Originally, I didn’t see The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring movie by choice. I was about 13 at the time, and my mother dragged me along with her. I didn’t really want to go, but went anyway. She said that I “owed” her for all the crappy movies she’d taken me to through my life because she didn’t actually want to see any of them, she was just being a good parent.

So, I saw the movie with her because guilt is one my family’s biggest motivational tools. I really liked the movie, and was mad that it didn’t conclude the story. I was even upset to find out there were TWO more of these films, and downright distressed when I discovered that they were coming out one and two years from that point.

I decided to read the books, and started The Hobbit the next weekend.

The Lord of the Rings movies are epic, and I mean that in two ways. They are epic in the most literal sense: they are extremely long movies. The other way I mean it is in size and scope: there are very few movie adaptations of books that cover as much rich material as the LotR movies do with JRR Tolkien’s huge fantasy.

The Hobbit films were rumored to be coming out not long after the original films, but the buzz about them didn’t pan out until much later. I reread it in preparation of its release (at the time rumored to be in 2009) but it turned out I wouldn’t have had to reread it until 2012. It was good that I did, though. I’d made up my own ending to the book, apparently, and read an entirely different ending than the one I remembered.

Anyway, the film: I didn’t expect The Hobbit films to happen with all problems, like the screen writing and directing changes, and I was a little nervous about what I was hearing: The Hobbit being stretched into three films didn’t sound like it was possible, or was necessary, since they were ADDING material.

Well. ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ really put my mind at ease. It was just as good as the original LotR films, and I really enjoyed some of the stuff they added. I had also forgotten how much I missed having a movie that covered the size and scope of the original films. Movies that cinematically beautiful and that complex don’t come around a lot.

The new trailer for the second film, ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ came out recently, and I’m really excited about it. Check it out:

The only thing so far that’s a little off-putting? I always pronounced the dragon’s name, Smaug, as ‘Smawg’ not as ‘Smoug’. ‘Aw’ as in ‘awful’ and not ‘ou’ as in ‘ouch’, if that makes sense. But I think I’ll be able to overlook it! 😉

Tagged: authors: jrr tolkien, books gone hollywood, books: lord of the rings series, books: the hobbit, genre: fantasy