Rating: Four out of five stars

World-Famous Three-Word Review: Hobbit Meets Dragon

Not every movie is going to be verbatim to its source text. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can more openly appreciate the film itself.

With so many popular book series being manufactured onto the big screen (see: Harry Potter, Twilight, the Hunger Games, et. al.), audiences flock to theaters with certain, specific expectations.

Movies act as a remediation of a novel. They are a completely different medium from literature. They are going to result in a different telling of the same story. Sometimes this disappoints people.

As a fan of the Tolkien books, I know the story of the Hobbit. As a fan of Peter Jackson, I knew that the movies could be different from the books. And still be wonderful in their own way.

Jackson continued that tradition with the Hobbit franchise of films. They are different from the original 1937 novel. The first two films have left out some parts and added some new elements.

Some of those, I liked: the extended sequence with Smaug the dragon, Gandalf visiting Dol Goldur. Others, I didn’t like: Radagast, Legolas, the awkward elf-dwarf love triangle.

But the revelation is that I can like them or dislike them on their own merits — not in just how close it true to the book it was.