The Hobbit (film trilogy)

Beorn appears in the second and third parts of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, played by the Swedish actor Mikael Persbrandt, who performed the man-shape on set while the bear was realised digitally. The films give him a history that the novel does not: he is presented as the last surviving member of his kind, the rest having been hunted down and destroyed by the orcs of the North, and he himself is said to have been held captive by them before escaping. This converts the flat, unexplained hatred of goblins recorded in the book into a personal grievance with a stated cause, and it closes the question the novel deliberately leaves open about what he was and where he came from. It also contradicts the book's remark that the change of shape continued in his descendants for generations, since a Beorn who is the last skin-changer can have no such line. The careful managed introduction at the hall, with the company presented a few at a time while Gandalf spun out the tale, is dropped in favour of a pursuit: the travellers reach the house with the bear behind them.

His part in the battle before the Lonely Mountain is likewise rearranged. In the third film he is carried to the field by the Eagles in company with Radagast, rather than arriving alone, on foot and unlooked-for after the fighting has turned; the killing of Bolg is given to another character, and the rescue of the wounded Thorin from the press is not shown at all. Nothing corresponding to the return journey follows, so the winter spent in his hall and his escort of the travellers back to the mountain road have no place in the trilogy, and he does not appear again after the battle. The earlier animated television version of the novel, made for American broadcast, cuts him out of the story altogether, taking the company from their rescue in the mountains to the edge of Mirkwood without a halt; the adaptations drawn from The Lord of the Rings have no occasion for him, since in that book he is only named in report.

Bilbo has been portrayed across the major screen and radio versions of both books. In the Rankin/Bass animated television film of The Hobbit (1977) he was voiced by Orson Bean, who returned to the role in the same studio's The Return of the King (1980); in Ralph Bakshi's animated The Lord of the Rings (1978) he was voiced by Norman Bird. The BBC's 1968 radio serial of The Hobbit cast Paul Daneman as Bilbo, and in the 1981 BBC radio dramatization of The Lord of the Rings the part was taken by John Le Mesurier — alongside Ian Holm as Frodo, the actor who two decades later played the elderly Bilbo in Peter Jackson's film trilogy (2001–2003). In Jackson's three-part film adaptation of The Hobbit (2012–2014) the young Bilbo was played by Martin Freeman, with Holm reappearing in framing scenes as the old hobbit writing his memoir.

The film versions alter several particulars of his story. Jackson's Hobbit trilogy keeps Bilbo conscious throughout the Battle of Five Armies, placing him at Ravenhill as a participant in the fighting and a witness to Thorin's final combat, where the book has him knocked senseless near the battle's start; it also gives him an invented heroic moment early in the quest, in which he physically defends the fallen Thorin against the orc Azog, who is expanded into a pursuing antagonist across all three films. In The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Bilbo's grasp at the Ring in Rivendell — which the book renders as a fleeting impression in Frodo's eyes — is realized on screen as a sudden, monstrous transformation of his face.

On screen and on air the people are represented almost entirely by the few individuals the stories follow. Orson Bean voiced Bilbo in the Rankin/Bass television film of the earlier novel, and took the part of Frodo as well in the same studio's version of the last part of the longer book, where Roddy McDowall played Samwise. Bakshi's film cast Christopher Guard as Frodo, Michael Scholes as Sam, Dominic Guard as Pippin and Simon Chandler as Merry, their movement drawn in part over filmed actors. The BBC dramatisation used Ian Holm as Frodo, Bill Nighy as Sam and John Le Mesurier as Bilbo; Holm returned two decades later as Bilbo for Peter Jackson, whose four travellers were Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, with Martin Freeman taking the younger Bilbo in the second trilogy. Difference of stature there was managed by forced perspective, doubled sets built to two scales, and stand-ins of smaller build rather than by any effect applied to the actors.

