Review of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) by Mason B — 19 Aug 2014

This may surprise many of you reading this but I liked the first Hobbit film better than the previous three Lord of the Rings films. I thought that the characters were more interesting, there was a better sense of fun, and that Martin Freeman, who is perfectly cast as Bilbo Baggins, was a far better reluctant hero than Elijah Wood ever was. So you can imagine my excitement to see The Desolation of Smaug in December. It would continue the journey from the first film, build on the relationship between Bilbo and the Dwarves, and finally show Smaug in all his glory. You can also imagine my disappointment at the finished product. While competently made and never tedious, The Desolation of Smaug is an overtly-padded film that never rewards the viewers patience with a satisfying climax. Everything that made the first film magical is gone, and even Smaug loses all interest after a while. In addition, while I personally am not a Tolkien purist, even I have to admit that several of Jackson's additions to the story are entirely pointless.

I would first like to talk about the things I liked. The acting is as good as it was in the first film, especially by Martin Freeman, Ian Mckellan, and Richard Armitage. Also the character of Bard, played by Luke Evans, is the most interesting new character in the film. He is the gruff fisherman trying to take care of his children who comes across the Dwarves in their time of need. Bard smuggles the dwarves into the town on a lake, aptly called Laketown. Living in the shadow of the Lonely Mountain, Laketown is one of the best realized aspects of this film. It has it's own look and feel, and you get a good idea of it's culture from what you see. The film also attempts to ask pertinent questions about Throrin's true intentions and the damage he may be bringing to Laketown in his adventure. These are the bright spots of the movie and the parts that Jackson got right.

I mention in the introduction that the film is overpadded, especially at the end. However the beginning of the film has the opposite problem. Those who have read the book or are at least familiar with it's general plot will be early awaiting the encounter with Beorn, the journey through Mirkwood Forrest, and Bilbo's encounter with the spiders. Unfortunately all these scenes are given little build-up are rushed to the point where they leave little impact. Beorn's scene barely takes up seven minutes, the forrest is not nearly as impressive as it could have been, and the encounter with the spider's, one of Biblo's most heroic moments, is underdone. They're good but not satisfying. It's like Peter Jackson wants to get them out of the way as quickly as possible in order to get the escape from the Wood Elves camp.

And this is where the padding begins. Here we are introduced the Wood Elf king Thranduil. Unfortunately we are also reintroduced to Legolas, one of the heroes of the first three films. While this might have worked as a cameo, Jackson inexplicably makes Legolas one of the main characters of the film. This only serves to give the film another unneeded action hero to fight the endless amounts of goblins chasing our heroes. His inclusion detracts from the characters we already have. Here we also get to meet Tauriel, one of Jackson's creations for the film. Played by Evangeline Lilly, Tauriel is a beautiful but deadly elf whom wasn't in anything Tolkein ever wrote. She and the dwarf Kili will have some sort of a love triangle that will be one of the low-points of the film.

It's unneeded scenes like these that edge out the more important points of the film. While the first film was all about Bilbo, here he's edged mostly to the sidelines. He gets his necessary scene here and there but other his development has ground to halt. The same goes for many of the other characters. We still have several dwarves that we don't know anything about. Gandalf gets some stuff to do here in a few-cool scenes, but mostly the film doesn't build on what happened in the first movie.

All this would be tolerable if the last hour of the film wasn't completely over-stuffed. I'll try not to give too many spoilers, but it all goes downhill about twenty minutes after Smaug enters. Those of you who have seen the first film and trailers for this know that Smaug has been built-up quite a lot. He's always been shown just out of shot or in silhouette, and we saw just his nostril at the end of the first film. So finally he is unveiled before Bilbo and the audience. And, while the effect is impressive and Benedict Cumberbatch gives a nice voice-over performance, Smaug looks exactly like you'd imagine any dragon to look like. There's little to differentiate him from any of the countless Dragons seen in millions of other films. However, he still could have been very menacing had he been used to the full potential.

It is at this point in the movie that there is about forty minutes of utter pointlessness. Everything is overdone to the point where even the Dragon loses all menace. To exasperate the problem the film keeps cutting to other scenes that are no where near as important or interesting as what's happening in the Lonely mountain. However at this point in the movie I was still willing to patiently tolerate all this, hoping that Jackson would be smart enough to allow the the movie to end at the right point in the story, knowing that the movie was dragging on for to long. The point where I realized this was a bad movie was when, after an hour of building up the climax, the film just abruptly ends. This ending was poor enough that it left the last forty minutes of the film without any point at all. I left the theatre completely unrewarded for my patience. So in the end the Desolation of Smaug was a weird combination of too long and too short and the same time.

I am fully aware that the Hobbit is a trilogy, but I believe for the trilogy to work each film needs to stand alone as it's own story. The first film worked because it had the central conflict of Bilbo trying to prove himself worthy to himself and to the dwarves. This was a conflict that was explored and resolved by the end of the film. The Desolation of Smaug builds up it's conflict and then doesn't resolve it. It's climax is going to be in another film. In addition it is filled with scenes and plot-points that are over-long and not needed, and the most important parts of the film are rushed. There's no room for the character development or fun that was in the first film. Despite everything I said here I don't think this movie should go unwatched, as I think perhaps the film after this will be a lot better. I know that the first one was.