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Originally Posted by Inziladun
I think the box office takings will be respectable. I really can't see it being a "flop", not the first installment anyway, but I do think a lot of people who liked the LOTR films are in for disappointment. I think the comparison to Lucas is apt, at least from what I've seen from the trailers. As you said, the "jokes" and gratuitous CGI are the more glaring similarities to The Phantom Menace, but the prequel trilogy parallel is there as well.
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The problem is I've never gotten the "overusing CGI is bad" argument. If the technology is available, why not use it? Technology should not take precedence over story or be used at the expense of the story and characters, but can be a useful tool. The anti-CGI movement seems to be a very big thing amongst people in their 30s or so ever since Lucas and I've never understood why. As to the tone...Even without Jackson's jokes, I think the tone was ALWAYS going to be different. Therein lies the quagmire. If you keep The Hobbit's tone to the letter, you're going to disappoint a ton of people who go in thinking "The Hobbit = The Lord of the Rings." If you alter the tone of The Hobbit to be as dark and grounded as The Lord of the Rings, you've lost a great deal of the magic and wonder of that book. It's sort of lose-lose.
I don't mean Jackson taking things in a more lighthearted direction; the book is overall more lighthearted. But if we're going to focus more on humor, the humor should be intelligent, clever humor. Not toilet jokes or jokes about Bombur being fat. You can make a little jabby joke here or there, a subtle one, about Bombur's weight, but making the joke part of his character just degrades his character. The problem Jackson faced is how to balance the tone of The Hobbit against the tone of the Lord of the Rings successfully, and not come off with a film that is like Phantom Menace (which tries to simultaneously court the 8-11 year old demographic while also targeting the then 30something year olds who grew up with the original films). I fear Jackson has gone down the same route, trying to target two audiences at once. You can't please everyone and any attempt to do so will result in failure.
And the three films are stretching it. I understand his desire to show as much of the story and backstory as possible; I do not feel his motive is cash grab. But the problem is two fold: If you have two stories (The main Hobbit story, and the White Council story) in the films, it could take away from the main Hobbit story, which is really a coming of age tale, in a way. On the other hand, most casual filmmgoers have no clue about the White Council or Dol Gulder or any of the stuff that was indeed happening during The Hobbit, so they simply think Jackson made all this up and added a third film to cash grab.
For myself, I think the "Third Film" should've just been the Extended Editions of the two films. While three, a trilogy, makes for a nicer number, it might've fared better with two films and allowed for a perhaps more centered story to unfold.
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Hmm. Will people who actually read books assume that the movie is such an accurate adaptation that they'll avoid the printed matter? I hope not. I think there are readers who watch movies, and then there are dedicated movie watchers who occasionally read books. The former understand the problems with film adaptations, and I think the story is strong enough on its own that PJ can't kill the book for them.
As for the latter, they aren't as likely to actively seek out the book anyway.
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What I bolded of yours is my fear.
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Well, the books were "consigned to a little niche" anyway, before PJ and the LOTR marketing came along. Before those films, I knew only a handful of people who had ever read the books, and none whose level of interest in them approached mine. Yet, the books have thrived over the long years. I trust that will continue, especially with the internet and its excellent (ahem  ) fora that allow anyone to virtually meet and discuss these wonderful stories.
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I suppose but weren't the books HUGE during the 60s, 70s and 80s--Practically a definitive part of popular culture in those eras, before PJ? I mean all those bands like Rush and Zeppelin helping popularize the books and the FRODO LIVES signs in the subways of New York etc etc. Plus you had in the '80s and '90s the influence of Tolkien on the development of Dungeons & Dragons and tons of like minded games and would-be-Tolkien fantasy novels....
I'd say the '60s, '70s, '80s and to a lesser extent '90s were a golden age of the fantasy genre and of Tolkien especially and beyond the works of Tolkien being forgotten, a larger part of me fears that the fantasy genre in general is dying off.