The departures are consistent in one respect: the domestic material at either end of the book is the first thing cut. Bakshi, the radio series and Jackson all pass over the Old Forest, Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-downs, and Jackson additionally compresses the long interval between the birthday party and the departure from Bag End, brings Merry and Pippin into the journey by accident instead of by the deliberate conspiracy of the novel, and drops the return home altogether, so that the four come back to a country that has never been occupied and needs no setting right. The Rankin/Bass treatment of the last part begins with the quest already far advanced and leaves most of the earlier narrative unrepresented. The radio version, longest of the older adaptations, is the only one of them to dramatise the retaking of the Shire.

Balin is played by Ken Stott in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, and the part is substantially enlarged. Where the novel gives him seniority and courtesy but little narrative weight, the films make him Thorin's oldest counsellor and the company's chronicler, and hand him most of the expository burden: it is Balin who relates the history of Erebor's loss and of the battle fought before the East-gate of Moria, and who reports the earlier attempts to reclaim the mountain. That retold history departs from the appendices at a decisive point, since in the films Azog is maimed by Thorin at that battle and survives to pursue the company as its chief antagonist, whereas Tolkien has him killed there by Dáin Ironfoot. Balin is also placed at the centre of the trilogy's added political material — he is repeatedly the voice of doubt as Thorin's temper hardens over the hoard — and he survives the final battle, so that the films close on him rather than on any hint of his later end. His book role as the one dwarf willing to go part of the way down the secret tunnel with the hobbit is not reproduced.

Peter Jackson's trilogy gives him a far larger role, played by Luke Evans across the second and third films. The screenplays rewrite his position in Esgaroth: instead of a captain among the town's archers he is a bargeman and smuggler who carries the dwarves into the town hidden in empty barrels, and he is given a family the novel does not mention — a son named Bain and two daughters, Sigrid and Tilda, with his wife dead before the story opens. His descent from Girion is made explicit and dramatised, Girion being shown to have failed at the same shot generations earlier, which supplies the knowledge of the dragon's weak point in place of the thrush that brings Bilbo's observation to him in the book. He is imprisoned by the Master before the attack rather than commanding the defence, and the Master dies in the burning of the town instead of surviving to squander the rebuilding money. Bard's kill is likewise reworked as an improvised shot from a bell tower rather than the last arrow of a firing line.

In Peter Jackson's three films Celeborn is played by Marton Csokas, and the part is reduced to a few moments beside Galadriel in the first instalment. He stands with her when the Company is received in Lothlórien and speaks briefly of the one who is missing from their number, but the substance of the book's audience is transferred to Galadriel or dropped: there is no reproach directed at the travellers for having forced the road under the mountains, and therefore no public retraction of it and no reconciliation with the Dwarf, which in the narrative is the chief thing the scene accomplishes for him. The departure from the wood is likewise altered. The gift-giving is absent from the theatrical version and restored only in the extended cut, where Galadriel bestows everything herself, so that the boats, the provisions and the detailed instruction on the river and its rapids—the one stretch of the story in which Celeborn directs rather than accompanies—leave no trace. He is not carried into the later two films, and he is absent altogether from the same director's Hobbit trilogy, where the council of the Wise and the assault on Dol Guldur are staged without him.

Dáin has been brought to the screen only once. In the last of Peter Jackson's three Hobbit films, The Battle of the Five Armies, he is performed by the Scottish comedian and actor Billy Connolly and realised as a fully digital character built on that performance; the part is small, confined to the arrival of the Iron Hills host and the fighting that follows, and the accent and manner given him are broadly comic in a way the novel does not suggest. The trilogy also alters the ground on which his reputation rests. In the first film, An Unexpected Journey, Azog survives the battle before Moria and continues as the chief antagonist across all three parts, so the single feat for which the book remembers Dáin is transferred away from him before he ever appears, and the pairing of father and son as the enemies of his two great battles disappears with it. Nothing of what follows the battle is dramatised: the settlement of the treasure, the succession to the kingship, and the long friendship with the restored Dale all fall outside the films, which close before any of it.

