In the same Empire Magazine issue that features Thranduil, Tauriel and Legolas on the cover, Peter Jackson gives his first details on the extended edition of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  Now, I loved AUJ.  Loved it.  I’ve watched it several times in the theater and again on Blu Ray and it is just a joy.  The complaints about it being boring or too long, baffle me.  A movie is too long if you don’t have enough story.  A 90 minute film can seem like an eternity if you don’t have a story, but a three-hour film flies by if you’re invested.

If you haven’t read The Hobbit recently, it does start with an extended dinner party, which also serves in the film to introduce and begin to differentiate between the dwarves.  The Hobbit is a different pace than the LOTR.  Things aren’t so dire yet.  No one knows Sauron is back.  The ring has not been found.  In many ways it’s an allegory for a sleeping Europe in the 1930’s; ignoring or choosing to overlook the rising menace.  If someone took a hose to Radagast’s face, I’d go so far as to call it a perfect beginning.

The extended edition was coming; we all knew it.  It’s going to run 169 minutes, which is only nine minutes longer than the theatrical cut.  I’m intrigued by some of the scenes Jackson outlines below.  I don’t know that we need more dwarf crassness.  We get it.  They do not like elves and it is mutual.  But the bit with the black arrow and a bit of Thranduil sounds intriguing.  We’ll find out when the extended edition hits stores in November.

If Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey wasn’t long enough for you, then we have some goods news. The filmmakers have revealed some of the scenes you can expect to see in the extended cut of the movie.

“You are going to get some serious Dwarvish disrespect of the elves at Rivendell,” director Peter Jackson told Empire.

“You are going to get more of Hobbiton,” said producer/co-writer Philippa Boyens. “We always wanted to wend our way through Hobbiton, but in the end Bilbo has to run out of the door.”

“You are going to get more Goblin Town, and the Great Goblin singing his song,” said Fran Walsh. “It is a great song, but it was just another delay in terms of moving the story along.”

“We are putting things in the extended cut that are going to play straight into the second film,” Jackson continued, “like this character Girion, who is defending [the city of] Dale using black arrows against Smaug. And the black arrows play a part in an ongoing story, for they are the one thing that can pierce the dragon’s hide…There are also issues with [king of the elves] Thranduil. We get some of the reason why he and the dwarves had a falling out – to do with these white gems…”

The extended edition of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will be releasd this November, just in time for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug which opens in 2D, 3D, and IMAX theaters on December 13, 2014.