Butter scraped over too much bread

Rating: 5/10 (15 December 2013)

The Desolation of Smaug occasionally entertains, often meanders. It has a pointless prologue (a flashback with people discussing stuff we already know), an equally pointless epilogue (a superfluous set-piece which is only there because the project was stretched over three movies) and a lot of filler between them. There are some neat moments but they are buried under an obscene amount of bloat.
McKellen as Gandalf is always good, although he has to deliver way too many cryptic asides. Freeman is perfect as Bilbo. Armitage invests Thorin with charisma and a darker streak. Pace's aloof King Thranduil provides an elf who is way more interesting than pretty stuntman Legolas (who is back, needlessly). Bard's role has been rightfully expanded. Smaug the dragon is great, his confrontation with Bilbo the highlight of the movie.
As for non-canon character Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly, she of the pensive stares in Lost)... the extent they go to make her likable - including heroic horns blaring in the soundtrack every time she jumps on screen slaying enemies - is rather embarrassing. And this is from someone who liked the expansion of Arwen's role in the previous trilogy.
Jackson's visually busy set pieces are tiresome, with weightless characters bouncing around and zero sense of threat. It's all very "pew pew, here come the good guys", like some hyperactive child playing with his action figures, if the child was a multimillionaire owning WETA.
What's worse, these sequences often don't advance the plot in any way: take the final fight against Smaug, which accomplishes exactly nothing. The dragon could have left before the scene started, or maybe halfway through it, and it would have made no difference. The last act, cutting back and forth between three parallel story lines, feels clunky and unfocused. Also, new villain Bolg, aka Azog 2.1, is criminally generic.
Howard Shore, who composed three amazing soundtracks for the Lord of the Rings, is also once again below expectations: continuity is one thing (by the way, where is the Misty Mountains theme which dominated the first movie?), but the amount of recycled material from the previous trilogy is distracting and the new themes nowhere as memorable.
It seems Jackson is finally doing what Christopher Tolkien (J.R.R.'s son) had
unfairly accused him of doing all along with The Lord of the Rings: turning his father's work into shallow action nonsense. I shudder to imagine Tolkien Jr. 's reaction to these new films: since he hated the trilogy which was actually good, this one must feel like Jackson is intentionally trolling him.
5/10