Tonight I went with a group of friends to see the second Hobbit movie.

I bypassed the concession stand and headed to the theater so that I could stake out a seat in the middle.

Plus, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t have to get up in the middle of a three hour movie after drinking a large soda.

Now to the movie. I could be a Tolkien purist and complain that the movie did not exactly follow the book, but I do understand the reasons why they are adding a lot of additional material and spreading the story out over three movies.

Of course, one of the big reasons is the money. They can make a lot more money with three movies instead of just one.

The Hobbit was written as a children’s book and did not have the rich detail that the later Lord of the Rings books had. One movie could very easily cover the story that is told in the book. But, you would have a movie with very little variety in the characters. You would have no female parts, no love stories, etc..

I do like the way that they are adding in some of the additional information. The additional story line of how evil is rising in the world is very intriguing. Most of this is covered in additional notes to the Lord of the Rings, and there are other Tolkien writings about Middle-Earth. Some of these have been published posthumously.

However, I do wish that they would stick a little closer to the main story line of the dwarfs. Some of the additions and departures from the original story are quite exciting, but some of them are a bit annoying or far-fetched. Especially if you have read the Hobbit a time or two or much more.

Since the movie has been out for some time we didn’t see anyone dressed up as characters from the movie, although I understand opening night in many places was quite interesting to see.

One of my friends posted a picture of how she painted her nails for when she went to see the Hobbit movie.

I am now looking forward to the third movie in the series. It will be interesting to see how they tie everything together and further fill in the back story of the Lord of the Rings.

Now to find my copy of the Hobbit and add it to my to-read again stack.

Steven