You do know.. you DON'T have to watch the films... lol.. your almost making out like someones got a gun to your head, forcing you to pay to watch it... I'd personally be super-psyched to know theres 3 films of a franchise I love instead of just the 1... but then I dont have a boner about cinema prices as much as you do...
Well firstly, I don't complain about cinema prices, I have argued against your claim that cinema prices are high because of downloading. You are the one complaining about downloaders raising the price of cinema tickets, which is completely false.
As for the "you do know you don't have to watch it". I'm not sure if you're being naive, antagonistic or stupid (or a combination of the three).
They do this knowing full well that people will want to watch it. Especially fans of the genre and the books (even if the fans of the books will gripe about the fact the LotR trilogy was as much Pratchett as Tolkien grrrr ). Now we all thought it was going to be two films. Two films are what were planned. They shot it as two films. Now we discover they have decided to shoot more footage to extend it to three films. Anyone who believes that this is anything other than a money making ploy and not an attempt to squeeze more money out of fans is burying their head in the sand.
The argument holds even less water when it comes to DVD releases (as weith CDs) because, yes people want to buy things, but after they've bought them suddenly they find special editions released. Then more special editions. Then box sets with extra features.
The argument can be made that you can wait for the version you want, but there are no release dates for these things. How long do you wait? 6 months, a year, 5 years, 10 years etc. The plain and simple truth is that these gimics target the real fans, not the casual buyer and it is immoral.
You can be an apologist for them all you want, it doesn't make what they do right.