Very Low Expectations Helped Greatly

Rating: 7/10 (17 December 2013)

After seeing the first part of THE HOBBIT I thought about catching the rest of the trilogy on DVD but having sometime off work and some money to spend I thought I'd treat myself to a visit to the cinema as a very special treat . I paid my money if only to escape the drudgery of a tough working week followed by a couple of lonely nights in my flat but didn't expect much from Peter Jackson whose creative stock seems to have utterly collapsed since RETURN OF THE KING
To be fair Jackson has made a darker and much better paced film to the first instalment that often manages to disguise how over extended the narrative is . Instead of the painfully repetitive story structure of being captured , escaping , being captured , escaping for the entire movie we actually often have engaging storytelling . I've never read the source novel and Tolkien junkies might hate any embellishment brought to the silver screen but the quest aspects are well done for the most part . The production have now concentrated on making THE HOBBIT a proper prequel to LORD OF THE RINGS as the Necromancer's power starts expanding planning extermination for Middle Earth . This subplot is developed via dual plotting where Gandalf leaves Bilbo's entourage and finds himself in danger . Bilbo and his comrades find they have problems of their own with constant danger all around them
The problem these dangers are often undermined by the production team who concentrate on spectacle rather than developing drama . A good example is where Bilbo and the dwarfs are cocooned by giant spiders which is a terrifying fate but is totally undermined by the arachnids being killed far too easily . This happens several times throughout the set pieces in the film where the good guys constantly defeat the bad guys so easily the audience quickly lose any sense of danger and adventure being involved . There's also a bit too much of the laws of physics being constantly broken . For example a fireball in a confined space would burn up all the surrounding oxygen and anyone nearby would suffocate but this fact is ignored and other implausible things involving science don't make the slightest sense . I know this features in many fantasy films , not least the original LOTR trilogy but it's been done to death and is very distracting . Compare the spectacular set pieces seen here to the battle scene seen in the departure of Boromir in FELLOWSHIP and you'll notice how overblown everything is in comparison here .
In summary this is fairly good film that is better than part one of THE HOBBIT . I say " fairly good " but when you compare it to LORD OF THE RINGS in general and FELLOWSHIP in particular ii is something of a backward step from the production team who brought us the original trilogy . That said I will probably pay money at the cinema to see the finale though more in hope rather than expectation