THAT Was a Dragon

Rating: 7/10 (13 December 2013)

"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" is the quintessential fantasy movie, with quests, monsters, fair maidens, heroes, villains, revenge, intrigue, magic, dungeons, and, of course, a dragon. All of these elements are present in Tolkien's novel "The Hobbit" (with the exception of the "fair maiden", that is), but not all of them are there throughout the novel; so, in trying to turn one novel into three movies, Peter Jackson had to stretch a lot of elements across all three movies, and introduce whole new elements in some places. It's less of a problem with "Desolation of Smaug" than it was with "An Unexpected Journey", which is partly why people say this film is superior to that one; but it's still a problem.
Jackson has taken some serious flack for reusing characters from The Lord of the Rings in a trilogy based on a novel that never even mentioned them. But, there is a valid and even important point to adding these characters. In the novel "The Hobbit", when the company enters Mirkwood, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) leaves them, claiming he has business elsewhere. While this may seem like a vague justification to give Bilbo an excuse to step up, Tolkien did actually have something important for Gandalf to do at the time. He leaves to investigate reports of a Necromancer in the crumbling stronghold of Dol Guldur. Many dark creatures in Middle Earth have a connection to this place, as you'll see in DoS. Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy) alerted the White Council to the Necromancer's plotting in AUJ, which is why we see them all together there, and why Gandalf travels to Dol Guldur in this film. I mention this to show that not everything Jackson does in the Hobbit films is about pandering.
On the other hand, some of what he does is all about pandering. While Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and company are battling Spiders in Mirkwood, they are "saved" by Wood Elves, who promptly take them all prisoner as trespassers. Included among the Elves is Legolas, who, in the Tolkienverse, is the son of King Thranduil (Lee Pace), so at least there's a logical explanation for him being there. But the female warrior Elf Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) is completely new.
I understand that Tolkien didn't include a lot of female characters in his stories. But the least you could do is not include a woman who has only two roles to fill, one of them being purely romantic. Sure, Tauriel is seen slaughtering at least as many orcs as Legolas, but that doesn't make her a strong character; that just makes her a character who happens to have a talent for killing.
Her other role was, apparently, being in love with Legolas; and with the Dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner). Between the awkward flirting with both men, the lack of any substantive contribution to the narrative, and Jackson shoehorning in a brand new subplot for Kili just so Tauriel would have some more screen time in the final act of the film, there's no real reason why her character should have been added to DoS.
The main problem I had with Tauriel is she seemed completely out of place in the narrative, and not because she had never been there before. They interspersed tense and dramatic moments between Bilbo and the dragon Smaug with "romantic" and, frankly, quite silly moments between Tauriel and Kili. If they had eliminated the "love triangle" between Tauriel, Kili, and Legolas, even if they had left in the romance angle between her and Legolas, then it wouldn't have wrenchingly distracted from what were, in my opinion, the most powerful moments of the film.
Setting aside all the "extra" plot lines, whether Tolkien intended for them to exist or not, the "Hobbit" parts of the film were, in a word, fantastic. The way they wrote and handled the scenes with the Spiders, the escape from the Wood Elves' dungeon, and the climactic confrontation with the magnificent Smaug were my favorite moments, and Freeman's Bilbo virtually carried every scene. He melded tension, suspense, and even humor into a performance that kept me grinning from ear to ear.
Smaug the Golden, the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities, in no way disappointed me. Dragons are magnificent creatures, and Smaug has set the standard for dragons for over 75 years now. Benedict Cumberbatch's voice undoubtedly lent to the powerful portrayal, but there's nothing that quite matches simply seeing the massive beast on the screen, emerging from beneath a sea of gold and jewels (with a cowering hobbit in the center adding no small amount to the feeling of awe at the sight). And to hear the words, only slightly altered from Tolkien's original text, as Smaug taunts Bilbo with his insignificance, teasing him with the prospect of near-instantaneous destruction, and even taking time to instill a sense of doubt in the hobbit's mind about his companions, the conspicuously reluctant-to-enter Dwarfs. I could watch the film over and over just to see Smaug again.
I shook my head several times throughout the film, though not as much as during the first film. I think some scenes (and characters, obviously) just didn't belong. But, some scenes that Jackson added helped the movie, and the larger narrative of the trilogy. And, as I cannot say enough times, the dragon was incredible. Much more so than after An Unexpected Journey, I'm looking forward to the next film.
(Read the full review at http://fourthdayuniverse.com/reports/2013/12/that-was-a-dragon/)