A well made movie

Rating: 8/10 (27 December 2013)

I thought The Desolation of Smaug was a very well made movie.
It wasn't a literal adaption of the book, which I think is only normal. After all you can't compare reading a book to watching a movie. Reading a book 'only' requires to let your imagination run free to create the story, the characters, the scenery, ... in your mind. If you missed something or didn't get something right away, ... you just read back. A movie has the challenge of showing you the story and doing so in a convincing way.
In my opinion The Desolation of Smaug is a rather intelligent retelling of the story, with amazing quality of visuals (nature, sets, ...).
Sure the pace of the movie isn't all that high, and it makes one wonder if it was really necessary to make three parts. However, allowing the time to get to know the (many many) characters (especially if you didn't read the book), to let the magnitude of the scenery sink in, and to properly tell the story, I thought the slow pace was a plus and reason enough to forgive the sometimes lengthy passages.