Review of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) by Popinfresh — 13 Dec 2013

If you are an actual fan of Tolkien you will be sorely disappointed with this movie. I thought Jackson took a little too much creative license in Part 1, however compared to Part 2 it would seem like Part 1 was letter for letter from the book. It's as if Jackson simply read the chapter titles and shot a movie with what he would think was in a chapter that could have such a title.

Jackson spends far too much time truncating interesting portions of the story simply so he can fit more "nowhere-in-the-book" action scenes in spots that should have been done in one cut. Barrels out of Bond is a perfect example of this. Jackson lacks the concept of building a story up to a climax and simply turns the dial to 11 the entire time.