Gandalf is indeed steering the story, but he always seems to not have control over the characters. Not Bilbo, not Thorin, not Frodo, not Aragorn, not the elves (Elrond, Galadriel etc who cannot be manipulated and also have the gift of foresight and whatnot), not the hobbits' actions (Pippin always fucks up and Gandalf has to clean up the mess, while Frodo 'died' during the first fuck up which Gandalf couldn't possibly know wasn't the case, but he did create the series of events that led to Frodo not dying in that action...) and he definitely has no clue of where the other wizards are, while he considers Saruman the greatest man alive up until that palantir moment.
For literature LOTR and Hobbit fans the films were very fluid, to use a very lenient term. Especially Hobbit seems like a movie loosely based on the book.