Aha! Yes, that's part of my problem too - I am still having trouble fully articulating it, obviously. I do think part of it is that Jackson is not comfortable with characters being unimportant in the grand scheme of things and lacking power (or even being important because of their lack of power). Which is a problem for the epic end of things as well, because epics in the set of traditions Tolkien draws on are uh. um. Not neccesarily very compatible with the very late twentith century/early twenty first action movie elements Jackson pulls in and tries to make them resonate with.
The Three Hunters sequences in The Two Towers is a pretty good example. For The Hobbit I think the best one is really the way Radagast and the whole There's Something Evil In Dol Guldur side plot is portrayed - Instead of being a thing Gandalf has been intending to check out for some time, and when Thorin asks him to come along on the Steal Back My Grandfather's Stuff quest, Gandalf sees an opportunity to get out that direction without raising any serious alarm bells, and neither the dwarves nor Bilbo ever really get major information or about it or seem to realize how serious the whole thing actually was... well. Uh. Yeah. (I'm also bemused at the fact that the key remains a plot point, and the "Your father gave me these," is also a plot point but "He was slowly dying and not very lucid anymore, because of all the torture, and also I don't really want to talk about how I got in there and out again," thing gets cut. Weeeeeird. Weeeeeeird.)
There's also the serious discomfort with the picaresque. Which is another of the genres the Hobbit partakes in. It doesn't have consistent villains who pursue the company all over Middle Earth, partly because they just aren't that important until the possession of Erebor and its wealth becomes an open question with Smaug's (not at all premeditated) death. It's like Jackson thinks there needs to be a driving through thread in the form of a villian, which the Hobbit really really does not have (although Fellowship, at least, does. Once the Nazgul turn up).
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The Three Hunters sequences in The Two Towers is a pretty good example. For The Hobbit I think the best one is really the way Radagast and the whole There's Something Evil In Dol Guldur side plot is portrayed - Instead of being a thing Gandalf has been intending to check out for some time, and when Thorin asks him to come along on the Steal Back My Grandfather's Stuff quest, Gandalf sees an opportunity to get out that direction without raising any serious alarm bells, and neither the dwarves nor Bilbo ever really get major information or about it or seem to realize how serious the whole thing actually was... well. Uh. Yeah. (I'm also bemused at the fact that the key remains a plot point, and the "Your father gave me these," is also a plot point but "He was slowly dying and not very lucid anymore, because of all the torture, and also I don't really want to talk about how I got in there and out again," thing gets cut. Weeeeeird. Weeeeeeird.)
There's also the serious discomfort with the picaresque. Which is another of the genres the Hobbit partakes in. It doesn't have consistent villains who pursue the company all over Middle Earth, partly because they just aren't that important until the possession of Erebor and its wealth becomes an open question with Smaug's (not at all premeditated) death. It's like Jackson thinks there needs to be a driving through thread in the form of a villian, which the Hobbit really really does not have (although Fellowship, at least, does. Once the Nazgul turn up).
*hands*