The Final Hobbit

It was a happy time; it was a sad time. The viewing of the last Hobbit movie with my brother Ryan. Ryan and I have the tradition of going to see the Tolkien movies in the theatre (and it's usually one of my only movie theatre visits I have each year), ever since the Fellowship of the Ring, the first of the Lord of the Rings movies came out. We didn't mean for it to become a tradition back in 2001 (before I graduated high school!) when we first decided to check out the Lord of the Rings movie, which we knew nothing about. We came out of the first movie with gaping mouths and widening minds to envelope the world of Middle-earth. We knew that story was a good one; one that was deeper and more wonderful than we had imagined. That is when I turned to the books and fell in love.

I rarely go to movies these days, but as I sat through the previews I was reminded how terrible the movies are now, and very few are worth going to. Even though this Hobbit movie does not capture all the essence of reading J.R.R. Tolkien's delightful story, and mostly captures action scenes and battles, I would rather have The Hobbit movies be wildly popular to the masses then some of these other movies that look so immoral and just plain bad.

As C.S. Lewis said, the world doesn't need more Christian books, it needs more writers who are Christian. And that goes for movies too. I would much rather books by Tolkien and Lewis be made into movies, even if the storytellers add their own flare and add a character or expand a battle. That means people who are not Christians are going to see movies that have deep Christian undertones and themes, and might think or talk about what certain things mean later. And then, who knows? They might even read the book (books are always better).