There were plenty of other clever titles I came up with for this blog. The Desolation of Smug, The Defecation of Smaug, and … But I decided to go with the ultimately less clever but more accurate Inconsistency of Smaug.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was a fun movie but it was riddled with problems. It was better than the first one, but that’s not really saying much. The Hobbit is trying desperately to ride the ten year old coat tails of the original trilogy and it’s failing miserably. But I don’t want to focus on the bad. So let me mention something good before I tear into it.
The acting in this movie was top notch. Martin Freeman does a great job showing Bilbo’s growth as a character as well as his fascination and fear of the ring. Ian McKellen was great as usual, but come on, who’s really surprised by that. The dwarves were so good that I never once thought of the as actors playing dwarves. Richard Armitage (Thorin) and Aidan Turner (Kili) were the best of the lot, but that could have easily been because they got more screen time than the others. Newcomers to the LOTR world Evangeline Lilly (Tauriel) and Luke Evans (Bard) did a lot to steal the show whenever they were on screen. Benedict Cumberbatch was the voice of Smaug and I he was the perfect choice. No one else could have made the dragon sound so regal and dangerous at the same time.
Let me start the negative part of the review by promising there won’t be any spoilers. Let also promise that I won’t bitch about how half of the movie shouldn’t exist as it’s taken from the Return of the King appendices. You guys are nerds and probably know that just as well as I do. Here we go.
The first gripe I had with this movie was the special effects. They were sloppy. There were times where the visuals were awe inspiring and made me truly believe I was in an Elven city or that I was watching epic battles with orcs. Then there were times where the special effects were laughable. There were a couple scenes that looked absolutely terrible. It almost felt like they put all their effort into a couple key scenes and just phoned in the rest. It sucked me out of the movie because it made the suspension of disbelief impossible.
The flow of the story needed a lot of work. There were some parts they just skipped over. To give a vague example: “Oh no! We have to get from here to way over there and it’s very dangerous!” *very next scene* “We’re here! Boy golly am I glad it worked out!” While my example was goofy, it was spot on without giving spoiler worthy specifics. The movie felt like it was pieced together by a person with ADHD. I understand the impulse to want to hurry to the best parts, but this movie was sloppy. Even Legolas was odd looking. There was something off about him and it was either CG modifications to his face OR too much make up. Either way he didn’t look right.
The final thing that bothered me about the movie was how it ended. I won’t say anything else about it for those of you who want to see it. I will say this, though. The ending was better suited for television. A week later I’d be able to sit down and see what happened next. The fact that I have to wait for December 2014 is going to leave me cold. The novelty of the ending is going to wear off and when number three starts it’ll be action right off the bat with no warm up.
Let me end with something positive. The movie was still fun. The acting and the action were two shinning beacons in a sea of mediocrity. The barrel scene was impressive and the interaction between Bilbo and Smaug was fantastic. If the entire movie had been as good as those parts then it would be a shoe in for an Oscar. But the way it turned out it’d as sooner win a Razzie.
Like my title states, the movie was inconsistent. It couldn’t make up its mind if it wanted to be brilliant or bad. If you saw the first Hobbit and liked it, then by all means, see this one. If you didn’t like the movie or didn’t see part one, then don’t waste your money. What you could do instead is take the money you would have spent on a ticket and snacks, add in what you’d have spent for part three, then buy the original trilogy on DVD or Blu-Ray and watch those instead. Those were fantastic movies. The Hobbit 1 & 2 are just shadows of the legends that came before them.
