The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

While it is always best to view a movie for what it is you see and not what has been anticipated, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug makes that very hard to do.  I best like to think of it as entering a dating relationship with someone who carries a lot of baggage – it is impossible to accept them without having to deal with many other factors and variables that have shaped them.

Firstly, many audience members enter into The Hobbit movies with an imprint of The Lord of the Rings trilogy burnt into their minds.  Second, the movie is based off of a book which is written in its own unique style and tone.  Third, An Unexpected Journey came out last year and has laid the groundwork for what The Hobbit trilogy will be like.  With all three of those factors, it is extremely hard to walk into the theatres and view this film for merely what is presented in front of you. 

Of the three factors mentioned, the first one is the hardest to shake because in so many ways it appears that The Hobbit is being made to recapture The Lord of the Rings magic.  This brings about a very somber tone in The Desolation of Smaug, where everything is of the utmost seriousness and any whimsy from the book has completely vanished.  We also see the inclusion of the popular Lord of the Rings elf Legolas, who gets as many (if not more) significant scenes as the title character does.  Essentially, in trying to recreate The Lord of the Rings we get a movie that follows a number of different stories and characters instead of centering around Bilbo Baggins like the book does.

Where this was a main issue that I had with the ever so bloated feel of An Unexpected Journey, it was much more organic and smartly applied in The Desolation of Smaug.  While watching the movie, it came across as a much more focused effort with almost every scene having a point in terms of the larger story.  That is not to say that it was not longer than it needed to be, as it easily could have been forty minutes shorter (and to that point, it could have been one movie instead of three films and near nine hours of footage).  Even though it was longer than it needed to be, I never got completely bored… only remotely bored at a time or two, which beats the multiple times I was moderately to completely bored in An Unexpected Journey.

I do not personally have a problem with long movies, but they should be long because they are impossible to tell any other way.  The Lord of the Rings movies were indeed long, but they did not feel that way.  That is because they actually had to trim and cut the vast source material to create the movies, leading to every scene being of significance to the story or characters.  The Hobbit movies, however, do feel like they are long because Peter Jackson and company want to make them long so that they can be a repeat of the LOTR, and that is when a long movie can really feel like a slog to the viewer.

Going into this film, it seemed as though a lot of people were saying ‘it is a step in the right direction,’ and I was joking to a friend about how that actually may not actually be a positive thing to say.  However, after now seeing the movie, it really is the best way to sum it up.  It is a much more cohesive story than the first movie, but it never quite becomes an excellent movie.  There are moments and scenes that are great and wonderful, but the picture as a whole fails to be the sort of epic that Warner Bros. want it to become.

The visuals are, at times, wonderful and create Middle Earth in such a vibrant way for the viewer that it becomes easy to be lost in the journey that is unfolding.  At other times I found the visuals a bit hard to track do to constantly moving camera work and some blur during the action scenes.  On the topic of the action, purists of the book may have a hard time with the insertion of certain action sequences, but to me it never entered the realm of being too out of place and fit with the adventure that Peter Jackson was trying to tell.  When we finally meet up with the dreaded dragon, Smaug, we are treated to wonderful environment and images that can keep eyeballs fixated on the screen.

Just as with An Unexpected Journey, I absolutely loved Martin Freeman’s portrayal of Bilbo Baggins, but I do feel sorry for him as his character really takes a back seat for a lot of the movie.  Essentially, the dwarf king is the most important character in the movie which seems to be one of the many elements that Jackson is trying to re-live from LOTR.  If you don’t believe me, just look at the visual similarities between Aragorn and Thorin and tell me that Jackson does not have a certain look that he is trying to replicate.  Spitting image, I tell you.

Two other treats in this film were Benedict Cumberbatch who was the voice of Smaug, and Evangeline Lilly who played an elf named Tauriel.  While Tauriel’s character is someone who was not in the original book, her creation and implementation in the movie were a good fit.  The film certainly lacked quality female characters for one, and the inclusion of Tauriel brings a female strength to the dwarfish sausage fest.  Lilly’s performance brought independence, spirit, and compassion to the movie and I will not shy away from saying that she was a very believable warrior.  Also, on the Cumberbatch front, the man has such a great voice (very Alan Rickman like) and delivery for this kind of role.  I can’t wait for the day that he plays a James Bond villain, because he would be perfect for such a role.

