The Hobbit: Desolation of My Childhood

Like many people who grew up loving J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, I was skeptical of the plan to split the movie into three parts: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey; The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug; and The Hobbit: Bilbo Baggins and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Making three movies out of the 1,400 page Lord of the Rings Trilogy was one thing but stretching this beloved 270-page children's story across three overlong films? Was Peter Jackson on bath salts?

Needless to say, I feel like quite a fool of a Took after just coming out of the second movie. It was great! What I had failed to understand is that the makers of The Hobbit trilogy are just giving the people more of what they want. After diligent note-taking and extrapolating for the third movie, here, in descending order of screen time, is what the people want:

• 9 Hours - Chase scenes. Endless chase scenes
• 8 Hours - Looney Tunes-esque action sequences
• 7 Hours - Something, anything to keep the plot from moving along before the next movie

• 6 Hours - Credits
• 5 Hours - Pensive glances (usually but not necessarily involving an elf)
• 4.5 Hours - Main characters about to die only to be saved at the last second by an arrow out of nowhere (also works if you replace 'arrow' with 'eagle')
• 4 Hours - Orcs leering menacingly
• 3.5 Hours - Same orcs dying by the hundreds with surprising ease
• 3 Hours - Inter-species sexual tension
• 2.5 Hours - Speaking in made-up languages (often combined with above)

• 2 Hours - Orlando Bloom paying off his second mansion
• 1.5 Hours - Characters/plot from Lord of the Rings
• 1 Hour - Characters/plot from Peter Jackson's feverish nightmares

• 38 Minutes - Characters/plot from The Hobbit
• 30 Minutes - Martin Freeman as Bilbo reenacting scenes from the British version of The Office (Note: not sure if this actually happened, I nodded off during one of the chase scenes)
• 25 Minutes - The least satisfying Stephen Fry appearance
• 5 Minutes - "Clever" Peter Jackson cameos
• 1 Minute - Horrifying moment of clarity upon realizing the irony of paying $15 for a ticket to the second movie of a trilogy where what little can be called a plot centres around a villain who becomes consumed by his greed for money

All and all it was a pretty good ride. Of course this doesn't count all the DVD bonus features such as hours of footage of orcs pumping iron to hone their ripped orc bods and PG-13 sex between an elf and a dwarf.

As you can imagine, I'm pretty excited to see Peter Jackson's version of The Silmarillion due out Christmas of 2016, 2017 and 2018.