John Rhys-Davies played Gimli in Peter Jackson's trilogy of 2001–2003, and also supplied the voice of Treebeard; the films move much of the story's lighter register onto the Dwarf, adding jokes at the expense of his stature and a drinking contest that has no counterpart in the book, while shortening his more reflective speeches. The Hobbit films of 2012–2014 individuate the company far more than any earlier version, with Richard Armitage as Thorin, Ken Stott as Balin, Graham McTavish as Dwalin, James Nesbitt as Bofur and Billy Connolly as Dáin Ironfoot, and they enlarge the story with material Tolkien does not supply: the orc-chieftain killed long before at the eastern gate of the lost mansions is kept alive as a pursuing enemy, an invented Elf is given an attachment to one of Thorin's nephews, and the company's attempt on the dragon within the mountain is written for the screen.

Earlier and later adaptations cast the figure differently. In the Rankin/Bass animated television film of The Hobbit (1977) Elrond is voiced by Cyril Ritchard, and in Ralph Bakshi's animated The Lord of the Rings (1978) by André Morell. Jackson's Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014) returns Hugo Weaving to the role and enlarges it beyond the novel: Elrond attends a White Council meeting shown on screen and joins an invented assault on Dol Guldur to free Gandalf.

Peter Jackson's trilogy cast Hugo Weaving as Elrond, Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, Orlando Bloom as Legolas, Liv Tyler as Arwen, Marton Csokas as Celeborn and Craig Parker as Haldir, and made two changes that are regularly noted: Glorfindel is cut and his rescue of the wounded hobbit given to Arwen, whose role is enlarged throughout into a continuous subplot, and a company of elven archers under Haldir is sent to fight at Helm's Deep, an invention with no basis in the book. The later trilogy drawn from the shorter novel goes further, returning Bloom to a story in which his character does not appear, naming the woodland king Thranduil and casting Lee Pace in the part, and adding an elf-captain, Tauriel, played by Evangeline Lilly, who has no source in Tolkien at all and is given a romance with one of the dwarves.

The Rankin/Bass television film of 1977 keeps the mountain as the goal of the journey but gives it little screen time, since the whole novel is compressed into roughly ninety minutes. The company's long wait on the western ledge is reduced to a few moments, the moon-letters and the thrush at the keyhole are retained, and Bilbo's two descents to the hoard survive in shortened form, with Smaug voiced by Richard Boone and Thorin by Hans Conried. What follows the dragon's death — the walling-up of the Gate, the negotiations over the treasure and the battle in the valley — is telescoped into a brief closing stretch, so that the siege that occupies several chapters of the book barely registers. Peter Jackson's three-film version of 2012 to 2014 does the opposite, expanding the mountain into the trilogy's central location. Its prologue shows the sack of the kingdom and has the Elven-king turn away from the burning valley, supplying a single dramatic cause for an estrangement that the book explains as an older quarrel over payment for work done. Smaug, voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, is confronted at length inside the halls by the whole company in a pursuit through the forges that ends in an attempt to drown him in molten gold; no such episode exists in the novel, where the dwarves stay outside and the dragon leaves of his own accord. The dragon's assault on the lake-town is moved to the opening of the third film, and the orc-host that besieges the mountain is led by Azog, who in the book had been killed generations earlier and whose place before the Gate belongs to his son. Dáin of the Iron Hills, played by Billy Connolly, arrives as in the book but into a much enlarged battle.

Frodo has been portrayed in every major dramatization of The Lord of the Rings. In Ralph Bakshi's animated film of 1978, which covers roughly the first half of the story, he was voiced by Christopher Guard; in the Rankin/Bass animated television film The Return of the King (1980) the part was spoken by Orson Bean. The BBC radio serial of 1981 cast Ian Holm as Frodo — the same actor who two decades later played the elderly Bilbo in Peter Jackson's live-action trilogy (2001–2003), in which Frodo was played by Elijah Wood. Wood reprised the role briefly in the prologue framing of Jackson's first Hobbit film (2012).

Blanchett returned as Galadriel in Jackson's Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014), although the character does not appear in the 1937 novel. The films insert her into a meeting of the White Council at Rivendell and, in the final instalment, into an invented rescue of Gandalf from Dol Guldur, where she confronts and expels Sauron.

