Life Review Facilitated Through Movie Review of: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

As I sat in the theater I was captivated by the thought that: "there was a time when I would've been anxiously counting down the days until this movie was released - now I could barely be bothered to see it over a month after it came out." Now I'd like to explain what I've come up with. As a young girl growing up in the rural plains of Alberta with three older sisters and three older brothers, very few proclivities were formed through my own discovery. Automatically the movies I liked, the music I listened to and the clothes I wore were determined by my siblings in an effort to garner relativity with them. Midst my plagiarized personality was a distinct love of all things Tolkien. My older brother loved the books, and although I was always too lazy to read them myself, he also had the animated feature films - a medium I could embrace wholeheartedly. I remember the dulcet tones of Glenn Yarbrough narrating the adventurous quests with folkloric song. The heaviness of the content softly contoured with the intricate (albeit off-putting) animation. I spent many a 'sick day' laying on a couch, drinking apple juice from the cardboard, Sunrype box watching The Hobbit and its literary family brought alive on screen. Flash forward to my late teens. 2001. The release of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings. The excitement was palpable and the aftermath measured in merchandise, soundtracks, figurines and homemade t-shirts. Didn't we all feel like we were on the quest right along side them every December? The anticipation in the months leading up to the release of the next film brought with it a surge of imagination and excitement. I was never disappointed. Flash forward to 2012. The first installment of the Hobbit is released. But the anticipation has waned. I'm excited to see it, but I realize that I've barely thought about it. I walk away feeling a coating of mediocrity covering my cinematic experience. So much so that with the release of the second installment, I had no real desire to see it at all. Now that I've seen it, I'm afraid to say that my indifference was justified. Why would you have CGI orcs when you just painted up a bunch of hobos in the first 3? Their cartoonish and instill annoyance rather than fear. The language is beautiful, but why do the actors have to deliver every line like they've just passed a kidney stone? Everyone is so severe, surely we can conjure up some more levity than a giant spider getting stabbed brutally in the... in the...face? I wanna say face, but I fear that's not entymologically accurate. What changed?! (Sigh) I fear the answer might be as simple as it is painful...have I 'grown up'. Now, don't misunderstand me. In NO way do I mean to disparage or call into question the maturity of those who maintain their constancy in love of Middle Earth. Quite the contrary; I miss the power of Middle Earth. I miss the days when Tolkien was fodder for my imagination and showed me how just deeply an imagination could run. Now, I'm disillusioned. I'm no better than the hipsters who watch Japanese documentaries on the drying properties of paint and walk away thinking it's the most prolific thing they've ever seen. Have I put on cinematic heirs? Or am I repeating the same migratory pattern that lead me to liking Tolkien in the first place? Regarless - Peter Jackson, you're losing me.