Review: Hobbit Desolation of Smaug

I suppose a review for something is in order. I haven’t finished Dual Destinies yet, but it’s close so expect that within a week. Instead you’re getting The Hobbit: Part 2: Desolation of Smaug: The Revengence.

Let’s get a few things out of the way first, shall we. First, no, I didn’t read the books of neither Hobbit nor Lord of the Rings. I’m a slow reader and I also occupy myself with way too many other things to actually sit down and read long books that often. So if my critique can be answered by, “they explain it in the book” I will answer that by saying, “I don’t care and kindly go find a corner and bury your head in the sand so you don’t have to listen to my lack of a book I don’t necessarily care about.”

I’ll admit I was against the whole Hobbit thing in the beginning because I felt ripped off by Peter Jackson. How the fuck did he ever expect me to be okay with him splitting the shortest Tolkien book into three movies that are all roughly three hours at length? I’m still not necessarily comfortable with the idea because it all still feels like a needless cash grab while the property is still bankable. Because once this is done, the series is official over in terms of film because there will never be a need to make Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit again. But if I know anything about greedy Hollywood shitheads, we’ll likely see some follow-up to Lord of the Rings in about three to five years in which Sam is now king of the Shire and declares war on the Elves and Humans for making fun of their diminutive size. Clearly they’d ally with the dwarfs and this would put a wedge in the romantic prospects of Gimli and Legolas.

What were we talking about initially? Oh, right, Destruction of Smudge. So it’s part two of the Hobbit, in that we were teased about a dragon for the better part of a whole movie and this time we finally get to see a dragon… in the third act. Well, it still beats Game of Thrones and their promise of delivering dragons sometime before judgment day. That’s basically what the driving force behind this movie, “Here’s your bloody dragon!” And it’s a well-designed dragon with a great voice and interesting set up. If anything, that third act really sells the movie and makes it seem like it was worth it… just a shame we had to slog through another movie to actually get there. But I suppose we had to start somewhere.

There have been many comparisons between the first and second parts of The Hobbit as to which is better than the other. Speaking from a purely objective standpoint, Detonation of Snogs is the superior film in just enough ways to win the gold star of the week. The reason for this is simple, pacing. Neither film, in any respect is “bad”. Both deliver on what they promise. With Unexpected Pregnancy, we started a journey with Bilbo, roughly seven or more dwarves, and Magneto on a quest to piddle about for an hour before cutting off in time to leave room for two more sequels. And in Discrimination of Slugs we are given a dragon with the bonus surprise of seeing Orlando Bloom reprise the role of a character that never actually appeared in the first book… but who gives a fuck because Orlando Bloom?

Like I said, the key difference is pacing. The first film was certainly bogged down by the fact it was mostly just piddling about and character building. I’m a fan of Avatar: Last AirBender so I’m fine with character building. But when we have to sum up twelve plus characters in three hours, you’re asking for a lot, especially when many are just interchangeable midgets with beards and battle axes when you only had a handful of distinct personalities at best. And when your best action scenes are few and far between, yes, your movie will tend to feel slow. Especially considering the fact this is supposed to be an epic fantasy story that you should (theoretically) take your kids to see because the initial stories were literally children’s stories.

Meanwhile, Decorations for Studs was rather fast paced. It was almost like the guys plotting out the movies were thinking, “Well, we dealt with all that character bullshit in the first film. Let’s just make this one more about fighting giant monster cocks.” And that’s pretty much what they did. There’s waves of orcs, colonies of giant spiders, a dragon, elves, and a man that looked like a bear for a while. We also get more allusion to the plot of Lord of the Rings when Sarumon basically shows up for a contractual appearance in a similar manner to Pyramid Head from Silent Hill in anything other than the game Silent Hill 2.

All of this serves to make the second film, as I said, faster paced. It certainly didn’t feel as long as it was and that’s certainly a good trait for any movie. Because the last thing you want to do when leaving is feel like you spend more time there than you should and hate yourself for being there. Those were my feelings after subsequent viewings of Man of Steel (in all of them, honestly). So, yes, consider The Hobbit’s second outing a “win” for the most part. It picked up where the first left off and hit the ground running.