Gandalf has been portrayed across animation, radio, and live-action film. In the Rankin/Bass animated television film of The Hobbit (1977) and its later companion piece The Return of the King (1980), the character was voiced by John Huston; in Ralph Bakshi's animated The Lord of the Rings (1978), which covers roughly the first half of the story, William Squire provided the voice. Michael Hordern played Gandalf in the BBC radio serialisation of The Lord of the Rings (1981). The most widely known portrayal is that of Ian McKellen, who played the wizard in Peter Jackson's live-action film trilogies The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003) and The Hobbit (2012–2014), receiving an Academy Award nomination for the first film.

Peter Jackson's three films cast John Rhys-Davies, an actor of well above the height the part implies, so that the character was produced by scale doubles, oversized sets and forced perspective rather than by casting; the same actor also supplied the voice of Treebeard. The most discussed departure is one of register. Where the novel gives its Dwarf a settled gravity and reserves the humour for his exchanges with Legolas, the films move a large share of his material into comedy, adding invented business such as the drinking contest at Edoras and repeated jokes about his stature, and cutting much of the courtly manner he shows towards Galadriel; her gift to him survives only in the extended version. His enthusiasm for the caverns of Aglarond, and the bargain with Legolas that follows from it, are dropped, and with them the colony he founds there and his lordship of the Glittering Caves, since the films close without the Fourth Age material of the appendices. In the later trilogy drawn from The Hobbit he does not appear; his father is played there by Peter Hambleton as one of Thorin's company.

In Peter Jackson's live-action trilogy (2001–2003) Gollum was realised through Andy Serkis's motion-capture performance, glimpsed in the first film and fully present from The Two Towers onward; Serkis reprised the role in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) and also appeared undisguised as the pre-Ring Sméagol in the prologue of The Return of the King, which stages the killing of Déagol on screen rather than leaving it to Gandalf's narration. The films externalise the divided mind as spoken exchanges between two personae, adding a scene in which the Sméagol side dismisses his darker half, and they invent an episode in which Gollum discards the elven waybread and casts suspicion on Sam, prompting Frodo to send his companion away before Shelob's lair. The ending is likewise altered: Frodo grapples with Gollum at the brink of the Cracks of Doom and both go over the edge together, Frodo catching hold while Gollum falls. A further film centred on the character, The Hunt for Gollum, was announced in 2024 with Serkis attached as director and lead.

Peter Jackson's three films, released from 2001 to 2003, cast Orlando Bloom, and the part is enlarged considerably as a fighting role. The Elves of Lórien are sent to the Hornburg in the films, so that Legolas fights there beside a contingent that has no counterpart in the book; he is given feats of arms invented for the screen, including the single-handed felling of a mûmak on the Pelennor. The Sea-longing, which in the text is the one lasting change worked upon him, survives only as a passing note. The same actor returns for the trilogy made from The Hobbit between 2012 and 2014, where the character does not appear in the source novel at all: he is written into the Woodland Realm as a captain under his father, who is himself shown on screen for the first time, and is paired with Tauriel, a she-Elf invented for those films with no basis in Tolkien. He is carried through to the battle at the mountain, and a line is added at the close pointing him toward the Ranger who will become Aragorn.

In Peter Jackson's trilogy the realm is held by Cate Blanchett as Galadriel and Marton Csokas as Celeborn, with Craig Parker as Haldir, and Galadriel is additionally given the voice-over that opens the first film, a framing role she has nowhere in the novel. The theatrical cut of The Fellowship of the Ring shortens the departure so that only Frodo's gift of light survives; the giving of the cloaks, the rope and the three hairs asked for by Gimli was restored in the extended version. The trilogy's largest invention concerning the wood comes in the second film, where Haldir leads a company of Lórien Elves to Helm's Deep and is killed there — an alliance with no basis in the book, which instead has the realm fighting three separate assaults on its own borders. Galadriel returns in the later Hobbit trilogy, at the White Council and at Dol Guldur, but her own country is not part of those films.

