The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug Review

Rating: 8/10 (8 January 2014)

So the second installment of The Hobbit came out this past weekend, Peter Jackson's newest blockbuster film from the world of Tolkien that acts as a set of prequels to the original Lord of the Ring movies that came out from 2001-2003. These films were considered the most ambitious film projects ever attempted in terms of budget and scope; they were also a critical success. About a decade later in July 2012 Peter Jackson made the announcement that he would be making The Hobbit into another big epic trilogy and it earned him heaps of backlash. After all, JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit is a 300 page kid's book. It would require a ton of padding, little artistic liberties and additional character development to draw it out into three whole Peter Jackson length films. The whole thing still smacks of exploitative franchise marketing kind of in the same vein of George Lucas's Star Wars Episode 1-3 prequels. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey didn't really do much to help negate this opinion at all since it felt slow and suffered from bad prequel-itis, trying to tack on as many tie-ins as it could to the original movies. If you weren't a big JRR Tolkien fan like myself than you would have found it dragged in places.
That being said, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug has accelerated the pace and it is a much stronger and more thrilling film than it's predecessor. There are still parts of the film that sedate you into a bored stupor but then you have incredibly exciting scenes that instantly knock you back into consciousness. The barrel scene feels like the roaring rapids 6 flags ride, with dozens of fights going on between elves, orcs and dwarfs up in the trees above the water, in the water, the amount of stuff going on speeds these exciting segments along and turns what was originally barely two pages of brief narration in the book into a good half hour scene. I was really glad that some of the parts in The Hobbit were drawn out longer than they needed to be in this movie because they make the characters seem less like fanciful fantasy creations invented for children and more like the action-oriented badasses that belong in the same world that The Lord of the Rings movies created. The Desolation of Smaug takes a much darker turn, abandoning the dwarf songs and quirky snot humor, focusing on thematic elements of greed and possessiveness that go beyond just the dominion of the ring. Thorin battles with his desire to obtain his kingdom under the mountain once again even when it comes into conflict with what's morally right. These are little conflicts that were considerably downplayed in the original Hobbit story but they make for interesting character development in a film. Though regardless of how long Peter Jackson makes these movies no one is ever going to know every dwarf's name by heart. JRR Tolkien didn't even bother giving each and every dwarf nuanced and defining personality traits; it's interesting the lengths that the director is taking in order to create memorable characters here.
On the subject of memorable characters I'm going to move onto the real reason that you want to go see this movie. Smaug the Terrible, Smaug the Impenetrable. Smaug the Magnificent. This could easily be one of the most malevolent movie characters of all time that should be included up there with Darth Vader, the Joker and Hannibal. Peter Jackson mentioned in an interview that more than anything he wanted to convey terror with this character by the impressiveness of his size. So this monster's head would be the size of a bus. His body would be the size of a 747 and everything else would be to scale accordingly. I highly highly highly recommend going and seeing this movie in a theater and in 3D because Smaug is well worth it. A little television screen is not going to do this character any kind of justice. Benedict Cumberbach is the voice of the dragon, which fills up the entire theater and rattles every bone in your body as he plays psychological mind games with Bilbo. Without a doubt the Smaug scenes are the most impressive and for me personally, just for this particular character, I am very glad the divided the book up into a trilogy just so the audience could spend more time with this famous dragon.
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