The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies, the final installment in everyone’s favorite-by-default prequel trilogy, doesn’t hit theaters until December 17. So in the meantime, fans of Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth epics must be content to entertain themselves with The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Lawyers. It’s a tale in which a coterie of brave legal experts fought a greedy, massive, reptilian creature who sleeps nightly on a gleaming pile of ill-gotten treasure—former Miramax head Harvey Weinstein.
The battle began in the ancient mists of legend, when as The Silmarillion tells us, Harvey Weinstein (and his brother and business partner Bob Weinstein) attempted to enslave Hollywood with a series of brutal Oscar campaigns that crowned undeserving wretches like Shakespeare In Love, and did throw the kingdoms of men into despair and disarray. While the Weinsteins were eventually defeated, forced to flee their kingdom by the unforgiving mouse lords of Mt. Disney, they planted the seeds of future strife in what at first appeared to be a gift: the movie rights to J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit, which were sold to New Line Cinema in what seemed to be a sweetheart deal.
But the deal was poisoned. A clause in the deal gave the Weinsteins a share of the profits in a movie to be made from the book. When New Line was conquered and ruled over by the Brothers Warner, The Hobbit was split asunder, smashed forever into three bloated, lucrative installments. The Weinsteins claimed they now owned a share of all three fragments of the original deal, and a share of the piles of gold produced by each.
Fortunately, the dark, enchanted forests of Holly-wood are watched over by an ancient group of wise, powerful wizards, who occasionally take action to prevent the Weinstein’s greed from enveloping all the land. One such wizened figure, former New York State Supreme Court Justice Bernard Fried, may his beard grow ever longer, acted as arbiter in the matter, shouting, “You shall not pass!” to the creature of smoke and fire that once bankrolled the likes of Reservoir Dogs and Chungking Express, and determined that the Weinstein’s greed would have to be sated with 2.5 percent of the first dollar gross from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and no more.
The Weinsteins have been defeated for now. But they lurk, waiting for another loophole to exploit, and another share of the gross to devour. At least until some hero can rise, and throw the original print of Sex, Lies, And Videotape into the fires of Mt. Doom, finally destroying the Miramax brand forever. As for the shattered fragments of The Hobbit, they remain asunder, but it is prophesied that one day, a master craftsman, using the mighty forge of FinalCut Pro, will assemble them into one, streamlined Hobbit movie, which will be held aloft from the highest peak of YouTube, and rejoicing will fill the land.