Like Being Stretched Into Three Movies
I was vaguely aware that sometime after the Peter Jackson's LotR movies came out, that The Hobbit book was made into not one, but three movies. The memes about "being stretched thin, like one book made into three movies" were memorable. Somehow I didn't take note of the movies themselves though. I saw some movie clips on Twitter recently that looked like LotR, but it wasn't. Then I remembered The Hobbit. So, I watched all three movies. They were each quite unremarkable. I'm not enough of a movie critic to be able to understand exactly what was missing, wrong or broken. I don't think it was any one thing. I liked the actors. The story was fine (obviously). It was just ... ehh.
My wife has read The Hobbit a handful of times (she almost sounded boastful when she said, "five times!"). She was quite dismayed at the "creative liberties" taken by the movies. But that wasn't the basis of my criticism, since I've not read the book.
I wonder if there are "extended editions" for each of the three Hobbit movies? That's a scary thought.
Speaking of The Lord of the Rings, I'm now reading my 7-book millennium edition to the kids at bedtime. We finally wrapped up our eschatology book. A funny thing happened when I closed that book for the last time. A asked me, right away, almost as though he had been waiting all this time for this very moment:
