Thoughts on Hobbitses

My building was doing testing on its fire alarms this afternoon, so I decided that made a good excuse to get out of the house and go see The Hobbit. I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings trilogy quite a bit, so I expected to like this one, too, and was not disappointed. I’m looking forward to the next installment, although I have a hard time seeing how Peter Jackson gets two more three-hour movies out of the remaining material, appendices or no appendices. ( Spoilers ahead. )

I think most of the criticisms I’ve seen of the movie are fair — character development sacrificed for action, too long (as mentioned above), a lack of diversity (a problem, to be fair, that’s inherent in the source, and at least Jackson made baby steps toward fixing it by bringing in a couple of female characters). I could also have done with fewer fat jokes. But most of these things didn’t bother me while I was actually watching it, just on reflection.

I'm glad we only have to wait a year for the next one. This thing Peter Jackson does, filming his movie series all at once to minimize waits and actor drift, is a good practice and more filmmakers should do it.