I gave Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' another read recently, paying much attention to where in the story might be the best place to split it into two movies. It's not as easy a task as I thought.

Many times I’m what you call a fair weather reader. What that means — at least the way I define it — is that I oftentimes will be finally driven to read a fine work of literature once hearing word it’s being used as source material for a movie. This happened when The Lord of the Rings was announced many years ago, and I tore through all four books in record time, first starting with The Hobbit, before the first film made it to theaters. After watching and being mesmerized by the incredible trilogy on both page and screen, I found I wanted to do something I’d not wanted to do with a book every before: to read it all again.

Last month I had my opportunity to start the series over again, as my son really wanted me to read him The Hobbit. Weeks later, we’ve finally finished it up. In the process, though, I made a point of trying to figure out one thing: where in the book will the first movie end and the second begin?

In case you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on with The Hobbit movie, it’s being split into two separate films, even though the source material is one book and of fewer pages than any of the Lord of the Rings books. The first movie is set to be released this December 14th, subtitled “An Unexpected Journey”; the second movie will some next year about the same time, subtitled “There and Back Again.”

My first reaction to that bit of news was that this was a blatantly abusive money grab, the interested parties grasping at every possible opportunity to make fisfulls of cash off the francise. This being their last opportunity to do so — and since the first trilogy was so well received — that’s not an unreasonable conclusion to make. (Though there’s still The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales out there as source material, they’re not licenses the studio has rights to.) However, after a little digging around, it seems there’s more to this split than just making money, or so the directors say.

I say “directors” because, at the start, Guillermo del Toro was set to the direct the films and later bailed, though both he and current director Peter Jackson have both stated the same thing: The Hobbit needs to be told in two films. At first the plan was to use the second movie merely as a “bridge film” into the the first Lord of the Rings story — The Fellowship of the Ring — but del Toro later decided against that, stating he believed The Hobbit was a dense enough story to take up two movies on its own.

As I read The Hobbit with my son, I paid careful attention to where in the book I felt a clean break could be made for two films to exist. Of course, my first instinct was to try to line the break up with about halfway through the book. So, my first guess was at the point where Bilbo and the dwarves meet with Beorn. In reading this moment in the book, it makes for what could possibly be an excellent moment for a recap to what occurred in the previous movie. If you’re familiar with the book, it’s here where Galdalf tells the tale of the journey from The Shire up through the rescue with the eagles, to Beorn. He tells this story to Beorn — a character who not once appears in the ’70s cartoon — as he blows elaborate smoke rings about the interior of Beorn’s abode. I could picture the directors using this point of the story as a place to recap to the viewers what had happened in the previous movie, as smoke rings danced about the room and formed the opening sequence. But … I now think this is more suited for what we’d expect out of a more elaborate cartoon version of the book and not something we’d see from Peter Jackson and company.

All that said, I’m not entirely convinced Beorn’s carrock and house aren’t a decent place to split the movie. However, I’ve read quite a few things that lead me to believing there are better places to split this story. For instance, del Toro has stated that he originally picked a stage in the book where Bilbo’s relationship with the dwarves took a significant turn, for the split to the second movie. This point in the book could be up to quite a bit of interpretation. Is it when Bilbo took charge and rescued the dwarves from the spiders? Is it when Bilbo pushed on through his fear and confronted Smaug? Is it when Thorin turned against Bilbo’s reasoning and instead decided to go to war?

There are also several forum posts that state a good point that I hadn’t considered before: Will viewers of the first movie feel cheated if they’re not rewarded with the introduction of Smaug? Should we at least see Bilbo confront Smaug before the credits roll?

The other bit that seems to support the idea of at least Smaug’s introduction is the idea that the second movie may still serve as a bridge into Fellowship of the Ring, adding in many details of the story that the books never really get into. For example, the second movie may get into aspects of where Galdalf took off to, with the battle against the Necromancer (Dol Guldur) with the council. It may get into what happened within those years between the end of The Hobbit — as far as what happened in the book — and what we know already of what happened between then and Fellowship of the Ring, such as Aragorn’s watch over the Shire.

After reading the entire book a second time — and it being fresh in my head again — I’m torn of where I believe a decent place for a split would occur. White I believe Beorn’s home or the conclusion of the spider escape would make for an even split of the existing printed material, I can see where at least an introduction of Smaug would be a nice conclusion to reward and entice viewers into a second movie. If that’s where things split, the major point of the second movie being the The Battle of Five Armies, then we can look forward to one hell of an epic Five Armies battle sequence. However, the lead-up to and follow-up from that sequence could be utterly boring and drawn out, making it one hell of a snooze fest. If the Dol Guldur battle is added to the second movie, it’s quite possible that could make things very exciting, though it’d likely consist of 90% or more made up, non J.R.R.-envisioned material.

There’s also the possibility that the first movie will actually contain the entire first book’s story, if you interpret what del Toro and Jackson have said on this topic differently. At one point del Toro has said that he wanted to tell the same story — or at least part of the story — from a different viewpoint. It’s difficult to know exactly what he meant by that, though I can’t imagine he meant, “let’s tell the same exact story all over again, except let’s just do the second movie all about what Galdalf saw and did throughout the story.” While most of that material would be cool to see on-screen, I’m not sure it’d make for a very compelling second movie, especially when most people familiar with The Hobbit story had already seen what they’d paid to see in the first movie.

After chewing on all the forum posts and the hints from the directors of these two films, I’ve come to the conclusion that the best place to break the films would likely come after Bilbo rescues his dwarven companions from the spiders. It not only leaves for a tense and epic sequence to end things off, but it spells out what I’d consider a turning point in his relationship with Thorin and company. It was in that moment that Bilbo showed much more courage than he had previously, and he’d rescued the dwarves from a fate not caused by his own carelessness (unlike with what happened with the troll trio). It’s also just about halfway through the book, and leaves for one heck of a great second movie, without having to pad it with material that had never been written about before.

What’re your thoughts on the two-movie split? What moment in the book do you feel makes for the best split for a second movie? Vote away …

Photo Credit: Warner Bros.