It is sad when the best way I can frame my thoughts on a film are that it is far from its destination, but it is on its way and that is where I land on The Desolation of Smaug.  However, it is about as good as it could have been after being set up by the lackluster first film.  An Unexpected Journey is what established the tone and the pace, and this film could not deviate from that.  Considering that fact, it did the best it could.  When the lights came up at the end of An Unexpected Journey I had no interest in checking out what was laying around the corner for our heroes.  However, when the credits rolled last night and the crowed started scurrying out (opening night and not even a half full theatre, I may add) I was left with some mild curiosity of what would happen next.

Rating – 3 out of 4 stars

Appendix  -  Spoiler Alert

Now, in keeping with the style of The Hobbit movies, I only think it appropriate to have an appendix, because at times that is what we have been forced to watch and that is the majority of what the third movie will be.  I am not joking.  The Desolation of Smaug ends with him flying to destroy the town on the lake, so it can only be assumed that he dies within five minutes of that fight which will be kicking off the next movie.  There is no way it could be a long fight because, let’s remember this, Smaug breaths fire and that little town is made out of nothing but wood.

And after that, the only thing that we are left with is the battle of the five armies, which is actually being set up a bit nicely in The Desolation of Smaug, but there seems to be a huge insistence on putting events in motion (Sauron and such) that lead directly into the LOTR trilogy.  This leads me to believe that the majority of the third film will indeed be nothing but appendix style material that aims to connect the two trilogies.  I have also read this is true, so there we go.  I believe this idea even came about when Guillermo Del Toro was working on the films and wanted the book to be contained to one movie and then have a second film fill the gap between the two.

Personally, I like Del Toro’s idea better as it would allow The Hobbit to be completely separate from the other movies and could allow it to stay true to the distinctive flavour of the book.  However, because Peter Jackson is intertwining it all together, it becomes just an extension of The Lord of the Rings and not a story in of itself.  This is amplified by the lack of attention that is paid to the title character.  Really, as my friend pointed out after the movie was over, everything that is in the movie should be stuff that Bilbo sees first hand as we are lead to believe this is the tale that he is passing on from his own experiences.

It seemed that in so many ways these new movies were to completely be a recreation of the original trilogy, right down to the run times and the increasing length of the movies as the series progressed.  Luckily it seems that this idea was shed as The Desolation of Smaug was supposed to be three hours (exactly the same as The Two Towers, also the second movie in the trilogy) ended up being two hours and forty minutes.  This could be a good sign that they learned from the mixed critical response to An Unexpected Journey as well as the fact that it was the lowest domestic grossing of the entire franchise that perhaps some things needed to change.

This ends up being to the benefit of the viewer, as we got a movie that was much more focused and on task than the first film.  However, I cannot say this enough, it still does not need to be as long as it is.  It really should only be one film, and not three.  My personal opinion is that the focus for this trilogy was not on telling the tale of The Hobbit but recreating the success of The Lord of the Rings.  There are a great many indicators to suggest I am right on this, including the inclusion of Legolas and the attempt to get Viggo Mortensen to play Aragorn.  Essentially, those characters are similar to R2-D2 and C3PO being in the Star Wars prequels.

It could be that the damage has already been done, however, and that the hill that The Desolation of Smaug needs to climb is too great.  I sat in a theatre that was probably at one third capacity on opening night, and it was an audience that seemed to show no energy once the movie was done.  While original box office projections put this film at being able to make around $85 million dollars for its opening weekend (An Unexpected Journey made $84), at the time of writing this article the projections have dropped with an estimated opening weekend of $75 million (I do want to point out that on my weekly box office predictions on this blog, I predicted $78 million… everyone needs to revel in being right from time to time – pay no attention to the predictions I made for Madea’s Christmas movie, though).