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used suction cups to climb a skyscraper or special radioactive insect clinging powers, but maybe I am confusing them with The Shadow, or with the Spider-Man. Or maybe Peter Jackson was.
    Okay so then there was another fight, this time between ninja-orcs and the awesome flying acrobat ninjette-bowgirl elf. I think her name is Arrowette or Artemis or something.
    Just kidding. To be quite honest, the actress Evangeline Lilly is not only quite attractive, she handles both the demands of the acting and a physical stunts very well. Indeed, I am afraid I have a bit of a crush on her, with her long lustrous hair, her finely chiseled cheekbones, her kissing-soft feminine lips, her soft curves aching with the promise of luscious loveplay…. Oh, wait a minute. I think I am looking at Orlando Bloom. Er, never mind. Sorry, Miss Lilly.
    Just when I picked myself again off the sticky floor of the theater, blearily wondering where the Hobbit character after whom this movie was apparently named might be hiding, BAM! The familiar Hammer came down again. This time, it was a scene where Orlando Bloom is standing a zillion feet away from the evil orc bounty hunter Slopgog the Unmentionable or whatever his name is, and he does not shoot him with an elf arrow.
    I sat there, rocking back and forth with my eyes crossed, and through the stream of drool and vitreous humor leaking down my chin I muttered again and again, “Shoot him with an elf arrow.
Shoot. Him. With. An. Elf. Arrow.
SHOOT HIM WITH AN ELF ARROW!”
    But no. No elf arrow was forthcoming.
    Blogsnog the Debunker, or whatever his name was, strolled in a leisurely fashion down the narrow walkway of Laketown, not ducking for cover, and meanwhile no one was calling for the town guard, and the elf guy continued not to shoot him with an elf arrow.
    You see, the film slimer, er, maker, wanted this scene to be like a gunfight in an iconic Western, with Clint Eastwood and John Wayne staring at each other with narrowed eyes as each strides menacingly ever closer, spurs jangling with each step. Of course, in a Western, both are armed with revolvers, and both are wary of making the first move lest the other man prove fast enough to draw and shoot first, but then both shooters want to close the distance to improve their aim. That is what makes such scenes tense.
    Here is what makes a scene spectacularly NOT tense. One guy has a gun and the other has a knife, or a club, or maybe strangling wire or even a stick of butter, because no one gives a rat’s fart for what the other guy has because you can shoot him first.
    If you have the weapon that, you know, shoots, you can shoot the guy who has no weapon that shoots, and so there is no downside to letting him see you go for your gun, or, for that matter, use a winch to load your crossbow in a leisurely manner, because you can raise it and turn him into a pincushion before he can attack you with his club or strangling wire. Or stick of butter.
    In such a case, he will be running toward you at full speed, because if he walks a menacing walk, well, that gives you time to roll a cigarette, light it, put your foot in the stirrup thingie on the crossbow, clamp it to your belt winch, and crank the string back, yawn, read a magazine, drop a bolt in the slot, check the grease on the bolt, aim, make vacation plans, check the wind speed, and fire a bolt through this heart and left lung and out his back in a 3D spray of unnamed orcish life fluids.
    Unless you are a superspeed acrobat wonder-elf, in which case you can shoot him nine times a second and spell out your monogram in his vital organs.
    Well, who cares? Neither character was in the book anyway. I think I lost consciousness at that moment, overcome by the fumes of the butter-substitute substance coating the theater floor between the seats. I woke a little later, and elfboy still had not shot Urgslug the Irkisonic, or whatever his name is. My wife had to stuff a wide handful of popcorn-flavored food