Last night, I went to the midnight showing of the long-awaited movie, The Hobbit. I’ve spent weeks being really, really excited, and I planned to write a super opinionated review of the movie today. The only trouble is, I’m not sure the movie managed to evoke much of any sort of emotion out of me. I didn’t hate it. I don’t think I loved it. Anyway, potentially there are spoilers after if you’ve not seen the movie, so don’t continue unless you want to know things about things and stuff.

So here’s the thing. The Hobbit is a pretty short book. There’s not really a ton to go on. And yet, they decided to split the thing into three parts. A fact that I was aware of, but kept trying not to think about because the implications were horrifying. And so they were. As far as being stretched thin goes, I’m pretty sure this movie knows how Bilbo felt after all those years with the One Ring, because there’s a lot of relatively obvious filler going on.

I don’t have the best memory in the world, but The Hobbit isn’t exactly a complicated book. I spent a lot of the time cocking my head trying to remember if there was any mention of things at all in the book. Obviously I expected embellishment, stretching the thing out over three movies, but like I said, I’d been in denial. I’m not a Tolkein expert, and I like to think a lot of that filler came from other places in the universe, but I’m not sure they should be tinkering with a perfectly decent story.

I assume it was both an effort to suck more money out of the thing (let’s be realistic, people) and also to give themselves a lot of space to build the Tolkien universe, as envisioned by Jackson. I’m sure it’s appreciated by a lot of fans, but I’m still waiting to see if all of the extra additions end up stringing together to be worth anything.

I’m not even upset, though, really. Mostly I have no idea what to think. Maybe I’m getting too old for midnight premieres (NEVER!) but I just have no real opinion of the thing. Perhaps I’ll just have to wait until all three pieces are out to see where they’re going with this.

So there you have it. My non-opinion. Sorry I didn’t have any ranting for you all, as I know you’ve grown accustomed to it.