Can someone who has some deep Hollywood connections tell me where all of these creatives got it in their head that Gollum–the guy who is basically the merging of Jekyll/Hyde, a drug addict, and that little guy who hangs out next to Jabba the Hutt and cackles at everything he does–is the linchpin of the Lord of the Rings franchise? Between Andy Serkis directing this new spinoff and last year’s dumpster fire of a video game The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, it’s clear all these studio heads think, “if there’s one Lord of the Rings character these nerds really want as their hero, it’s the fantasy version of Chris Rock’s Pookie in New Jack City.”

Yes, he’s a fascinating character and Andy Serkis played him marvelously, but where did these studios get the idea that this emaciated snot was what brought us to the theater again and again?

We don’t want to live vicariously through a creature so desperate to recapture the object of his obsession that he whittles away every piece of himself until he’s a monster. We all know what that’s like with everything we’re dying to dive into once work’s done on Friday afternoon. We want to live vicariously through spell-slinging wizards and axe-swinging dwarves and elf archers who move like Spider-Man through hordes of Haradrim to take down massive super-elephants singlehanded.