10 Reasons You Should Give The Hobbit A Second Chance

5. A Film Cliffhanger That Works?!

Cliffhangers in films are always tricky; if a writer's not careful it can look like a lazy get-out-of-a-plot-hole-free card or a desperate way to set-up a sequel. In TV an open ending will be addressed the next week, but in cinema there's going to be potential years between installments; it makes the ten month wait for more Game Of Thrones seem minimal. The problem is that, as films conventionally need to work on their own, it's hard to get cliffhangers to work. There are exceptions, but most end up feeling rushed; The Matrix Reloaded, which had sequel Revolutions due only six months later, ends with the most anticlimactic reveal imaginable, shoe-horning in a plot point from a hour previously as a 'big reveal'. Being an adventure that rarely lets up, finding a points to turn The Hobbit in two/three is tricky. The Desolation Of Smaug's ending is particularly cut fine, coming essentially in the middle of one extended sequence. But as the film has placed so much emphasis on getting to the Lonely Mountain, having a cliffhanger appearing just before a new step of the story begins (the repercussions of the dwarves arrival), it just about works.