The most underrated thing about the Hobbit movies

Martin Freeman's performance.
Even though the movies themselves aren't perfect (granted, I haven't seen Desolation Of Smaug), I always found Freeman incredibly likeable and sympathetic in the role. Maybe it's just his face or the adventurous innocence of his character, but I feel like people don't really give him any credit. The regular Ian McKellen was good as always, but I feel like I wouldn't have found as much to resonate with without Freeman in the main role.

I think they should have focused more on him in the last movie, instead of poorly directed action scenes.

God-damn it, I mean Hobbit movies. @Yoda, can you fix this for me?

I just saw him on an episode of The Graham Norton show. He said that he and Andy Serkis had a nickname from the rest of the cast of Black Panther. "The Tolkien white guys".

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We are talking direcotor's cut?

Agreed, I found Bilbo to be pushed to the background in favour of the Dwarves quest - and it turns out 99% of the dwarves were also pushed to the background. Character development in this trilogy wasn't as strong as LOTR. I thought Smaug himself was superbly done, though.

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What an excellent day for an exorcism.

I've been in the bag for Freeman since The Office came out. I know most Americans will have no idea what I'm talking about of course but that's what bing is for. When he was sharing a desk with Garreth Keenan (that's literally how he pronounced his name... like it was italicized) I thought that was some of the funniest comedy I'd seen in years. So, naturally, I thought he was fine as Bilbo.

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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

Martin Freeman usually delivers decent, more understated performances, which I think is right for fantasy franchises like this, like Harry Potter (or even the Frodo that came with the earlier trilogy). Although The Hobbit series 3 wasn't great (I enjoyed 2. 1 & 3 were only decent), it had little to do with Freeman.

I thought the trilogy as a whole was underrated. I watched it the other day and overall it's well done. If it had been edited better, it would have been nearly as good as LOTR, in my opinion. I watched the extended version of Return of the King and it's clear why they removed those scenes for the theatrical release - the movie's better without them. The movie makers didn't have as much to work with, considering LOTR was a huge book (or a trilogy of books, depending on your point of view) and Hobbit was a measly 300 pages and change.

I'd cut the first 15 minutes of the first movie, starting instead with Gandalf appearing before Bilbo as he sits on his front step. I'd inter-cut the dwarves each appearing at Bilbo's door, and cut out most of the dwarf silliness.

From the second movie, I'd cut some of Beorn (I don't think the actor was right for the part and I thought the bear often didn't look like a bear). I'd shorten the river scene and cut the orc attack on Lake Town completely (it didn't move the plot along).

In the third movie, I'd pare down the battle (in the book, Bilbo is knocked unconscious through most of the battle, so we don't even see most of it).

With those edits, they could've perhaps had it down to 2 movies at roughly 3 hours each.

Someone mentioned a director's cut - where can I find it, and are there any other cuts out there?

While all that may be underrated, we agree that the best thing to come out of the Hobbit movies is the behind-the-scenes footage of Cumberbatch motion-capturing Smaug, right?

That's brilliant.

He was definitely very well cast here, generally he plays the fish out of water well. Personally I did also find Richard Armitage's Thorin very effective as well even if it was obviously very heavily embellished relative to the book.

I don't think the films problems come from a weak central character story, they come from an uncertain tone and narrative that's less focused than LOTR and often revisits elements of it, the Hobbit being arguably a dry run for Tolkien's latter work.

Personally I tend to think that a lot of the issues were almost inevitable with the films being made as a followup to LOTR, hence why they were delayed for so long. I think either they'd have needed to make it totally independent of Jacksons LOTR or they'd have needed to rewrite it far more radically than they did to deal with these issues.