Another major difference between the two is the focus of characters. In the first film we’re basically watching Bilbo’s coming of age story in which he starts off as the reluctant hero who ends up becoming a valuable asset to a team of seasoned warriors. We also see how he’s shunned and disliked at first, but ultimately accepted for the heroic (and mostly luck-based) acts he manages to pull off. In Dehydration of Boggs, the focus shifts to Thorin Oakenshield. For those who don’t remember, he’s the guy that basically wants to reclaim his Dwarven throne and homeland under the mountain from the nasty dragon in the first place.

As far as shifting character focus goes, it’s actually quite alright. The first film painted him as a badass warrior much akin to Aragorn from the first film that made him seem somewhat flawless. It’s only in this film we see chinks in his metaphorical armor that is his personality. We see that he is just as prone to the madness of his grandfather, blinded by pure ambition and greed. We also see he’s willing to make difficult decisions for the sake of those who he cares about, even if it means putting his life at risk or weakening their fighting force. He’s also very cunning in his plan to try and one-up the dragon.

We also focus on another dwarf for a bit. I forget his name but he’s the slightly taller one that falls for the elvish woman, Tauriel. We get to see a little bit of how this journey actually affects the dwarves and gives us a peek into their lives back home with their families (mothers, daughters, sons). And this hints at a budding romance that will likely occur, promoting peace between two different races of people not unlike Gimli and Legolas. Speaking of which…

Tauriel is our new resident badass character next to Legolas. But she’s different because she’s new to the franchise (at this point in the films) and also a woman, which this journey was sorely lacking to start with. It’s nice to see character additions like this because while she is there kicking ass, Legolas is still trying to steal the show (for the most part) and she isn’t really overpowering the story in any way. She’s a fun addition that takes nothing away from the main focus and just gives us an extra fun character to enjoy, so no complaints there other than I wish she had been here sooner… like multiple films ago in Fellowship of the Bling.

Beyond that, I can’t think of much criticism that wasn’t already lodged at the first one… but since I never did a review of that one, let’s do a refresher. I find it kind of sad to see bits of set pieces and scenery from the Lord of the Rings films. Not because I don’t expect those locations to be nonexistent, but aside from a couple locations (like the Shire) I can’t imagine so many being reused. For example, the scene in which Frodo gets stabbed by a wraith in the first movie was reused in Unprecedented Hypocrisy without shame. But that’s another thing part two does better (from my observation) is that it didn’t feel lazy and reuse assets from older films, and, instead, tried to keep everything all original for the most part.

Also I can’t really tell if the added content that wasn’t originally in the book (from the appendix of Return of the King or something along those lines) is really worth adding. Not that any of it is bad. But most if it is just geared towards showing us how the events in Lord of the Rings eventually come to be. But does that really matter? Can’t we just focus on the story of tiny folk climbing massive mountains to fight Godzilla? No? We have to crowbar in more shit from Lord of the Rings because we need to pad out time for more money?  

So we basically have a year until the next movie comes out in which we see the gripping conclusion as to whether the dragon will kill everyone or if good will triumph over evil. Unfortunately, spoilers, we already know how that goes since we (a) have books to look at (b) the good guy always wins and (c) know that this comes before Lord of the Rings, a movie trilogy in DESPARATE NEED of an awesome dragon fight sequence that they never got and they were all the poorer for it. So we can conclude the next movie will have the dragon die without it being a surprise to anyone, right?

To wrap up, Demolition of Thugs was a fine movie. It was better than the first, which was already better than the movies they were prequeling, which I guess should be a surprise given that prequels are basically cancer to film franchises. It had lots of good action bits both necessary to plot and unnecessary to plot and only added in to pad out time (much like I’m doing with pointless repetition) and to shoehorn Orlando Bloom into another movie because it helps us forget about that shit pirate movie he was in last. See ya next time when I probably do a game review. :D