While you could make some argument as to how they share some similar elements, I'm really not too worried that Peter Jackson will mess up The Hobbit in as profound a way as George Lucas did the whole Star Wars universe.
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How The Hobbit Will (and Won’t) be Like the Star Wars Prequels | K-Squared Ramblings
A visionary director returns to his high-profile trilogy years later with a prequel in which some of the same characters establish key elements of the original backstory. Hmm….
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All Jackson needs is an identifiable protagonist and the Hobbit would be a million times better than any of the prequels.
Jackson can't really mess it up too badly. I think the only risk that he is truly running is that he puts in too much additional content outside of the storyline that detracts from the central tale.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy had cohesive stories that arched all three movies, and also had stories within themselves. The Hobbit was only a single book. So he will have to create the individual movie arcs with the additional content that was not originally part of the story, but added later.
I'm cautiously optimistic.
And, conveniently, he has one.
Depending on how it's directed and played, Bilbo could be even a better protagonist than Frodo. Elijah Woods' messianic tragedy-boy was deeply moving, but, at some point, stopped being human (Sam being the identifiable protagonist in that pair). Bilbo's story arc avoids Frodo's martyrdom, and that's a good thing.
+Andrew Eva, yeah, that loss of focus might hurt. On the other hands, the LotR Trilogy managed two major storylines in parallel (3 after Gandalf and Pippin head to Minas Tirith), so it's doable.
For sure +Dave Hill and the author of the article rightly points out that all the source material is Tolkiens, so there is an assumption it will be just as rich. My big concern is that making 3 movies out of 1 book + extra source material might be stretching it.
The Hobbit as a standalone tale is one thing, The Hobbit as a prequel to LoTR is another, deeper, and much richer story. As long as it's handled well (and I trust Jackson to do that) it will be just fine.
+Rachel Luxemburg this is the most coherent comment about The Hobbit movie.
People don't understand The Hobbit as a story is different than The Hobbit as part of the War of the Ring.
Yes, +Rachel Luxemburg – a very good point.
“Review: ‘The Hobbit’ suffers from story bloat”
I am rather worried. Three three-hour movies for a book that’s probably less than 20% the word count of The Lord of the Rings? That doesn’t ring true to me.