Is Peter Jackson losing touch with Tolkien

Rating: 7/10 (3 January 2014)

The Hobbit is (dare I say it) precious to me. My father read it to me as a five year old each night before bed. I did the same with my oldest son when he turned five.
Overall, I've been happy with the Peter Jackson adaptations. There's plenty of 'true' Tolkien included and I've been able to tolerate the changes. DoS is no different but geez Jackson is pushing the limits.
The most frustrating thing about the hobbit movies is how inept the bad guys are at killing people. What's the point of establishing big, blood thirsty, killing machines when a soft serve with a sling shot is taking them down?
This takes away all feeling of menace within the movie and makes the periods of exposition almost unbelievable. How can we invest in the thought that a goblin army invaded and overthrew Moria when thirteen dwarfs survive an attack by thousands of goblins without a scratch? One of them was brandishing a soup ladle as a weapon! The kitchen staff should have been enough to defend Moria.
At one point in DoS the dwarfs had been bitten by giant spiders, imprisoned by elves and were armour-less, weapon-less and stuck in barrels floating down a river.
Then Legolas and Tauriel go tip-toeing and pirouetting across the boulders slaughtering orc after orc. Why was the last alliance of elves and men such a ferocious battle?
I didn't mind the introduction of Tauriel. Imagine if she had been introduced as the surviving member of an Elvish hunting party that got decimated by orcs. It would establish her credentials and have the orcs gain some much needed credibility.
Among others LotR had Gandalf, Aragorn, Boromir, Theoden, Theodered, Denethor die or suspected dead. Faramir and Eowyn were grievously injured, all added weight to the story that these battles had consequences. The Hobbit movies are the poorer for lacking this edge.
I know I'll get howled down for this but I wouldn't have minded if Jackson had knocked off a couple of dwarfs along the way. Preferably Ori and Dori (how desperate was Thorin to have brought along those two cupcakes?) It would have rocked everyone back in their seats, given the bad guys some impetus and had us all wondering what was coming next. Would we have missed two dwarfs?
Back to Tauriel. I didn't mind that there was an introduced character, I didn't mind that she was a she and I could even live with the bizarre love triangle.
Are elves so superficial that Kili's eyebrow waggle, smutty double entendre and relative height were enough to get her immortal heart racing?
It was just clumsy that she was into Kili based only on his look and long before he revealed his poetic, romantic side and she'd sucked the poison out of his...(see Jackson you're not the only one).
Has Elrond been waiting 800 years for Celeborn to get out of the way so he can have a crack at Galadriel?
Why was Legolas such an angry young Elf? There's parts of LotR where he is quite grim but in DoS he's like a troubled teen. It would have been nice to have visited Legolas at home but his introduction as a major character was completely unnecessary.
The handling of his hots for Tauriel was, like a lot of things, raced through.
Thranduil: Legolas likes you. Tauriel (breathless): Does he? But you would never allow a guy like him and a gal like me...? Thranduil: No. I wouldn't.
Done. Move on.
Thranduil was great. He really tapped into that Elvish other worldly quality but in a distant, angry sort of a way.
I've heard people unhappy with the brevity of Beorn's appearance in DoS. Beorn is a classic character but I can understand his limited involvement...all they did in the book was eat honey cakes and drink milk. I'm looking forward to seeing Beorn kicking ass in the Battle of Five Armies.
Likewise the journey through Mirkwood. Jackson established the confusion and drowsiness of the forest without having the dwarfs chasing fairy lights all night. The spider battle was brief and intense but like a lot of things in these adaptations we've seen it before in LotR.
We see in Bard yet another "can he escape the shadow of his ancestors" storyline however I think the third hobbit movie will be better for his characters development given the major role he is to play.
The Dol Guldur back story is well handled and provides a link to make this series a true prequel to the LotR movies. The shot of Gandalf charging across the bridge with staff in one hand and Glamdring in the other is truly iconic.
Smaug. Smaug's introduction was brilliant. The treasure horde was of a scale that couldn't be imagined and the slow reveal of the dragon was amazing. Smaug's voice and movements were perfect. The riddling with Bilbo was intense and very evocative of the book. But...we have yet another epic villain who couldn't hit the side of a barn!
The Erebor sequences of Smaug playing hide and seek with the Dwarfs were obviously intended to provide an action packed climax to part two but all they achieved was stripping yet another key villain of his power and menace.
The gold statue of Thror is one of the most ridiculous movie scenes of all time. After going to all the trouble of setting it up, Smaug simply shakes like a dog after a bath and everything is fine.
As always the landscapes and sets of Middle Earth are breath taking. The performances are very good.
The problem for mine is that Jackson seems less sure of where and how he needs to vary from the original text than previously.