I’m gonna be honest with you. I loved Peter Jackson’s job on The Fellowship of the Ring when it came out. I was amazed they were able to translate things so accurately, that they managed to fit so much of the story in, that the actors seemed to really get the characters, so on and so forth. This is also partially because, at the time at least, there was very little of Peter Jackson’s “Hey, I got an idea!” crap to deal with. I could forgive taking away Frodo’s shining moment so that Liv Tyler could have something to do.

Then the movies kept coming out, I started getting older, and I kept watching the movies repeatedly as the years passed. In fact, it used to be a Thanksgiving and Christmas tradition once upon a time to watch the Extended Editions when the holidays were upon us. So I’ve watched the movies numerously, especially Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, and in the end, while Peter Jackson did a good job, he wasn’t the best choice.

I’d like to indulge further in the future, possibly in a sort of podcast between me and my brother, but for now I’ll leave it as what Peter Jackson actually does best. He’s a schlock horror director. He’s got a cheesy sense of slapstick for B-Grade movies that can’t be taken seriously. While he’s not terrible at directing other stuff, he has an inability to keep the tone right in certain scenes.

Good: having an Uruk-Hai pull a dagger from his thigh, throwing it at Aragorn who proceeds to deflect it with his sword.

Bad: having an Uruk-Hai pull a dagger from his thigh and then licking the blood off. It’s not intimidating, it’s gross and broke the pace of the action sequence.

Good: having Legolas pull an arrow from his quiver, stab a close-range Uruk-Hai with it, then use the same arrow and down another Uruk-Hai in the distance.

Bad: Legolas shield-surfing down the stairs. Did you really just pull that out of your 8th grade Lord of the Rings fan-fic?

Peter Jackson has problems with keeping a consistent tone. It’s great when it’s the Hobbits having their innocent and fun romp out of the Shire together, and the jokes are all about. When the tense moment in Moria is disrupted by a complete skeleton falling down a well, as if one simple mistake knocked all the shelves in the China shop down like dominoes, then you have problems. I must once again point to Ralph Bakshi’s rendition as a proper execution of that scene.

So now the first trailer for The Hobbit has hit the Internet, and people are going crazy. They love it, and are already excited for next December. Assuming the world doesn’t end, that is.

Only I watched it, and couldn’t help but sigh. I already have problems with dividing it into two films, and trying to include all of Tolkien’s Index notes in the back of the books. Part of what made Gandalf so mysterious in the original book was his sudden disappearance, only to return in time to save everyone. It also made his character very a sort of crutch that Bilbo and even the other dwarves had sought to rely on, but when true danger had come, they had no Gandalf to rely on. Now, however, the mystery is gone. We’ll be with Gandalf every step of his journey as well, primarily to pad some length onto a story that doesn’t need its length padded.

I do mean padding the length, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of those things Gandalf was doing off-stage during The Hobbit was actually determined by Tolkien later, when he decided to write The Lord of the Rings. He had changed the chapter Riddles in the Dark, after all, as he decided later that a simple magic trinket would actually be a MacGuffin in the next story.

The Hobbit is, first and foremost, a simple adventure fun for the whole family. It has more in common with fairy tales than it does with legends and epics. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, you get a sense of an older man telling a number of children a story by light of the fire place. It is full of simple humor such as dwarves falling in through a door, one on top of the next, and a wallet suddenly coming to life and yelling at Bilbo about being stolen.

Even the nature of the Battle of Five-Armies is a bit silly. The entire purpose is to sort of wrap up a moral message that children can understand. Thorin was greedy and wouldn’t help those who had helped him, and in the end he and some of his friends had died. Wheel of Morality tells us the lesson that we should learn, which is don’t be greedy.

Consider this, especially if you have read the books, and watch that trailer again. Peter Jackson has some of those thematic elements in there, primarily in the introduction of all the dwarves. However, there’s so much “Danger! Suspense! Action!” going on, playing it as a completely straight-faced epic, complete with Thorin becoming Peter Jackson’s new choice for dark-and-brooding-heart-throb-for-women.

This is not J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. It is very much Peter Jackson’s, and as such, the thematic elements are going to be completely ruined.

I will see the movie. There is no doubt about that. I will probably enjoy it, too. I will not love it, however. I probably never will, and I will only lament further that Peter Jackson has had such a hand in this franchise. Hopefully, before I die, a better director can re-translate this film.

Given Hollywood’s latest trend, however, they’ll instead give Peter Jackson The Silmarillion and turn it into a sprawling seven to ten film epic, complete with schlock horror slapstick that completely misses the point of the original tales.