The Desolation Of Smaug Review

Rating: 6/10 (8 January 2014)

Being someone who didn't like 'An Unexpected Journey', I wasn't looking forward to The Desolation Of Smaug at all. In fact, I didn't just not like 'An Unexpected Journey', I hated it. I think it's an awful movie and easily the most disappointing movie of 2012. The decision to split The Hobbit story into three movies is completely stupid and doesn't work at all. After seeing Desolation, I still think that decision is stupid, as the movie feels more like an action-fantasy epic that's inspired by The Hobbit rather than a straight up adaptation of the book itself.
Desolation is a much better movie than it's 'An Unexpected Journey', but that's not saying much. I enjoyed Desolation for the most part, but I still don't think it's a particularly great movie, albeit far better than it's terrible predecessor. I was always a bigger fan of The Hobbit book than The Lord Of The Rings ones, and it's disappointing that it's not getting the adaptation it deserves.
One element of the book that was done justice in this adaptation is Smaug. I thoroughly enjoyed all of his scenes and they were probably the most entertaining in the movie. However, I didn't think the CGI in this movie was particularly good. It seemed to be a large step down from the Middle-Earth movies that came before it. Also, I want to comment on a particular shot during the barrel scene (which, by the way, was completely unnecessary and could have been left out) where the perspective switched to first person, and this shot is so awful it looks as though it were filmed with a GoPro camera. It was very ugly, off-putting and completely took me out of the experience.
The main problem Desolation suffers from is the same biggest problem that it's predecessor had: it's too damn long. There could easily have been at least half an hour cut out, but it's not. Peter Jackson includes countless scenes that serve no use so he gets his movie as close to three hours as possible, because after all; Jackson is SUCH a master at fantasy storytelling that anything short of 150 minutes is criminal, no? Whereas a long running time was well suited to The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, it's not a good fit to The Hobbit movies at all. However, I still have hope for the next installment, 'There And Back Again'. It should be more like the LOTR movies what with the (hopefully) epic Battle Of The Five Armies. And maybe Peter Jackson will fill the inevitable 160-180 minute run time with things that are actually essential to the plot for once.