For ages to come

Rating: 9/10 (12 December 2013)

As Peter Jackson stated, this movie as well as the others is ultimately waiting to find its place on a DVD/bookshelf, a detail not to be forgotten when sharing comments. Unlike most other theater rendez-vous, this is not a fast-food opus aiming to be seen one time for all.
But if such aim surely suited Tolkien's LOTR trilogy, how could it work with The Hobbit, a little book which never wore so vast an ambition ?
Mostly, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy was a scale extension of the Hobbit, both of them beginning at Bag End and ending in a great-scale war against orcs. So, how should we bother to have two of the same ?
Somewhat, Fate put that paradoxal temptation in Peter Jackson's way. Like Tolkien, PJ had to further the adventure because of his first success. That means attempting to surpass LOTR as if it was a first draft.
Will it be a successful enterprise ? Will it reach limits or suppress them ? IMO, some limits were already in sight, because Tolkien never really succeeded to create a resilient & self-sustaining fantasy world further than a theater for neverending battles against an evil force perpetually fueling them like they did in his obsessional Silmarilion. So, Peter Jackson, as movie-maker, may as well end being trapped himself in that obsession. That's why, in my opinion, the more important is to see if he will escape it, and how.
What we already have in the new trilogy is an escapism in a new generation of technology, and a challenge for story-filling skills.

About CGIs : For years now, lots of people are used to complain about them as if they were alienating movie-making : George Lucas and most contemporary blockbusterers fell into that trap ; does Jackson stay on its edge ? Much more than a draft, An Unexpected Journey was already a CGI-feast : we got the Trolls, Gollum, the Goblins, Azog and the Great Goblin, BUT a significant portion of people complaining about CGIs. In Desolation of Smaug we get Beorn, the Spiders, Bolg, Sauron, Smaug and even a little bit of Thranduil that is more CGIs, while the complain about CGIs has decreased, among the critics as well as among the public. Innovative CGI getting into a routine after only one year, that is indeniably a progress in terms of movie-making.

About storytelling : for the first time, what we have is a single book turned into a trilogy. LOTR had already been a revolution in the way that P Jackson shot together 3 movies, that had never be done before. But THIS is a new revolution, maybe even more important for the history of movie-making, because it shows how ONE book can be turned into THREE movies, thus respecting all of their contents and adding environmental bits.

How many books can be converted that way ? So far, nobody knows, but the main fact may be that nobody was caring about such a question before. That may be a progress for movie adaptation, because for decades we got used to a 2-hours standard movie-making that had mutilated lots of literature masterpieces, and now we happen to know now that those cuts may not stay as a fatality : a book converted in 3 films can be a commercial success, adding its short life in theaters to its longer life in DVD-shelves.
P Jackson allowed himself to ADD NEW ELEMENTS, 'filling the hoes' to a book already existing. Had it been done before ? Probably not in the 2-hours standard movie-making, where the main purpose was to determine what had to be cut, and not what had to be added.
Then, whether the ads are approved or disapproved, nobody can avoid the fact that those adds are here in the first place and maybe for the first time in movie-making history.
Erebor the Mountain of Gold opened this new Gate in AUJ. Then, Azog the Defiler added his own profanation of the ancient habits in movie-making. In Desolation of Smaug, the gate is now wide open, and see what we get :

A young dwarf recognizing a She-Elf as some star he thought inaccessible for ages to come.

A leader dwarf standing where nobody ever stood in any dragon story : on a dragon snout

A dragon fascinated by a golden dwarf as tall as him

A red dragon turned golden dragon and stupidly hating it, for his own demise...

And all this is just a glimpse into a new world which may be NOT part of Tolkien's world, but which is surely part of OUR world now. Those new allegories existing for ages to come.
Do we lose here, or do we earn ?