Review: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. I felt like this could have been a lot shorter. Yes, there were fun parts and OMG SMAUG (awesome!) but it feels like all we're doing is bridging some sort of gap. Yes, we're putting in all the details from the book, and there is technically more story after Smaug turns Lake Town into so much rubble, but truthfully, couldn't we have jumped like half of this, put in the stuff from after the destruction, and thus skipped having to have a third movie?

Well, we could have, but truthfully, then it doesn't square with its predecessor (or sequel which was made a movie first) as a trilogy.

In a way, this is so capitalistic, it's sickening, but in another way, it makes it easier to skip the stuff in the middle by simply watching the first and third movie when they inevitably come out as a DVD boxed set.

Anyway, my .02 cents on the subject of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

We are definitely raising a Geek

I am the proud co-owner of a four year old. I say co-owner because she is my niece and if I said I owned her, my brother (her dad) and my mother (her Mimi) would probably take serious issue. Ownership question aside, my niece is a geek. She probably does not know it yet, but she is just the same.

To illustrate, we are currently working on letter and word recognition. A. B. C. D. Apple. Bird. Cat. Dragon. Yes, dragon. She recognizes the word when she sees it and takes great pride in pointing out the dragons she recognizes on the Dungeons & Dragons poster I have hung on my bedroom door.

How did this come about? Simple, she was raised by geeks. My mother (her Mimi) has always encouraged targeted long-term acquisition. For her, it was Swarovski crystal and porcelain roses. My older brother collects the cartoon character Tigger from The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. My little brother has a heavy preference for video games (he was playing Tecmo Football at three). Me, I collect dragons and comic books. She's still too young for me to trust with my comic books, most of which are older than she is, and thus valuable enough for me to wait past the hamfisted stage of her development. The influences of each of us can be seen in her choices of activities:

She uses a dragon poster to practice reading and color recognition. She knows the Tigger Song word for word. She screams when she does not get a turn at Dance Dance Revolution while others are playing.

There are definitely people who would think now is a good time to cut off the geekishness at the pass through the use of the normalizing effect of television; however, in our family we watch CSI, Bones, Burn Notice, and Fringe, so I do not think that will help in any way. Besides in this day and age, I think raising a geek is something to aspire to. Now to start on her brother. He's only 8 months old, but you really should start young.