The Original Plans for The Hobbit

I’m still convinced that PJ—if given enough time—would’ve knocked it out of the park. Del Toro may have also. Instead, we got the worst of both worlds: del Toro leaving late in the game & PJ with little prep time, not able to surround himself with the talent he had before (F Walsh & P Boyens), left to cobble together whatever ideas of another artist’s work he could while under tons more studio scrutiny and micro-management under a huge time constraint. It’s honestly a miracle there’s anything good to say about these movies

Ever since I know what Jackson had to deal with, I feel sorry for him and the whole project. I really wonder how the movies would have turned out with him as a director right from the start, enough preperation and only two movies.

Nah, let’s be honest. In the universe where Del Toro’s movies were produced, fans are moaning “imagine how much better they would have been if Peter Jackson had directed!”

I think the visual differences between the LotR trilogy and Del Toro's Hobbit could have been easily explained by framing the fist movie as Bilbo telling the story of his adventures to a young Frodo, who has never been outside the Shire, and wouldn't know, for example, what Orcs or a Dragon looked like. And so we would literally be seeing them through the lens of Frodo's imagination. Very similar to the idea behind Tarsem Singh's movie, The Fall. And then it would make a lot more sense for the second movie to be visually closer to LotR, as it wouldn't have the same framing device.

I both love and hate this channel. I love it because it is entertaining and gives us a look into "what could have been," which usually is a heartfelt, genuine improvement over what we got. But that is also the very reason I hate it.

The saddest part of Del Toro’s vision never seeing the light of day is his love of practical effects. I would have loved to see a more practical take on middle earth’s special effects, especially the uncanny valley effects that Del Toro gravitates towards.

Remember don't blame Jackson for The Hobbit it was a very troubled production that didn't have much prep work.

I still feel so bad for GDT. 2:58 PJ didn't do this, it was the studio demanding it. PJ did stellar work with the mess he had to organise. But even him can't turn shit into gold.

It's honestly really heart breaking what happened to the hobbit. I'm sure Sir Ian and Peter felt it during his scenes. There was no capturing the magic of the Lord of the Rings in this circumstance. Once again, big studio execs ruining movies. If those delays never happened, Guillermo's idea would've been incredible, maybe not LOTR level, but certainly much better than what we got, and a much better experience for everyone who worked on the films.

Del Toro is one of the best filmmakers out there, and his visual style has never failed to disappoint. Had he retained control of the film, I have no doubt that it'd be just as beloved as Jackson's LOTR trilogy 😊

I was too excited to see GdT's "The Hobbit". His movies have what he calls "eye protein", and are amazing to watch! His creature designs would've been wild. I'm sure his Smaug would've been ugly, asymmetrical, and scary as Hell!

A friend of mine worked on the Hobbit series before Del Toro left and shared this unique fact with me: Del Toro intended to film several scenes throughout both films using minor adjustments to the colour grading to imply that Bilbo was making up parts of the story entirely. These small adjustments would signal that Bilbo wasn't being entirely honest about what happened on his adventures without making this super noticeable. There is even a line from Del Toro's screenplay that plants this idea early in the first film, when Gandalf tells Bilbo "all good stories deserve a little embellishment." This was Del Toro's creative solution to remaining truthful to the kid-friendly nature of the book, without contradicting the tone of the LOTR trilogy. Jackson did not honor this detail written into the screenplay, and so therefore the barrel sequence for example is played tonally consistent with the rest of the film.

It was a sad story when it comes to The Hobbit films and what could have been. That said, given the recent success of Pinocchio, I would be open to GDT doing an animated version of The Hobbit to enable his vision but also expand his fantastic stop motion work.

Jackson’s was also 2 screenplays. The studio forced a third film after filming. The second screenplay was cut up in the editing room, and reshoots were done to stretch it.

The idea of Del Toro’s fantasy like world slowly and seamlessly becoming Jackson’s darker, slightly more realistic world sounds like it would’ve been amazing. Real shame it didn’t come to fruition

I want PJ bigatures version. With practical effects and models, and props. And the studio giving them enough time to do it so it didn't need to all be greenscreen. I wish it had been shot on Super35 and film instead of 48 frames per second 3D video. Should have been two films.

You are quickly becoming my favorite channel. Love all these what could have been videos!

Let's all agree Hobbit would've been 100x better with less CGI

The Hobbit trilogy that we got was obviously a misfire which we can't 100% blame Jackson for. That being said I'm not sure Del Toro would have been the right fit either. He makes interesting films to be sure but I feel a lot of his work is style over substance. The Hobbit movie we should have got was one where Jackson actually had time for pre production with a limited budget and no greedy studio interference.

We saw some of it. The design for Mirkwood and Thandruill's Elvin Cave were based on Del Toro's Minatures.