A bogged middle

Rating: 7/10 (17 November 2018)

This review contains spoilers.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is the sequel to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The movie is the second part to The Hobbit trilogy. The movie continues following the same characters as they continue making their way to the mountain home of the Dwarves. Along the way they are hounded by obstacles and Azog.
The second installment to The Hobbit trilogy is truly a bloated mess. The first movie, An Unexpected Journey, at a least had more focus than the second movie. This second movie had many elements of it that had no bearing on the rest of the movie. For one, when the Dwarves go into Mirkwood they are captured. This is a fun side adventure by itself, but it creates a pointless love story-line. In this story-line Tauriel a Wood-elf played by Evangeline Lilly falls in love with the Dwarf Kili and vice versa. The movie continues to explore this story-line even though it felt like needless time padding.
The movie has loads of new movie only characters that never existed in the book. This adds so much more padding to an already overloaded movie that there really does not have to be. The series really should have ended with this movie and the previous one being three hours each. This movie meanders for a long time focusing on character that it really should not be. A lot of characters from The Lord of the Rings trilogy return here and it only serves the purpose of setting up The Lord of the Rings. This is a bad way of setting up the Lord of the Rings trilogy as it was done at the expense of The Hobbit trilogy. As a retrospective, The Hobbit could have done better with the Lord of the Rings foreshadowing in the background rather than the foreground.
This movie is of course incredibly stunning visually. The effects are great at a standard frames per second and the 48 frames per second. The movie's barrel sequence and dragon sequence are the most memorable. Both of these scenes have interesting visual choices and direction that makes them fun to watch. There is nothing I did not like about these two scenes. The audience had a blast watching them.
The casting choices in this movie are great. Just as in The Lord of the Rings, I could not see any weak links in the cast. Each actor and actress fit their role. Even Benedict Cumberbatch that voiced Smaug fit the role perfectly. Listening to Bilbo, played by Martin Freeman, and Smang banter is entertaining to listen to.
I would still recommend The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The viewers should check their expectations and not expect the same quality as The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
Grade: C