Marcel Winatschek

Cookie Monster Is The Better Hobbit

Somewhere online there’s a Sesame Street parody of The Hobbit where Cookie Monster plays the lead, and it’s genuinely better than the Peter Jackson film. Not in any technical sense—it’s obviously worse. But better in the only way that counts.

Cookie Monster’s version is about a character trying to find cookies. Eggs, milk, crumbs. Things he actually wants. In the real movie, a hobbit walks across a continent carrying a ring that half the world wants to kill him for. He’s hunted, miserable, surrounded by enemies. And he keeps insisting the ring doesn’t matter, that he’s doing this out of duty, that destroying it will save everyone. But we both know he just wants to keep it. The whole film is about a guy lying to himself.

Cookie Monster doesn’t bother with that. He wants cookies. He’s going to find them. You know exactly what’s happening. There’s something honest about it—no invisible corruption, no mythology to hide behind, no weight of history. Just someone looking for food, and that’s actually enough of a story.

Maybe that’s why the parody works. It strips away everything: the lore, the stakes, the sense that you’re watching something significant. What’s left is something smaller and truer. The hero’s journey stops being ridiculous when your hero just actually wants to eat something.

I haven’t watched the new Hobbit film and don’t plan to. But I’ve caught pieces of the Cookie Monster version, and I understand why it exists. That’s the hobbit story worth paying attention to.