Movie Review: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

First of All: When I was a wee teenager, my dad took me out to see The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and my little nerd heart just about kicked the bucket right there from the sheer amount of awesome that stems from anything Tolkien.  The following few weeks remain a hazy blur in my memory, a whirlwind of lengthy text and multiple rewatchings of the movie.  Needless to say, since then, I've been a huge fan of Tolkien, and remain to this day thoroughly impressed by his master work of epic fantasy.

Second of All:  The Desolation of Smaug continues where An Unexpected Journey left off, with Gandalf, Bilbo, and the posse of dwarves trekking toward the Lonely Mountain to fulfill their quest--and, apparently, a prophecy to boot.  Their path with be fraught with massive dangers, from giant spiders and orcs to angry elves.  As the group journeys ever closer to their encounter with a dragon, Gandalf finds himself drawn away to darker business, as the Necromancer's power continues to grow.

Third of All: The Review!
I would be lying if I said that I wasn't delighted to see a movie made out of any of Tolkien's works, and The Desolation of Smaug fit the bill quite nicely.  It was action-packed, full of excitement and emotion, with gorgeous sets and good character development.  There was quite a lot that was both good and bad about it.

First on the list, and quite honestly, probably the whole reason I wanted to see the movie in the first place, is the dragon.  Heck yeah dragons!  Any nerd worth his salt has a soft spot for these giant fiery death lizards, and Smaug is up there on the list of some of the most famous flame-spitters of all time.  I was also very excited about hearing Smaug being voiced by the one and only Benedict Cumberbatch, whose voice is on par with those of Patrick Stuart, James Earl Jones, and so forth, at least in my opinion.  He also did a wonderful job in BBC's series Sherlock, which I'll get into some other time.  But back to dragons.  Smaug was rendered amazingly, in my opinion.  The lithe brutality and cunning of a dragon was very excellently rendered, as well as his sheer size in relation to everything else.  Some masterful animation went into Smaug, for which I applaud the moviemakers.

As with all of the Tolkien movies to date, Peter Jackson did a wonderful job of creating a real-feeling world for the characters to run around in, from the locations to the gorgeous sets, and not to mention the carefully crafted costumes and props. I have to say I'm a little bit in love with the swords they make.  Okay a lot of bit.  Top notch job on that end!

Though a good job was done all around, there were a few things that could have been done better, in my opinion, though.  First of all, my biggest gripe is that The Hobbit is being drawn out into three movies, where two would have fully sufficed to give what's written in the actual book a fantastic rendering.  There are quite a few indicators of this stretching factor which became--in some cases--almost painfully obvious.  First and foremost is the decision to bring back the ladies' favorite man, Legolas.  While this was probably done for fanservice (even though they changed his eye color?), it's a gripe for me because Legolas doesn't even appear in the book (though if he does, it's probably an obscure reference).  In The Desolation of Smaug, Legolas and his elf lady friend (who also doesn't appear in the book) play an enormous part of the plot, which is one of the hugest indications of arbitrarily-made material to draw out the plot and rake in some extra cash.  Also, there are several scenes at the end which have nothing at all to do with the book(you'll know them when you see them, but one involves the dwarves and the dragon, and the others have to do with the aformentioned not-supposed-to-be-there characters).

Strangely enough, I'm not too upset about the fact that they're also following Gandalf's side of the story, which is hardly touched upon in The Hobbit book.  Yes, it is referenced in passing in the text, but the depth to which the movies is delving into his side of things was a pleasant surprise for me. I don't mind this stretching of the story, since it's simply going into detail about something that was already there, and not inventing characters and stories where they probably don't exist.

My last gripe has to do more with some of the technical things in the movie.  Though Smaug's animation was breathtakingly awesome, the same level of attention to detail wasn't paid to the entire movie.  There are more than a few spots where the animation used in some action scenes was pretty obvious, and not nearly as well-executed.  Also, there were some spots where the tension was drawn out using some pretty cliche tactics.

Overall, I loved the movie, despite its many flaws.  I give it a Four and a Half out of Six Nerd Stars.