, would have been to turn TH from a wonderful children's fairy story, a tale that can stand on its own, into a mere prequel to LotR. TH would have been diminished into nothing but a 'set up', & put in the service of something else.
TH is in many ways the best introduction to Tolkien's mythological world - even though it doesn't 'fit' properly, & its certainly the best introduction for children. The idea of taking that introduction away from them in order to please the Leggy-boppers & the teenage boys who want to see Orc blood splattering the screen is a sad one to me. In the book the 'horror' & violence is distanced, only referred to, & the last battle is not described. In any movie it would all be there, graphically depicted. Bilbo stabbing the spiders in Mirkwood would be there on screen, Beorn rending apart Goblins would be there, Fili & Kili would fall (like Haldir) in slo-mo before Thorin recieived his mortal wounding, etc.
Now, any reader who saw that kind of movie would never be able to read TH in the same way again. You'd have to avoid the movie altogether if you wanted to retain the simple charm of 'In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.....in the morning of the world, when there was less noise & more green'.
Can you make the Hobbit movie that movie fans & producers want without trashing the innocent, light-hearted, 'high adventure' mood of the book? No. Adding in to TH the kind of violence & brutality that fans of the LotR movies expect & removing the silliness, the innocence, is effectively pornographising (yes, its a real word apparently!) the story. Its taking something which belongs by right to children & making it harsher & darker purely in order to sate the jaded palates of 'adults' who have fed to long & too deeply on the Hostels & Die Hards, & require darkness & brutality & ugliness in their movies. Remove the songs & the silly jokes that child readers love purely in order that the teenagers don't feel 'embarrassed' & start throwing their popcorn at the screen.
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