i didn't expect the hobbit to be that long

This is a pure example of capitalism at work. Jackson took a single novel that might have been possible to film as a single move, and padded it out by adding other Tolkien material so that he could stretch into three movies.

The Hobbit story was originally a (fairly short) Kids book,and Lord of the Rings was a Young Adult trilogy sequel..The success of LOTR (and the extended editions of each of those 3 Movies) told the producers there was more gold than from a Dragon's Hoard to be mined out of more Movies set in Middle Earth..with the result we now have another 3 Year cycle of movies based on a shorter original work than LOTR..Characters that didn't originally feature in the book (but come from Tolkien's extensive back story for the Middle Earth world and LOTR) are popping up to give more depth to these movies,giving scope to make them longer.

Hello dear ! Well I don't know if you watched the Lord of The Rings movies that came before The Hobbit, but the dvd editions are 3 and a half hour longs (each !) on the extended edition (as far as I know the regular ones are about 3 hours as well), so this was to be expected.

For me, I wasn't surprised about the length of the movie because this is usually its length looking at the LOTR trilogy. :) Maybe that movie wasn't the type of your daughter. If it was an animated film, then maybe she gets to see it until the end.

I fully expected the Hobbit to be 3 hours long since all of the Lord of the Rings movies were 3 hours long, and Peter Jackson seems to be fond of 3 hour long movies anyway. I've seen it twice now, and the first time was at the first midnight showing available. So it was like 3AM before we left the theater, and we had an hour drive back home. Oh, and I had a 9AM class in the morning. Have I mentioned that I'm a hardcore fan? lol

Right. It was really very long, as if the director had all the time in the world (in a positive way). Each scene was carefully made and developed. I really loved it. I'm excited for the next part. But, i think it'd be a long wait before the next part of the series is shown.

Wow, a movie that is three hours long? I don't think I have the patience to sit through a movie that length. I remember when I was younger, my parents always brought me and my sisters to watch Hindi movies that are three hours long but there was an intermission in the middle of the movie so that we can stretch our legs. Was there an intermission for this movie?

I haven't seen it yet, my friend told me how long it was and I was a little surprised, the book was so short compared to the LotR movies and he's making 3 movies out of it! So totally not about the money right? Oh your poor daughter must have been so tired, they should have started the movie at 6pm instead since they knew it was so long

I have not seen the movie, but as far as I can tell, not many people have actually read the book. Those who have probably didn't understand it from the reviews I've heard. The book and the movie were both about Bilbo Baggins and the adventure he went on.