I’m not sure about you, but I’m still so very confused about what exactly the Hobbit sequel is and is not. What is the purpose? What story will be told? Guillermo del Toro attempts to clarify matters by explaining to MTV that The Hobbit films aren’t actually two films, but one movie told in two parts.

“The reality is that we stopped talking the first movie and second movie, and we just started taking about the movie - the two episodes, or two parts, as if they were a single piece of narrative,” said del Toro. “We don’t even call it the bridge movie, we just call it ‘The Movie.’ And this is great. When we found what reverberated, and we found it in one of our virtual meetings - we understood. It’s a movie.”

So the first film will tell the first half of The Hobbit, and the second film will tell the other half? Well.. No, not exactly. del Toro says that the second film will lead directly into The Fellowship of the Ring, and admits that even he doesn’t know when the book known as The Hobbit will end and the story bridging to the Lord of the Rings trilogy begins.

“We are finding out,” GDT quipped. “I think Smaug dies in the first movie. So draw your own conclusions.”

And that death occurs in chapter 14 of the 19 chapter novel. So I’m more confused than ever. It appears that the second Hobbit film might contain the last five chapters of the book. Could it be that Jackson, del Toro and crew don’t have enough narrative story for the second film. Remember, the whole idea of a sequel was born out of studio greed (money) and not story necessity. Am I the only one who thinks that spreading the last chapters of The Hobbit into the next film could end messily?