6 Reasons It’s A Good Thing ‘The Hobbit’ Is Being Split Into Three Movies

As a person who writes jokes about nerd stuff online, I know it’s my duty to be really super snarky about Peter Jackson splitting The Hobbit into three movies, but I just can’t do it. The fact is, I think it might be a good idea. At the very least, I don’t think it’s going to turn out any worse than The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Here’s why The Hobbit being made into three movies is going to be okay…

About The Same Amount of Stuff Happens In The Hobbit as in Lord of the Rings

Yeah, the Lord of the Rings trilogy is around five-times the length of The Hobbit, but that’s mostly because it’s massively padded out with obsessively detailed descriptions, complicated political intrigue and the literary equivalent of RPG side quests.

If you just run down the major events and action scenes, more or less the same amount of stuff happens. If The Lord of the Rings were written like The Hobbit, the former would be about 800 pages shorter.

How did we put up with this for nine hours?

I’d Rather Spend Three Movies With Bilbo Than Frodo

He gets the whole “throw the ring in Mt. Doom” thing done in the end, but for the majority of the Rings trilogy Frodo is mostly just whiny and useless. Even though Frodo has had five times as many words written about him, I still think of Bilbo as the real “hero” of the family.

Bilbo’s relatable, likeable, smart and at times gets to be a genuine hero — and he doesn’t have a “Sam” trailing around behind him the whole time doing all the hard work for him. Also, Martin Freeman > Elijah Wood.

Bilbo’s Encounter With Gollum Can Easily Anchor An Entire Movie

It looks like the first movie won’t extend much beyond Bilbo’s adventures in the Misty Mountains and his first encounter with Gollum, which is fine by me. The scenes in the goblin tunnels and Bilbo’s outsmarting of Gollum are by far the best thing Tolkien ever wrote and he knew it — there’s a reason these chapters were used as the jumping off point for the entire Rings epic.

Where the hell are you going old man?

We’re Going To Get To See Where the F–k Gandalf Kept Running Off to All The Time

This annoyed me to no end as a kid — why does Gandalf keep leaving the party high and dry? Every time he left Bilbo and the dwarves alone, they’d end up almost eaten by ogres or something within minutes. Stop…wandering…off you old bastard.

Well, the good news is Jackson is using The Appendices from the back of Return of the King to help flesh The Hobbit out to three movies. A lot of The Appendices are devoted to describing what the f–k Gandalf was up to during his little disappearances. My inner 9-year-old will be very pleased to have this s–t finally explained.

Having More Room To Breathe Can Only Help the Final Third of the Story

The last third of The Hobbit always felt too abbreviated to me — suddenly we’re introduced to a bunch of humans we’re supposed to care about, then Smaug is killed out of nowhere, and in the book’s most infuriating bit of storytelling, Bilbo is knocked out and misses most of the big (kind of anti-climatic) final battle.

Hopefully the extra room afforded by a third movie will help Jackson develop the human characters and make the death of Smaug and the Battle of the Five Armies more epic.

Dwarves!

Dwarves!

F–k elves. To hell wizards and orcs. Dwarves are my Dungeons and Dragons race of choice, and yet they’re usually relegated to the background. The Scottish-accented comedy relief. But not in The Hobbit! This is a tale absolutely lousy with dwarves from beginning to end!

So many things are getting chopped with axes you guys — sooo many.

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