The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Last time, when I reviewed The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I didn’t get to see it in the 48 FPS 3D version until about a week later. But this time, times are a changing, and I can talk a bit about that too. I ended up liking the super detailed high frame rate for the first film, so I am of course excited to see right away this time.

But I am also stoked for a second reason. Now I don’t have to watch The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug twice within a week in theaters. I don’t care how good it is. Ain’t got time or money for that now. I don’t like to watch these LOTR movies a lot anyways. Once in theaters, and once eventually an extended version.

This picture does not do justice to how BAMF he actually looked on screen, 3D, 48 fps.

Plot outlines for this seems dumb. I assume everyone knows the story?

This movie starts out with Bilbo (Martin Freeman), Gandalf (Ian McKellen), and the Dwarven friends (Ricahrd Armitage, Ken Stott, and more) on the run, orcs still chasing them. Some stuff happens, and Gandalf has to leave again to go figure out some necromancer stuff.

This causes the gang to get in lots of trouble. Trouble with spiders, and then the wood elves (Where we meet Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), who totally gets the hots for a Dwarf. Odd!). Some escapes happen, they eventually get to Laketown, meet Bard (Luke Evans), sort of help an uprising, and get their way to the mountain! After all, they only have so much time to get there, before the secret entrance is no longer revealed.

Then we finally meet a dragon, Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch), who just wants to get his sleep on, but bitches be burglin’, so he has to get his rage on.

“Damn it Bilbo, I will not draw you like a french girl. Stop asking!” – Smaug

The term desolation might not mean what it used to mean. With a title like that, and if you already know The Hobbit story, you then know when this movie is going to stop at.

But you’d be wrong.

After seeing this movie in theaters, I left with an overall bad taste in my mouth, definitely something I didn’t see coming, and rather unfortunate, due to the size and nature of this movie.

I should reiterate, I don’t care what the the book story is, and the sideplots they added from other source material to make these movies. More interesting plot lines never hurt anyone. But this movie is called The Hobbit and subtitled The Desolation of Smaug. A better, more descriptive title would have been Legolas Kicks Ass, and then they meet Smaug. Which is all this movie felt like to me.

Sure, there was a cool spider scene. The barrel escape was nifty. But plot line wise with this film, you would find a hard time figuring out what actually gets accomplished. Once they introduce Legolas, they almost forget about the other characters, and focus on how amazing he and Tauriel the other elf are at fighting. It becomes just a Legolas show when he is literally running around Laketown and taking out a whole Orc invasion pretty much on his own.

Smaug was very badass. That is very clear. He was a well made CGI creation, probably one of the better dragons I have ever seen in a CGI movie. The best scene in the movie for me was the initial encounter between Smaug and Bilbo, when Smaug toyed with Bilbo as he ran through the treasure piles. But eventually he felt like nothing more than a cheap cartoon villain, or something, once the Dwarves got involved and start to mess with him.

I understand that this movie is part of a series, but I felt like this one has done the worst job at still telling a complete and actual story. Each of the LOTR stories felt complete. Yes they had more to do, but they ended at appropriate points once the current biggest baddest climactic point was finished, the ones they were building up to for each film. An Unexpected Journey ends after a series of skirmishes, a close encounter with death, and the dwarves finally learning to accept Bilbo.

This movie LITERALLY ends right in the middle of a fight. What in the fuck. Is this Lost? Is this some show that needs cliffhangers? So instead of getting a complete story, I get part of a story. A 160 minute part of a story.

Here is a third picture, to give you a better scope of this movie.

So what is the main complaint? I guess, somehow, it is their change from 2 to 3 movies. A problem I didn’t have with the first one, but I believe in this one becomes very very apparent. This entire movie, save for a few scenes, felt like filler, working towards the third, probably more exciting and conclusive story.

I will reiterate, Smaug was great. The barrel scene was way better than I could have imagined. The spiders were interesting. But everything else just fell flat or felt repetitive. I felt no fear from the Orcs the entire movie. The appeared, they died, they kept appearing, they kept dying.

Peter Jackson might thing he is infallible now, given the original success, and other successes of stuff like The Adventures of TinTin, but for this film I think he reached too far.