The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (PG-13)
15/03/14 22:53 Filed in: 2013
Starring: Ian McKellen
December 2013
This review was originally tweeted in Real-time from the back row of a movie theater and appears @BackRoweReviews. Though efforts were made to tease rather than ruin this movie’s memorable lines and moments, some spoilers may exist in the following evaluation. The original tweets appear in black, while follow-up comments appear in red. For concerns over objectionable content, please first refer to one of the many parental movie guide websites. All ratings are based on a four star system. Happy reading!
Peter Jackson sighting before the first line of dialog.
The director, taking a cue from Hitchcock, has made cameos in each Middle-earth movie to date.
A “chance meeting” at Bree. A nice noir-ish setup.
Whitey meets with the necromancer at Dol Goldur. Not a pleasant portent.
Had a brain cramp in the theater…should’ve known how to spell Dol Guldur.
Don’t know that I’d chance Mirkwood without Gandalf.
In fact, I’m absolutely positive I wouldn’t.
Bilbo pulls a Pippin by plucking at a web.
Hobbits are nice folk, but they’re not exactly the sharpest swords in the armory are they?
Bilbo above the forest...one of my favorite scenes from the book. Beautifully realized.
Creepy spider scene isn’t nearly as skin-crawling as the bug scene in Jackson’s King Kong.
Which is actually a good thing.
Imprisoned Dwarf yells “Bilbo” and everyone in the audience says shhhh. Now that’s funny!
Dwarves in Barrels. Sounds like a board game. It would make a heck of an amusement park ride though.
“This is not a nice place to meet.” Ha!
It’s all about Sylvester McCoy’s delivery here.
Lots of decapitations in this one. The twitching Orc is a bit much.
This type of twitching is probably the only thing orcs and chickens have in common.
Lake Town is brilliantly visualized.
This is actually an understatement. The design elements here, with a gelid river writhing through the quaint village and snow gently falling from the melancholy sky, have created one of the more immersive environments in all of Jackson’s Middle-earth; second, perhaps, only to Rivendell.
Random observation: Evangeline Lilly looks quite fetching with Vulcan ears.
“I have the only right.” Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Bard.
Arkenstone equals MacGuffin: Bilbo’s purpose is revealed.
Treasure under the mountain makes Scrooge McDuck’s vault look like a piggy bank.
Athelas. Remember that from the first LOTR?
Need another hint? Kingsfoil.
Nice walnut pillow. I guess the people in Lake Town really are poor.
Legolas is like a Jedi in this one.
But are his powers here a little too unrealistic? I mean, he’s more formidable here than in the LOTR films…and he’s not even supposed to be here since Legolas doesn’t appear in Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
Final analysis: A weaker ending but a better overall effort than the paint-by-numbers first film.
By weaker ending I mean the creation and cohesion of the giant golden image of the dwarf king. Contrived and improbable.
Some creative departures from the book here, but most of them work just fine.
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars. Smaug’s comeuppance and the Battle of Five Armies yet to come. Stay tuned.
Bottom line: This film is a marginal improvement over the first Hobbit, but certainly isn’t on par with the LOTR trilogy. There are numerous departures from Tolkien’s book and some are incredibly intense, like Gandalf’s showdown with the Necromancer at Dol Guldur, while others are highly questionable, like the barrel scene. In the book and 1977 animated film, the barrel scene is a tranquil passage, but in the film the momentary respite from the incessant perils of their journey is transformed into a protracted action sequence storyboarded with an eye toward a possible video game release. Jackson gets a bit cutesy here, like Lucas did with most of the action scenes in his prequels. Still, other elements in the film are nearly transcendent, like the eponymous dragon, which is startlingly brought to life by Weta Digital and Benedict Cumberbatch’s eerily malevolent voiceover. Smaug definitely lives up to its billing as the movie’s deliciously duplicitous drake. So will the third Hobbit installment supersede the first two films? If wishes were dragons... Hopefully Jackson will bring the quality of the third film up to the level of the LOTR while bridging the gap between trilogies. When I tell you that Jackson needs to up his game, I’m not just blowing smoke.