For those who simply cannot get enough of Middle Earth, Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” promises to be the ultimate Travel New Zealand miniseries. He and his “Lord of the Rings” team have taken J.R.R. Tolkien’s dense but slight and more comical “Rings” prelude, a simple quest to rob a dragon, and blown it up into a trilogy.

And since the first installment, “An Unexpected Journey,” clocks in at almost 3 hours … well, you see what lies ahead of us.

The settings are gorgeous. The effects are spectacular. (Well, most of them.) Gollum looks more real than ever.