Peter Jackson Explains Why the ‘Hobbit’ Movies Are Such a Huge Mess

[Zigûr]

Yes, for me a lot of the "spirit" is found in Professor Tolkien's particular use of language, which for me at least is rather "music to my ears", and the dignity and high seriousness of much of the work. These are elements I don't think the films capture at all well. For instance I find a little lightness of heart from the Hobbits in the book highly preferable to the film's tendency to have Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli crack jokes or for characters like Denethor to be presented as grotesque and vulgar (which makes him annoying rather than tragic).

Ultimately however the adaptation is just an adaptation, and to me the book is the "real" thing, so it almost doesn't matter to me anymore because no adaptation is going to be able to give me what the book gives me - because it's not the book.

Over the years this train of thought has led me not towards wanting more faithful adaptations of source materials I already like, but rather towards a view that there is a certain kind of adaptation, typically the 'straightforward page to screen' one, which is quite pointless beyond making me aware of the source material, which I inevitably prefer.