Review of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) by Dillinger P — 06 Aug 2015

It breaks my heart to say this, especially in regards to Peter Jackson, but The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug is utterly atrocious as a piece of entertainment, technical bravado and may just be the biggest slap in the face, in terms of fan service, this side of.

.. Well, anything. Upon watching the first part of this, never should have been trilogy, I couldnt help but feel so much character and depth was missing and that an over reliance on CGI was abundantly clear, the entire way through the film.

I remember thinking, surely things can only get better, you know, when you have longer to delve into character and story, as long as you dont stretch out a thin narrative, you can build and build upon the story and layer story and character arcs, and although the first Hobbit wasnt that great a film, at least it felt like a film, it had a clear destination, a clear goal, it had a beginning, middle and end.

The Desolation Of Smaug is without a doubt the single biggest let down I have witnessed in a long time. starting from where we left off, Bilbo, Gandalf and the group of mainly characterless dwarfs continue to be hunted by orcs as they make their way towards Erebor and attempt to reclaim what is theirs, along the way Gandalf goes in search of the "Necromancer", I'll get to that in a bit, and the dwarfs are captured by some familiar Elfen faces, blah, blah, blah.

I say "Blah, Blah, Blah" because the content of the book, does not fit this over lengthy trilogy, meaning that everything is just tedious and a chore to watch. I care even less about everyone in this film than I did in the previous installment.

Martin Freeman, the protagonist, barely does anything in this film, ITS A FILM ABOUT HIM! Yet Freeman is forced to paddle through the shadows. McKellan gets absolutely shafted in this film, having zero merit, zero reasoning and zero interest, what so ever.

He's barely in the film and Jackson is hell bent on occasionally showing us the crap he is up to and it is crap. The stand out performance here is Armitage, as he has the most to play with, but even that's being generous as for the first 3/4's of the film he just throws things at orcs or occasionally pats Bilbo on the back.

Christ even Orlando Bloom and Evangeline Lilly show up in a fairly substantial portion of the film, to basically act as ballet dancers for an hour and a half. Bloom has never really held my attention as an actor, however here, his sole purpose is to appease fans of the original film and fire arrows at things, I dont care.

Benedict Cumberbatch is forced to hide behind a shockingly fake looking Smaug for an hour in what must be, through no fault of his own, the most disjointed and uninteresting finale to a film, ever. The pay off doesnt pay off, that is criminal, especially with talent like Cumberbatch, who is doing a wonderful job as Smaug, but I dont care, because not only does he look fake, his surroundings look fake and to top it off, we keep getting thrown back to Gandalf the pointless and the Necromancer staring at each other, or of course Stephen Fry as the most banal character he has ever committed to screen.

I was bored, really bored watching this film, I took in very little, because there was very little to take in. I'll sum this film up, if you took an A5 picture, then scanned it, resized it, without touching the resolution, and printed it off 50 times larger that what it was meant to be, the picture would look, out of proportion, feint, stretched, dull, lifeless, lacking any of the charm the original picture had.

That is the Hobbit, nothing fucking happens in this film, nothing. AND THE CGI HAS GOT WORSE! WORSE! How is that possible? The film looks fake, all the time, it never looks real and what really pisses in my cornflakes is the fact that Jackson has spent 5 hours showing CGI orcs and then for 1 scene, decides nah, I'll get practical costume and make up and actors, before going back to motion capture, what is the point? It's offensive, and not just because I studied film and make film, its offensive to think your audience is going to accept this kind of lazy approach to film, why not just make it an animated film? That would be less offensive to my eyes and my patience.

And people raving about this movie, like what you want, but you cannot defend this movie as a fitting entry into the series, never mind Jackson's catalogue. This movie is empty, hollow and fucking offensive, that would kill any film, but theres more! Yes, Jackson has ramped up the violence, but since this movie needs to appeal to the widest demographic possible, the violence is handled in the most glorified and non threatening way possible, yes the first film didnt exactly help matters, but here its just constant balletic violence with zero threat, zero injury and zero fucks given by anyone involved with the violence, its just there to look cool.

Hey kids look, chopping an orcs head off is cool! It's so cool in fact, lets do it over and over and over again, so that its even more desensitized by the time the credits roll round. Hilariously moments before the credits roll, Freeman nervously mutters the line "What have we done?" and it acts as a form of thought process for everyone involved in the making of this movie.

I cant blame the actors, why would you not want to work with Peter Jackson, why would you not want to be in The Hobbit, why would you not want to work with some of the greatest talent on the scene? I can partially blame Jackson, but even so, he is trying to hold the reigns on a machine much bigger than he is and considering the monsterous battle to get this film made, its no wonder he is trying to rescue the film and fans from sheer disaster, but he still allowed, with all his power, this film to exploit his audience.

The people to blame here are MGM, they are money hungry bastards that clearly want to ride the consumer until they have pillaged everything from them. This is not a film for the fans, its not a film for movie lovers, its barely a film.

It looks terrible, its pacing is shocking, its script is woeful, its lost even more charm. I'm actually dreading sitting through the 3rd and final installment, I am dreading watching a Peter Jackson movie, not only is that a first, but for anyone in the industry, thats practically unheard of.

The only redeeming factor of this film is its cast and even in this horrible film, they cannot save you from utter boredom, total waste of time, money and effort.