Movies.com invites a TORn staffer to share his thoughts on “The Hobbit” every other Monday.

What makes two films based on The Hobbit one of, if not the most highly anticipated film of both 2012 and 2013 and potentially one of the biggest film smashes in history?

People simply love Middle-earth. Generations of people. Many, many millions of people.

Grandparents and parents have handed it off to children and the proliferation of genre culture has only increased the audience that looks at Middle-earth and its author J.R.R. Tolkien as one of the pillars on which so much else in popular culture, definitely including movies, is built. Read the rest right here.