So after bankruptcy, a change of director, strikes, a change of law and an extra movie, the first of The Hobbit films is finally here. I'm a Tolkien nerd - The Hobbit is one of the books I can first remember reading, and I read Lord of the Rings every year for a while. I'd not gone back to either book in more than a decade, but I'm enjoying a reread of The Hobbit and spent a happy hour today browsing the appendices at the end of Return of the King.
Doing this has reminded me of two things: firstly, I love Tolkien; secondly, there's so much material in The Hobbit and the background of Middle Earth you could easily make another trilogy. Whether Peter Jackson should have is another thing. To paraphrase one of my friends, it's hard to see how it's not going to mess with the story's narrative arc.
