Review of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) by Ducknation — 25 May 2014

Now that I have seen this movie twice once in IMAX 3D HFR format and once in standard format I can say the film feels great either way you watch it. Also I see that a lot more people are liking the HFR this time around which is good becuase I loved it in the first film when most were skeptical of it. Sure they left out some stuff from the book and added in some new thing's that weren't in it but that didn't degrade my experience of the film.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is an amazing movie no doubt about the only other movie that I had just as good of a time watching it at the theater was Gravity. That movie was only 1 hour 30 minutes this movie has at least an hour more of screen time which is non stop epicness. All the Dwarves are still kickass sure it seemed like they had less screen time and I didn't get a get a feel of all them in the group like I did in the first film but they all at one point have thier moment. The barrel scene was so hilarious better then how I expected it to turn out it felt like a mini adventure in itself. Bombur in barrels was so amazing him just spinning around killing orcs that was just brilliant.

Orlando Bloom as Legolas was great he is just BOSS in this straight epic kills the whole time just like back in LOTR. He was also part of the barrel scene which is a part of why that whole scene was epic. Sure he wasn't in the book but the book takes place just 75 years before LOTR and Legolas is anywhere between 500 and 900 years old so it would only makes sense that he would be in it I mean he is the son of Thranduil the elf king. Also Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) not being an actual Tolkien character she still did an amazing job. I can understand why people don't like her and with her story arc it can be annoyin but I still liked the character being in the film it's always good to have and stunningly beautiful elf girl.

Martin Freeman (Bilbo) again was amazing and with Bilbo going through the first movie finds his "courage" and is more of a badass in this time around killing huge spiders and not being compleatly scared to death of Smaug no way he could have done that in the last film. You also see the toll of what the ring has done and is doing to Bilbo and how he is starting to notice for himslef the power of the ring. Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug was of course the best character of the film for sure his voice is just so cold and chilling. Seeing this in IMAX was of course a must you can't pass up seeing Smaug in IMAX and I wasnt disappointed he is massive. For a moment there how big he is made me think about the mountian the dwarves carved out and how huge that thing was for Smaug to be able to just move about in there with ease.

Ian McKellen wasn't in the film that much he is for like the first 20 mintues then maybe another 15 mintues 20 max throughout the rest of the film. His battle with The Necromancer was the best part of the film I thought though the whole light magic vs dark magic fight was epic. Luke Evans was great as Bard I always liked him as an actor he was just never in any good movies before this.

There was only a couple thing's I didn't like about the movie one of them was the CGI. A couple times the melted gold looked pretty bad and one time that I seen Smaug looked bad. Now I know Weta can do better then that they the have proved it with movies time and time again it just sucks they dropped the ball this time around. The other thing is the Soundtrack isn't the best Howard Shore is the best hands down but it seems with the soundtrack it didn't set the scenes like it did in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and with the LOTR trilogy the only times I really felt the music while I was watching the movie was right in the opening and when Gandalf was fighting The Necromancer other then that it was meh.

Overall I give it a 8.5 I aboslutly love this movie can't wait till blu ray so I can buy it then buy it again when the extended edition comes out like I always have with these films.