The final “Hobbit” movie — and, Smaug willing, the last Middle Earth movie ever — slumps its way into theaters today. Don’t be surprised if audiences greet it with an exasperated huff: They’ve been asked to spend way too long trouncing around Middle Earth, following the adventures of ol’ Tiny Man Whatshisface.
“The Hobbit” films are a drag — they’re too long and too boring, which is what happens when you stretch a simple 320-page book for kids into three engorged movies. All told, the movies take up 513 minutes (with extended scenes), some 8½ hours of CGI-watching and dwarf-counting. It’s long enough to read the entire book — and then some.
In fact, it’s long enough to do a lot of things. Here is a partial list of things you could have accomplished instead of seeing all three “Hobbit” movies:
Maine is basically one big Hobbiton, right?ScreenshotDrive from Manhattan to Bag End (9 hours 16 minutes), which is just a road in Maine and not a hobbit hole
Burn 3,744 calories hiking (wizard and/or fellowship optional)
Or, burn 4,658 calories rollerblading — if hiking is too hobbit-ish for you
This color matches with one ring to rule them all.File Name a new line of nail polish (which apparently takes eight hours)
Yo, Gandalf, how about you Uber that bird ride to hurry this thing up?ScreenshotDevelop a hit app, though a simple and silly one, like Yo (created in eight hours)
Read the original Tolkien “Hobbit” book (based on average reading speed), with still THREE HOURS left over to read most of the first “Harry Potter” book
You can take pee breaks while making chili too.Michael Sofronski/NY PostMake your own elevensies by roasting a turkey or slow-cooking chili in a crockpot (each of which takes eight hours)
Binge-watch the entire run of “Black Mirror” (seven hours) on Netflix, plus three episodes of “Parks and Recreation” for comic relief
Create an epic prank in the snow (the creator says that one took 8½ hours)
Russian: good enough for Mickey Rourke, good enough for you.ReutersTake four Level 1 Russian classes (eight hours), with time left over to try to translate some Elvish into Russian
Now, if you watched the whole “LOTR”/“Hobbit” trilogy, clocking in at a whopping 20½ hours, you could have instead:
Learned to play the ukulele (or just about anything in 20 hours, according to this book)
The beautiful Hudson Valley beats Mordor any day.Courtesy of Scenic HudsonWalked from 14th Street to Beacon, NY, in the Hudson Valley
Or, driven from Manhattan to Sioux Falls, SD (21 hours)
Gollum bookends are also good for beating life back into your numb body after watching all these movies.FileRead (most of) Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy (26 hours)
Just beware of criminals dressed in hobbit costumes in New Zealand’s Times Square.screenshotFlown to the actual Middle-Earth, New Zealand, whose slogan is actually “Home of Middle-Earth” (20 hours, 40 minutes)
