Spread thin, like butter scraped over too much bread

Rating: 6/10 (16 December 2013)

I think The Desolation of Smaug will polarize viewers on its action sequences: either you'll love them, and that in itself will make the movie a success, or you will, like me, find them far too dragged-out and unnecessarily embellished in comparison to that which was quite concise in the original story.
That being said, Jackson's fifth venture into the Tolkien Universe is still on form, if being fair.
Desolation of Smaug is an entertaining watch whose main flaw is its length. The Lord of the Rings worked as a twelve hour epic because there was simply that much story to be told. The Hobbit is really just a two hour movie drawn out and padded to feel more Rings-y. An unfortunate side effect of this is that the title role has been marginalized, in favor of some of the bigger characters. In the book, Thorin plays part of the sub-plot, not the main plot, but this role seems to have been swapped with Bilbo's, which is a shame because Martin Freeman is well cast as Bilbo and brings the right mix of sincerity and humor to the part.
In short, Jackson's expansions in the story don't add much except to pad the movie, which in more generic terms might be referred to as poorly edited. I'd say that with Desolation of Smaug, Jackson has not improved on the first movie but The Hobbit continues to faithfully represent what is in the book and is roughly as good as the book but the additions add up to nothing.