The forest's fullest screen treatments belong to the two adaptations of The Hobbit. The Rankin/Bass television film, compressing the novel into roughly an hour and a half, keeps the wood as a set-piece but reduces the crossing to its essentials, so that the company's straying from the path leads more or less directly to the spiders and to capture by the Elvenking's folk; the Elvenking himself was voiced by Otto Preminger, and the subsequent escape from his halls is retained in shortened form. Peter Jackson's trilogy moves in the opposite direction, expanding the forest across two of its three films and drawing on material the novel leaves off-page. Thranduil, played by Lee Pace, is given a far larger part than the book's brief and mostly nameless Elvenking, and two figures absent from the novel are placed in his realm: Legolas, played by Orlando Bloom and carried over from the earlier trilogy, and Tauriel, played by Evangeline Lilly, a captain of the Woodland guard invented for the films. The most substantial departure concerns the forest's southern reaches, since Dol Guldur, which the novel keeps entirely in report, is shown directly: Gandalf investigates and is imprisoned there, Radagast is written into the same events, and the White Council's assault on the stronghold is staged onscreen rather than merely mentioned afterward.

In Peter Jackson's three films Galadriel is played by Cate Blanchett, and the ring is treated as a visible property of the costume rather than as a concealed thing brought forward at a chosen moment. It sits plainly on her hand from her first appearance in Lothlórien and is seen again in the closing sequence at the Grey Havens, so the disclosure that the novel stages as a deliberate act of revelation, and that depends on Frodo's altered sight, becomes in the films a detail the audience has already registered. The Mirror scene and the offer of the One are both kept, but the accompanying explanation of what the ring maintains and what its keeper stands to lose is heavily compressed. Blanchett returns in the Hobbit trilogy, where Galadriel is given a direct confrontation with Sauron at Dol Guldur and a display of power staged for the screen; the appendices record the White Council's assault at that date but nothing of the sort attributed to her personally. The 1981 BBC radio dramatisation, having no images at its disposal, can register the ring only in speech, and its Lothlórien episodes accordingly retain the naming and the refusal much as the book has them.

Peter Jackson's trilogy of 2001–2003 invented Lurtz, a named Uruk-hai captain played by Lawrence Makoare, to give the Orcs who shoot Boromir a face; in the novel they remain anonymous. The same films stage the breeding of Saruman's Uruk-hai beneath Isengard as an on-screen process, where the book supplies only rumour and inference, and retain Uglúk (Nathaniel Lees) and Grishnákh (Stephen Ure) from the pursuit across Rohan. The later Hobbit trilogy of 2012–2014 makes the more consequential change by keeping Azog alive: killed at Azanulbizar in the account given in the appendices, he instead survives, played by Manu Bennett, to pursue Thorin's company as principal antagonist across all three films, with his son Bolg demoted to a subordinate role, while the Great Goblin, voiced by Barry Humphries, is expanded well past his brief part in the novel.

Peter Jackson's trilogy filmed the valley's exterior at Kaitoke Regional Park north of Wellington and cast Hugo Weaving as Elrond and Liv Tyler as Arwen, and its best-known departure falls on the approach: Glorfindel does not appear, his errand on the road is given to Arwen, and it is she who carries Frodo to the crossing and summons the flood. Inside the house the council is rewritten as an open quarrel between the delegations, and the reforging of Elendil's sword is removed from the valley altogether and postponed to the third film, where Elrond brings the finished blade to Aragorn in Rohan; the films also dispatch a company of Elves from Elrond to the defence of Helm's Deep, for which the novel offers no warrant. The later Hobbit trilogy returns to the same setting and enlarges the stay considerably, giving Lindir a speaking part (Bret McKenzie) and staging a meeting of the White Council in the valley, an episode assembled from the appendices rather than taken from the shorter book.

