The Hobbit: The Desolation of a Good Film Series

Rating: 5/10 (27 December 2013)

Go to the bottom to see my overall thoughts if you want a short review of the movie.
The Desolation of Smaug looked like it would kick ass from the trailers. There was an awesome dragon, Orcs going nuts on dwarfs, and some over the top stunts. The movie was very different.
The Good:
-Film maintains a constant tone: As much as I liked the first film, it had a very major problem. The film kept changing tones. At one point, we have dwarfs singing about what Bilbo hates and the next scene, we have the dwarfs explaining about the fall of their race. The Desolation of Smaug fixes this with a constant serious tone.
-Great Visuals: Middle Earth once again looks fantastic with some gorgeous CGI and great shots of New Zealand.
-We can take the Dwarfs more seriously: The dwarfs now have more dignity and don't have as much silly moments. That isn't to say that there are still some silly moments, but they aren't just Gimli clones now.
-Smaug is AWESOME!: Though Smaug sorta looks like a generic dragon, dragons are freaking cool. Smaug is Godzilla sized which makes him even cooler. The CGI on him looks pretty good, though nothing special. Overall, I liked Smaug.
The Bad:
-Movie is just one long actions scene: This is my main problem with the movie. It's just one long action scene. The stunts are pretty much the same, except that they are in different places. While the first movie had scenes of people talking drawn out way too long, this movie has action scenes drawn out way too long. They get pretty old quickly.
-Not a lot of Bilbo: What I liked about the movie was being able to revisit Middle Earth again and Bilbo Baggins. In this movie, he isn't in that many scenes. The scenes he's in are usually forgettable. Instead, we focus on the dwarfs who are all interchangeable except for Thorin. By the time the movie was finished, I hardly remembered seeing Bilbo in this.
-Pacing is weird: I read the books and they've paced this one really weirdly. One major event from the book takes place for only a few scenes while a minor scene from the book is stretched out for 30 minutes. It's really weird.
-WAYYYY TOO LONG: This is a problem with both the hobbits. They are stretched out way too long. In the first Hobbit, it felt like we moved somewhere as Thorin finally accepted Bilbo on the quest and we learned a lot about what was going on which made up for the long time, but this movie is pretty much only action scenes. I didn't really learn anything about these people, but why have character development when we can have people jumping into crap like the 5 other scenes before it.
Overall Consensus: The Desolation of Smaug had some cool stuff in it with great effects and visuals and was not a bad film. For me, this was definitely very underwhelming with one tired action scene placed after the other. Character development is little as well as the fact that the film is way too long. If you haven't read the books, you might enjoy it, but as a fan of the book, I was disappointed.