Opinion of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Believe me, they do take a backseat. They're still there a little, of course - it is supposed to be story for youngs.

The issue of course being that the specific sort of youngs for whom The Hobbit was written are the not the same sort for whom these movies are being made.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Believe me, they do take a backseat. They're still there a little, of course - it is supposed to be story for youngs.

The issue of course being that the specific sort of youngs for whom The Hobbit was written are the not the same sort for whom these movies are being made.

As someone who had a brief stint attempting to learn Quenya in high school, I can understand that. I'm much more lax about it now. I make an attempt to judge entertainment with an open mind. I'll relent that I likely would have joined the angry mob when the purity of the adaptation was so sullied in my dorkier days. But you don't spend hundreds of millions of dollars to create three excessively long movies that will please no one but people who have made it through the Silmarillion.

And making it through the Silmarillion is only the beginning of it...

I still need to reread 'The Shibboleth of Fëanor' one of these days.