Great epic rendition to a standalone children's fantasy...and then some!

Rating: 10/10 (12 December 2013)

Peter Jackson did a brilliant job in taking liberal creative license in bringing out the epic feel of this continuation from a rather innocent book meant for children. This installment is very much different from the first film not just of its epic scale but particularly Jackson's input to incorporate darker themes with more adult-oriented storyline which includes romantic plots.
Right from the beginning I felt that there was some sort of a disconnection or that certain lacking of association from the first film even though this one is a continuation from of the first.
For those who have actually read the book you would have known that one significant addition to this film was the inclusive of the female elf, Tauriel, and her lingering romance with Legolas of whom the latter was not even written in the book.
To make things even more complicated or rather to have that somewhat tasteful twist to it, Jackson even had Tauriel to be emotionally attached to one of the dwarfs, Kili, that in my opinion was the hottest one of all and did not look anything like a dwarf.
But I appreciate Jackson's approach to bring Tolkien's beloved children's book in another direction.
If THE HOBBIT book could be regarded as a standalone fiction on itself then I'm I'm glad that Jackson and his co-writers, Phillipa Boyens and and Fran Walsh, actually took the painstaking effort to link THE HOBBIT films to THE LORD OF THE RINGS especially with familiar characters of Sauron, Galadriel, Saruman and Elrond.
As the title suggests, the film obviously reveals to us the dragon Smaug in all of his glory. And all I can say is that the fire-drake's appearance was simply breathtaking. That was how a dragon is suppose to look like. Somehow, I can't help but to make a comparison between this dragon Smaug to that of the one in Dennis Quaid's DRAGONHEART especially with the authoritative vocalizations provided Benedict Cumberbatch that sounded eerily similar to Sean Connery's vocal portrayal. Nevertheless, I'm impressed by Smaug's presence.
**SPOILER**
However, I do have to say that ending was not what I'd expected at all even though I am fully aware that there would be a concluding episode to the whole HOBBIT franchise coming out next year. And that is the film's super abrupt cliffhanger. As you could imagine from Peter Jackson's THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy the ending of the first two films had their share of cliffhangers of their own. Yet in THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG, the ending was so abrupt that it practically choked many of the audience in the theater. It was that abrupt as if Jackson himself had no idea of how to end the film subtly like THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING or THE TWO TOWERS or other films for that matter.
But needless to say, I am pretty pleased by the outcome of THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG.