We watched the second Hobbit movie last night and it was truly awful. It starts right after the Eagle rescue and ends with them inside the Lonely Mountain, and gets almost everything wrong. I could make a list but it’s really everything.

This movie felt like a huge wasted opportunity. One of the best short novels in English literature and they decided to just make up an alternate version.

Why is Legolas in this at all? Why is the Master of Laketown a villain with an evil sidekick? Why is Bard a barge pilot? Why is the entire time in Laketown so … weird? Why are Fili and Kili left behind in Laketown? What, in short, is going on here? Who looks at Tolkien and says, cute story but what if we changed everything.

Yes, we’re going to watch the third one. Why? Because one cannot simply look away from a train wreck.