In Peter Jackson's film trilogy The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003), Saruman is played by Christopher Lee. The films alter his story at several points. His confrontation with Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring becomes a physical duel of wizardry inside Orthanc, and the snowstorm on Caradhras, of ambiguous origin in the book, is shown as Saruman's own working, his voice heard on the mountain. He never adopts many-coloured robes on screen, remaining white-clad throughout, and the Scouring of the Shire is omitted entirely: in the theatrical cut of The Return of the King he simply disappears from the story after Isengard's fall, while the extended edition transfers his death to Orthanc itself, where Gríma stabs him atop the tower and he falls to be impaled on the machinery below. Lee reprised the role in Jackson's Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014), where Saruman attends an invented White Council scene in Rivendell in An Unexpected Journey and, in The Battle of the Five Armies, joins Elrond and Galadriel in a physical assault on Dol Guldur against the Ringwraiths — events only summarized, without such detail, in the book's frame of reference.

In Peter Jackson's three films Sauron has no embodied role after the opening sequence: the armoured figure of the prologue was performed by Sala Baldwin, while the voice, used both for Sauron and for the Ring itself, was Alan Howard's. For the remainder of the trilogy he is represented as a burning, lidless eye set upon the summit of Barad-dûr, which turns a figure of speech used by characters in the novel into the literal form the Enemy takes on screen; the book gives no warrant for a physically present eye, and keeps his person unseen but not disembodied. The prologue also rearranges his overthrow. Elendil is killed by Sauron directly and Isildur takes up the broken sword to cut the Ring from his hand, whereas the narrative in the appendices has Gil-galad and Elendil throw him down together and perish in the act; Gil-galad is absent from the sequence altogether. In the later trilogy drawn from The Hobbit the same studio gives him a considerably larger part, voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, who also spoke Smaug. There the White Council's expulsion of the Necromancer from Dol Guldur, reported only in summary by Tolkien, is staged as an extended confrontation, and his identity is revealed on screen rather than deduced.

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation faces a difficulty peculiar to the medium, since a horse carries no dialogue and therefore no cast credit; Shadowfax exists there only in what other characters say of him and in sound, which throws the emphasis onto the Rohirrim's estimation of the animal rather than onto his physical presence. Ralph Bakshi's animated film breaks off after Helm's Deep, so the later journeys that define the horse's part in the story fall outside its scope altogether.

In Peter Jackson's trilogy the dragon is performed by Benedict Cumberbatch, who supplied both the voice and, through motion capture, the basis of the creature's movement and expression; the same actor also voices the Necromancer of Dol Guldur. Smaug is held back to a glimpse at the close of the first film, occupies the second, which is named for him, and dies at the opening of the third — a rearrangement that moves his destruction out of the middle of the story and makes it the overture to the war over the hoard. The largest departure is an extended sequence in which Thorin and the company face the dragon inside Erebor and attempt to drown him in molten gold from the reawakened forges; in the book the Dwarves never meet him at all, and no one but Bilbo speaks with him. Bilbo also sets the Ring aside during their conversation, where the novel keeps him invisible throughout. At Lake-town, Bard is a smuggler and a prisoner before he is an archer, and he looses the black arrow from an improvised mounting on a bell tower with his son beside him, rather than from among the town's bowmen.

Peter Jackson's trilogy of 2001–2003 goes furthest in the other direction, giving the Ring an audible voice — supplied by Alan Howard — so that its pull on a bearer is externalised rather than reported. Three departures bear directly on it: the seventeen years between Bilbo's farewell and Frodo's setting out are compressed to a short span; Faramir, who in the novel refuses the Ring almost as soon as he understands what it is, instead takes the hobbits and their burden towards Osgiliath before releasing them, which erases the contrast the book draws between him and his brother; and in the chamber within the mountain the Ring goes into the fire out of a struggle between Frodo and Gollum rather than through Gollum's own heedless triumph. The Hobbit films of 2012–2014 read the finding of the ring backwards from the later book, treating Bilbo's keeping of it as ominous from the first. A further film under the title The Hunt for Gollum has been announced with Andy Serkis directing, but nothing of its content is fixed.

