How did The Hobbit movie characters compare to their 📔book versions?

[Maiden_of Harad]

So, did the film's portrayal of your favorite character satisfy, delight, or dismay you?
My favorites were the same in the book and the movie: Bilbo, Balin, Fili, Kili, and Thorin. Fili and Kili seemed somewhat undwarvish, however; and, though Thorin's pride is evident, he's not nearly as arrogant and haughty as in the book.
As an aside, Richard Armitage as Thorin seemed much more dignified than Viggio Mortenson as Aragorn. Maybe that's because PJ did not repeat the mistake of making Thorin a king who didn't want his throne, like he did with Aragorn. I was afraid that the filmakers would turn Thorin and Bilbo into another Aragorn and Frodo, but they did not.

 

[Dís]

Definitely. When I read the book as a teenager my favorite was Thranduil and I only wished he'd come over more friendly in generous. In the movie he sums up all the negative traits I detected in him in the book. He just plain sucks.
When I grew older, though, Thorin became my favorite and he is, of course, nothing like the book-Thorin, starting with age and appearance. I hope the coming movies will not spare us the flaws of his character even for the sake of Armitage-fandom. He just sucks just as much as Thranduil, but at least he was never supposed to be angelically good.

 

[Andreth]

In the book I've loved Bilbo: his simple, middle-class, no nonsense quality was something I really appreciated in him; even if I'm a fan of the heroic tales and characters ( my favorite Tolkien's writings are definitely all things related to the Silmarillion and my favourite character is the tragic and grand Maedhros ), I do really have a thing for such a honest, frank, definitely non-heroic character such as Bilbo; he accepts and even welcomes his own simplicity and, if you want, mediocrity, and lives and exploits his very own ability, without trying to make something " heroic " that was not his own.
this said, in the movie my favourite character was Thorin; I loved Bilbo ( and Gandalf! Sir Ian McKellen is definitely over-the-top ), but I really appreciated the depth and good-quality acting that Richard Armitage yielded to the character ( even if I didn't appreciate much the changes in the plot ).