That was how Gandalf gets a chance to interrogate Gollum and why Legolas shows up in Rivendell - Gollum escapes from the elves of Mirkwood.
More details based on the books. Gandalf is uneasy about Bilbo and the ring. He starts looking for Gollum but fails to find him and he lets the matter rest. After seeing Bilbo’s behaviour in letting go of the ring following the birthday party he enlists Aragorn to help him and they search everywhere. Gandalf gets frustrated and realizes Isildur may have left a description of the ruling ring in Minas Tirith. So he leaves Aragorn and finds the scroll that talks about glowing elvish script on the ring.
But Dale is after Lake Town and after Bilbo floats down the river and sees the Lonely Mountain. That’s strikes me as a better place to fade to black than wandering up the lake and through Dale.
Maybe they’ll show the arrival of Smaug, the fall of Dale and the end of the Kingdom Under the Mountain at the start of the movie.
I remain worried and excited - though less worried than before.
I think the scenes of Dale and actually almost this entire last video blog is prefaced by Peter Jackson effectively saying, “You are lucky to be seeing this as most of this is in the second movie.” So I agree with the barrels being a good breaking point as that is what we’ve seen in the earlier blogs.
As much as I like any Movie Middle Earth goodness, and (unlike some purists) like MOST of what PJ has done, but I’m still dubious that a third movie could work.
I’ll withhold judgement on three Hobbit films - I think it can work, interweaving the known Hobbit storyline with Gandalf’s involvement with the White Council and the Necromancer - but we’ll see.
It’s the Extended Edition idea I’ve started to have problems with. While I think PJ did fine with them in LOTR, I have the feeling that a film maker may get sloppy with the storyline in released movies, filling in the holes with an extended edition later. I recall some discussion about Prometheus, that Scott might release a special edition that fills in the (giant, gaping) storyline problems in that film. I feel that a movie should be released that tells a whole, complete story - any extended edition might include scenes that were cut for time/lack of importance, but it should not be necessary to do so to fill in holes left in the main release.
Just saw the Hobbit trailer today at a showing of The Dark Knight Rises. It looked good! I have a lot of confidence in PJ (despite quite a few nits to pick in LOTR) and know he’ll give a trilogy his best shot. He wouldn’t have asked for more work, I suspect (and hope), if he didn’t have some good ideas that he wanted to see realized on screen.