Peter Jackson's trilogy of 2001 to 2003 gives its prologue to Galadriel, spoken by Cate Blanchett, and shortens the history considerably: Gil-galad has no part in it, and the ruling ring is cut from Sauron's hand after Elendil falls. The years between Bilbo's departure and Frodo's are compressed to a short interval. Galadriel is shown wearing her ring, but the dependence of the Three upon the One — and with it the reason the keepers take ship at the close — is left mostly unspoken. The Hobbit films of 2012 to 2014 move in the opposite direction and add what no source supplies: the Nine are given tombs in the High Fells of Rhudaur, found empty, and their bearers appear as wraiths at Dol Guldur to be driven off by Elrond, Saruman and Galadriel. The appendices the trilogy otherwise draws on record no such burial and no such encounter.

Peter Jackson's trilogy built the Shire as a practical location on farmland near Matamata in the North Island of New Zealand, and the set was afterwards rebuilt in permanent materials for the Hobbit films and left standing. The films' handling of the country departs from the book in two ways that are much discussed. The long interval between Bilbo's departure and Frodo's — seventeen years in the novel — is compressed to a matter of weeks, so that Gandalf's identification of the Ring and the flight from Hobbiton follow closely on one another. More substantially, the occupation of the country and its recovery are omitted altogether: Saruman is dealt with at Isengard rather than at Bag End, his death appearing only in the extended version of the third film, and the four travellers return to a Shire that has not been touched, which turns Sam's vision in Galadriel's mirror into an averted possibility rather than a prophecy fulfilled. The Old Forest and the Barrow-downs are cut with Tom Bombadil, so Buckland's hedged eastern boundary plays no part. The Hobbit trilogy frames its narrative with scenes at Bag End on the day of the birthday party, with Ian Holm and Elijah Wood returning in their earlier roles to join the two sets of films together.

In Peter Jackson's trilogy Thorin was played by Richard Armitage and became one of the largest roles in the three films, portrayed as considerably younger and less grotesque in bearing than the dwarves around him. The most consequential departure is the survival of Azog, who in the book was killed before the gates of Moria a century and a half earlier: here he lives on as a personal pursuer, driving much of the invented action across the first two films. In consequence Thorin's death is transferred from the confusion of the battle, where he was overwhelmed near the bodyguard of Bolg, to a single combat with Azog fought apart from the main engagement, and Fíli and Kíli are killed separately rather than falling over their uncle's body. His growing obsession with the hoard, treated in the novel as a change of temper, is expanded into an extended affliction with a name; and material from the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, including the affairs of Dol Guldur, is woven around him.

Lee Pace plays Thranduil in Jackson's three-film treatment of The Hobbit, where the role is enlarged far beyond its scope in the novel and the character is named from the outset. The trilogy opens his part before the main action, at the Mountain in the days of Thrór, and gives him a personal motive that Tolkien does not supply: a set of white gems he holds to have been wrongfully withheld from him, which thereafter governs his handling of Thorin's company and his claim on the hoard. Legolas, who has no place in the novel at all, is written in as his son and as a captain of his guard, alongside the invented Tauriel; from this the films build a domestic thread with no source in the book, including the king's objection to his son's attachment to her and references to a mother whom Tolkien nowhere mentions. The effect is to move him closer to an antagonist in the final film than the novel's king ever becomes, since his march on the Mountain is driven by a private claim rather than by the reckoning of a masterless treasure, and his conduct during the battle is given a wavering the book does not describe.

In Peter Jackson's three films the Lord of the Nazgûl is present from the pursuit through the Shire onward, though he is not named or explained until the last part; in The Return of the King he was performed by Lawrence Makoare, with his speech supplied by Andy Serkis, an arrangement that separates body and voice in a way the earlier films had not required. The chief departures are structural. Nothing of Angmar, of the northern war or of the flight of Eärnur is given, so the character arrives without the centuries of history the appendices supply, and the foretelling that he would not fall by a man's hand is attached to Éowyn's stroke alone rather than to an older prophecy, since Glorfindel does not appear in the films at all. The meeting at the broken gate of Minas Tirith was cut from the theatrical release and restored in the extended version, where the encounter ends with Gandalf's staff shattered — an outcome with no counterpart in the book, and one that reverses the balance Tolkien leaves undecided. The later Hobbit trilogy, drawing on appendix material for its Dol Guldur scenes, goes further and invents a tomb in the High Fells from which he is roused, an episode without any source in Tolkien.