How many millions of people before me have made the "An Unexpected Trilogy" joke?

If it makes the movies shorter, I'm all for it. I almost peed myself during Two Towers because I didn't want to leave and miss anything. When they flooded Saruman's tower, it made it even worse.

Go, Bart, go! We're #1! Gimme a P!!!!

I think with adding in some other Tolkien tales that tie into the 3rd Age, two films was going to be fine. Three is excessive and suggests the lack of restraint that led to an unforgivably boring four hour King Kong film.

That said, I'll be seeing all of them, even if he makes it into six movies.

It'll depend on how bored I am around the time of release. When I thought it was going to be just one movie, it was a "definite" for me. When it became a two=parter, I said, "What the hell."

A trilogy seems like overkill and I've lost a lot of my casual interest in the film.

BTW, how many of you maniacs will try to watch all three Hobbit movies and then all three LotR movies when they're all on Blu Ray? How many will try with the extended versions?

Steve made an "Unexpurgated Journey" joke. (Nice one, Steve!)

I am going to do a quote-fix like this every single time you mention King Kong, from now until one of us dies.

Will they be referred to as The Hobbitses?

Wasn't being wrong once enough, Doot?

Not if I ever want to catch up with you.

ZING!

Don't remember the novel being all that long.
Jackson dropped some characters and scenes in adapting the LOTR novels for the screen;no reason he couldn't do the same for the Hobbit.

There you go again. What can one expect from a Claremont fan though?

I think this whole splitting up films into two or more parts can be blamed on Kill Bill. That one did pretty well and then they did it with the last Harry Potter book and that was successful too. For better or worse, I think you're going to see it more and more, especially on things where there is a built-in fanbase.

This will be the greatest film trilogy of all times.

With Kill Bill, the material justified it -- these newer films seem to be motivated by the cash-in. If a movie has a legitimate reason to be spread out, I have no issue with it.

I thought the last Harry Potter benefited greatly from the additional screen time. I have not read and never will read any Twilight books, but it seemed like from looking at them they were all about the same length; stretching the finale of that series into two films was probably overkill. Not as much as taking a short story like the Hobbit and making it into a 9 hour epic though.

I've never read the Harry Potter books, but my wife likes the movies, so I saw the final two in theaters -- they felt like they were well-paced and nothing seemed overly padded out.

We were just hoping the "Bitch" line would make it into part 2, and it did, in spades.

I'm totally unfamiliar with the novel. Everything I've heard about it makes it sound like a series of barely connected adventures.

Is it a single story or a series of adventures? If it's a series of adventures, they could easily expand those tales into feature length.