The final Hobbit installment is the most anticipated film to come out this particular Wednesday. Literally no one, not even director Peter Jackson, knows how it will end. Yet we here at Fool’s Gold have obtained the ultimate in sneak-peeking exclusives that no one in Hollywood wants you to know!
SPOILER ALERT: Reading the rest of this column will make your scalped movie tickets worthless. All the hours you spent crafting a costume? Toss ’em down the Cracks of Doom. You won’t be able to attend the midnight showing, because possessing these secrets will make everyone avoid you even more than your authentic hobbit foot odor. So proceed with caution, dearest readers. Caution!
If you recall, our hero, Bilbo Baggins (tragically played by not-Morgan Freeman), had just accidentally set the dragon Smaug (voiced by Sherlock Holmes) onto the populace of Laketown (played by Minneapolis). Smaug’s breath was about to liquefy everyone like a blazing Ebola outbreak, which is what the evil Lord Sauron (voiced by Smaug) actually wanted all along.
Meanwhile, the aspiring dwarf king Thorin Oakenshield (played, confusingly, by a human being) desperately wants some pretty rock that he just won’t shut up about. We presume he desires to gift it to a hot elf-girl all his own. To illustrate Thorin’s pinings, Jackson craftily cuts to a scene from another time, where a legendary human warrior finally mates with a tall cat-lizard-alien on another planet by connecting their braided brain-hairs. Thorin’s quest is even more daunting; not only does his beard lack braided brain-hair, but he is a full four feet shorter than the totally hot elf-girl Tauriel (played by a totally hot elf-girl). Furthermore, Tauriel yearns to make chromosomally-confused babies with Thorin’s homedwarf Kili (played by Fili).
Now EVERYBODY in Middle-earth wants a hot elf-girl for Christmas. Even the orcs (played by what’s left of the Olsen twins’ careers) desire the wooing power of Thorin’s pretty rock. They muster entire armies to take it from him, even though he doesn’t have it.
Oh, sidebar note: Smaug the dragon dies before all this rock-blocking happens. So he’s out of the picture until the unannounced sequel, where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle explains how the death was faked. For now, we want you to believe that he was shot by some guy named Bard and his mystical black arrow (both voiced by Sauron).
All that is mere foreplay to the 45 minutes where the armies stake out the best campsites. We get a stunning 20-minute panoramic sweep of a local map. A 17-minute strategic debriefing on five screens, Brady Bunch-style. A half-hour gambling montage where one prisoner eats 50 hard-boiled eggs. Gandalf the wizard (played by himself) puts on a 12-minute joint-forces fireworks show set to orchestrated rock music. Then we get an intense impromptu swordfight using marshmallow sticks as rapiers.
This drama is voiced over by Bombur, the ever-hungry dwarf, cataloguing every single way to prepare shrimp. This distracts Bilbo from assembling his machine gun, polishing his boots, and scrubbing the barracks with a toothbrush. (Yes, Bilbo is still in this film. We were surprised to remember him, too.)
Bilbo breaks back into the action during the awesome battle scene, which looks just like a video game on your living room TV only you don’t get to control anything and you can’t pause it to run to the bathroom. THAT JUST MAKES IT MORE INTENSE. Fili (played by Kili) dies, as does just about everyone because that’s what happens when you give sharp objects to 800,000 males and one hot elf-chick.
Even Bilbo dies. Yup, the same Bilbo who plays an old and cranky hobbit in The Lord of the Rings. Jackson gets fuzzy on the details here, but we’re pretty sure he (Bilbo) is a zombie. (Maybe Jackson too.) He better not turn out to be a vampire because we’re sick of that crap.
Then Aaron Sorkin guest-directs a political segment. There’s a recall election to install a new dwarf king who understands marriage is between a dwarf man and a nice, bearded dwarf woman.
After the Scooby-Doo ending and the Thelma and Louise ending, Bilbo finally trundles home with his share of the box office revenue loaded onto a pony. When the lights go up at THE END (or however it concludes; remember, literally no one knows), everyone at the theater will stay in their seats because nowadays there’s always ANOTHER ending after the credits. This time, the scene will show a mysterious monoculus oracle (played by Samuel L. Jackson) announcing a suite of fifteen four-part episodes from “The Silmarillion.”
Please act surprised.
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