"The Hobbit"

This morning when I woke up, I spent my entire shower thinking about "Lord of the Rings." I had just recently seen Ian McKellan's guest-starring bit on "Extras," and that video, like a madeleine in Proust or a hatch implosion on "Lost," suddenly led me on a brief acid flashback recall of watching "Lord of the Rings" for the first time. It's been more than six years since "Fellowship of the Ring" came out, which means it's been more than four years since the trilogy was finished. This was mind boggling for me, because somehow, in my mind, "Lord of the Rings" always seemed a little bit new. Maybe it's because none of the rip-offs ever matched up - the Harry Potter films are good but can't match the epic sweep (the cinematic Hogwarts always feels like a movie set; Middle-Earth felt like a genuine land far away from normal human life, and that's not just a New Zealand joke); other big-budget trilogies (Spider-Man and Pirates) ended with awful whimpers, whereas "Lord of the Rings" gained momentum the more it went along.

The Hollywood cycle has turned - just a little bit, I think, but enough that "Lord of the Rings" can now stand on its own as a magnificent oddity. A movie like "Troy" is unimaginable without "Lord of the Rings" - just look at the trailer, with its obnoxiously large CGI masses, it's uncomfortable wide-angle close-ups, that shot of two armies racing at each other which is taken directly from the very beginning of "The Fellowship of the Ring." Yet "Troy" sucked, just like "The Golden Compass" sucked, and "King Arthur," and now Hollywood is focusing on superheroes. At the same time, epic stories that used to be obvious movie catnip are more and more being funneled to television - HBO has started things moving on an adaption of "A Song of Ice and Fire." It makes sense, really - you can just fit so much more into a TV series. Then again, it's interesting to note that, with the full unabridged director's cuts, "The Lord of the Rings" runs longer than season 5 of "The Wire" - and "The Wire" never had a moment as glorious as the start of "The Two Towers," when the camera swoops down to follow Gandalf battle the Balrog all the way to the center of the earth.

Well, now it's official: Guillermo Del Toro, fantasist auteur du jour (who actually, in this picture at least, bears a striking resemblance to pre-Slimfast Peter Jackson), is directing a duology of "The Hobbit" - one movie based on the book, and one movie that will bridge the 60 years between "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings." God only knows what they're going to do with that second movie, but oddly, that's the one that I'm much more excited for. By the time both films come out, we will have had a genuine decade of Tolkien Chic. Part of me thinks it's crazy that Del Toro is making such a commitment (4 years); part of me is excited, because his vision is just as weird as Peter Jackson, with maybe just a bit more playfulness, appropriate for the more loosey-goosey "Hobbit." Part of me just really, really hopes that Warwick Davis gets a part in the movie.