One example Jackson pointed to was an evocative passage adapted from Tolkien\u2019s \u201cThe Fellowship of the Ring\u201d\u009d as a poetic account of life after death placed on the lips of Ian McKellen\u2019s Gandalf in \u201cThe Return of the King\u201d\u009d: \u201cThe journey doesn\u2019t end here \u201d\u00a6. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass \u201d\u00a6. and then you see it: white shores, and beyond \u201d\u00a6. a far green country under a swift sunrise.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
This is a lovely gloss on Tolkien \u201d\u201d and there are similar spiritually themed touches in the \u201cRings\u201d\u009d movies. Yet in the latest \u201cHobbit\u201d\u009d movie, where Tolkien has a dying character utter the memorable line, \u201cI go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed,\u201d\u009d the film version unconscionably omits this line entirely.<\/p>\n
Changes like these are sadly typical of the \u201cHobbit\u201d\u009d prequel trilogy, which is far cruder and less sensitive to the charm and beauty of its source material than the \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d\u009d films were. As bad as Christopher Tolkien\u2019s fears in 2012 about \u201cThe Hobbit\u201d\u009d films might have been, the reality is worse.<\/p>\n