Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Reviewed
When I first heard that Peter Jackson would be making The Hobbit into a prequel film his Lord of the Rings series, I was excited. When I heard there was enough material to fill two films, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. When I heard it was going to be a trilogy, I became a little sceptical.
I'll admit I've not read the book since high school, and in the context of having read The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Silmarillion, it's a bit of a blur as to what was The Hobbit and was was added from the overarching lore. However, if my shoddy memory serves, the basic premise is that a homebody gets talked into going on a treasure-hunting adventure with a bunch of fun-loving Dwarves, serving to illustrate that the smarts of an unlikely hero can win the day.
Thus far the movies have made Bilbo (Martin Freeman) a bit player in the larger story, which is now more about a disenfranchised people questing to reclaim their homeland from a dragon, and redeem themselves from a fall-from-grace.
While this second Hobbit film is, in some respects, better than the first, I found it to be riddled with pointless scenes. For much of the film I truly wondered where this garden path was leading me, desperately seeking some sort of arc in the story. With no beginning and a cliff-hanger ending I find the pursuit of a grand finale, some 12 months away, a flimsy excuse for stringing together a bunch of disconnected scenes of our heroes’ quest to the Lonely Mountain.
In The Desolation of Smaug we continue to explore Middle-Earth with our heroes who are still being pursued by the pack of Orcs that found them at the end of An Unexpected Journey. They encounter Beorn (Mikael Persbrandt) - a were-bear and giant spiders, and are captured by the Elves of Mirkwood Forest, only to escape and be smuggled into Lake-town by Bard (Luke Evans).
Familiar LOTR tropes are rehashed but not built on or treated in any unique way: Elves still hate Dwarves; if you're cut by a Morgul blade, you need Kingsfoil (a weed) and Elven magic to heal the wound. Yep, we know.
Unfortunately, neither are the characters progressed much here, rather passing relatively unaffected from ordeal to ordeal. Instead, most seem to serve a function: Balin (Ken Scott) is the wise advice-giver and problem-solver, Thorin (Richard Armitage) plays brooding hero, Kili (Aidin Turner) provides some comic-relief, and poor Bilbo has been demoted from titular protagonist to ‘that guy who'll always get them out of trouble’.
Despite this, it does all seem worth it when our band of heroes finally reaches the Lonely Mountain and encounter Smaug the Dragon (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch).
By this stage in the film I had a serious need to pee. But from the moment Bilbo entered the cave of riches and awoke the slumbering, smooth-talking dragon, every scene featuring this amazingly realised character was worth crossing my legs for.
It is here that the film really begins to shine. Perhaps the dialogue is lifted wholesale from Tolkien’s original, or maybe it’s because Bilbo is finally given a chance to talk rather than bumble along, but something changes and the film is all the better for it.
Unsurprisingly, The Desolation of Smaug ends on a cliff-hanger which will leave you wandering exactly how they are going to fill another 2 to 3 hours with what seems to be a pretty succinct set up of an epic battle. But given much of these prequels have been consciously made to tie in directly to the LOTR films I'm pretty sure Jackson figured it all out years ago.
All in all, I am glad I saw it, even if I did risk a bladder infection. As with each of Jackson’s interpretations there are plenty of beautiful moments, both visually and emotionally. And despite some pithy dialogue we get to escape to Middle-Earth for yet another few hours. It is spectacular but certainly feels drawn out, maybe we didn’t need that second breakfast after all.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is in cinemas from Boxing Day.
I'll admit I've not read the book since high school, and in the context of having read The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Silmarillion, it's a bit of a blur as to what was The Hobbit and was was added from the overarching lore. However, if my shoddy memory serves, the basic premise is that a homebody gets talked into going on a treasure-hunting adventure with a bunch of fun-loving Dwarves, serving to illustrate that the smarts of an unlikely hero can win the day.
Thus far the movies have made Bilbo (Martin Freeman) a bit player in the larger story, which is now more about a disenfranchised people questing to reclaim their homeland from a dragon, and redeem themselves from a fall-from-grace.
While this second Hobbit film is, in some respects, better than the first, I found it to be riddled with pointless scenes. For much of the film I truly wondered where this garden path was leading me, desperately seeking some sort of arc in the story. With no beginning and a cliff-hanger ending I find the pursuit of a grand finale, some 12 months away, a flimsy excuse for stringing together a bunch of disconnected scenes of our heroes’ quest to the Lonely Mountain.
In The Desolation of Smaug we continue to explore Middle-Earth with our heroes who are still being pursued by the pack of Orcs that found them at the end of An Unexpected Journey. They encounter Beorn (Mikael Persbrandt) - a were-bear and giant spiders, and are captured by the Elves of Mirkwood Forest, only to escape and be smuggled into Lake-town by Bard (Luke Evans).
Familiar LOTR tropes are rehashed but not built on or treated in any unique way: Elves still hate Dwarves; if you're cut by a Morgul blade, you need Kingsfoil (a weed) and Elven magic to heal the wound. Yep, we know.
Unfortunately, neither are the characters progressed much here, rather passing relatively unaffected from ordeal to ordeal. Instead, most seem to serve a function: Balin (Ken Scott) is the wise advice-giver and problem-solver, Thorin (Richard Armitage) plays brooding hero, Kili (Aidin Turner) provides some comic-relief, and poor Bilbo has been demoted from titular protagonist to ‘that guy who'll always get them out of trouble’.
Despite this, it does all seem worth it when our band of heroes finally reaches the Lonely Mountain and encounter Smaug the Dragon (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch).
By this stage in the film I had a serious need to pee. But from the moment Bilbo entered the cave of riches and awoke the slumbering, smooth-talking dragon, every scene featuring this amazingly realised character was worth crossing my legs for.
It is here that the film really begins to shine. Perhaps the dialogue is lifted wholesale from Tolkien’s original, or maybe it’s because Bilbo is finally given a chance to talk rather than bumble along, but something changes and the film is all the better for it.
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| The Hobbit by Paul Caggegi (http://processdiary.com/) |
All in all, I am glad I saw it, even if I did risk a bladder infection. As with each of Jackson’s interpretations there are plenty of beautiful moments, both visually and emotionally. And despite some pithy dialogue we get to escape to Middle-Earth for yet another few hours. It is spectacular but certainly feels drawn out, maybe we didn’t need that second breakfast after all.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is in cinemas from Boxing Day.
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