The Hobbit Marathon

My first year of dental school I had a rather extended Christmas break.  With little homework, and no job, I found myself sitting around doing very little for nearly three weeks.  I decided I would tackle the Lord of the Rings Extended editions, and my brothers, and soon my parents got in on all the fun.  After that it became something of a Christmas tradition of mine ever since then!

For the past two years my Christmas' have been especially fun with the release of The Hobbit movies.  This year was both fun and sad because we got a Hobbit movie, but it was also the last one we were going to get!

I thought this was pretty funny, especially since we already experienced this with the Harry Potter series!  Speaking of Harry Potter, I'm still sad that we don't get new books for that, but that's a different story.  I started looking into pre-buying tickets pretty early, and I randomly discovered that Megaplex was having a Hobbit marathon prior to the release of the new one.  They've been doing marathoning events for other series like this, and although I generally support exciting movie events, I'd never done one of these before.  Anyway, I posted something on Facebook, and I actually got a friend who wanted to go with me!

I put off buying tickets for a while because I still wasn't sure I could handle that many consecutive hours of Tolkien.  I finally decided I was just going to do it, especially considering I wouldn't really get another chance.

I didn't "dress up," but I did wear my elf ears!

If you know me, you know I love going to the theater.  We started at 1:00 pm, and went till about 10:00 pm.  They gave us 15-20 minute breaks between movies, and we got in on a Hobbit Marathon deal where you could refill a large popcorn and soda for free the entire movie.  It ended up being exactly what I needed.  Because we were in the theater, I got to just relax and enjoy nearly nine hours of movies!  Just for fun, here are the movie lengths.
Unexpected Journey - 2 hours and 49 minutes; Desolation of Smaug - 2 hours and 42 minutes; Battle of Five Armies - 2 hours and 24 minutes for a grand total of 7 hours and 55 minutes.  Huzzah!

I loved the whole thing!  It was a little long, but I loved the movies, and the Diet Coke, and it also gave me time to catch up with my friend Kyle.  Kyle and I went to High School together, and really hadn't seen each other since we had our ten year high school reunion.  (I know, that makes me feel really old!)  So apparently he's a huge Tolkien fan, and it was so fun to watch these movies with someone who appreciates them like I do!  Anyway, I'm already looking forward to getting the extended edition, and having the marathon for the ages!