Late Reviews: The Desolation of Smaug
While I certainly enjoyed the first Hobbit movie it was one of those movies I never had an overwhelming need to go see it again and again the way I did with the Lord of the Rings films. This carried over with the second film, The Desolation of Smaug, and I never got around to seeing it in the theater.
There were several factors behind my lack of temptation. One of the problems I ha with the first movie was wondering where they were going to put the “to be continued” point in the story being as familiar with the material as I was, it affected my entire viewing of the film. On the same theme since the first film ended on what was essentially the halfway point in the book I found myself wondering just how even with the material from Tolkien’s appendixes they were going to stretch the second half of the book into two more films. On top of this I had heard numerous complaints from friends whose opinions I generally trust, so I was finding myself more than happy to wait and watch it when the library got a copy of the DVD.
So I finally when I was housesitting for a friend. (the biggest perk of this gig being the complete cable package) Again like the first movie I enjoyed it as a fun roller coaster ride with great design, special effects, and a great cast doing their job very well.
My biggest problem was all of the padding, and when I say this not the added scenes from the appendixes but the way they seemed to want to change every scene into a fifteen minute action scene.
Take the barrel scene for example. In the book it’s the company escaping their prison sneaking out the back in the empty wine barrels the elves are sending back to Lake Town. In the movie it is a white water rapids chase with both the elves and a band of orcs going after the escaping dwarves and the dwarves defending themselves with amazing acts of barrel fu.
The other problem I have with it is just how the original material is translated onto the screen. One thing I find fascinating about the book the Hobbit is that it serves as a fascinating transition from 19th century fantasy, which was essentially fairy tales for all ages, to high fantasy that Tolkien pretty much invented. I don’t have a problem with most of the retconning in the movie since Tolkein retconned the story extensively himself. But having said that the Hobbit is still one of the great children’s books and I didn’t think the film should have abandoned it’s roots completely.
But despite all of this nitpicking (and trust me I can go on for hours with this) this was a fun film to watch. I especially enjoyed the spider scene and despite it being an example of the excessive padding I mentioned, Bilbo confronting Smaug the dragon was appropriately epic. (though the number of filters they ran Benedict Cumberbatch’s voice through I almost wonder why they bothered casting him.)
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