It’s sort of depressing to go into a movie knowing that it’s
just part of a story. It was like that for An Unexpected Journey and it’s the
same for The Desolation of Smaug. After seeing “Desolation”, I’m convinced that
these films will only be enjoyable when I can watch them all in a row.
This is a long
movie, but doesn’t drag as much as “Journey”. The plot moves along pretty
quickly. While “Journey” was a sort of one long, meandering chase scene, “Desolation”
covers three side plots: the woodland elves of Myrkwood, hiding from the orcs
in Laketown, and finally, the initial confrontation with Smaug in the Lonely
Mountain. Except in the very beginning, the plot moves forward logically. There
is even a side-side plot with Gandalf, which is a continuation of what was done
in Journey.
The filmmakers took a lot of elements from Lord of the Rings
and transplanted them in this film. An elf healing the wound of a morgul blade.
An underground chase scene in a dwarven city. A visit to the Prancing Pony
complete with strange looks from strange characters. Gandalf finds himself in
peril after visiting a rival wizard’s home. It seems like they recycled a few
too many scenes.
The inclusion of Legolas was seamless and he had some great
scenes, as well as a playful rib at his future relationship with Gimli.
Evangeline Lilly played Tauriel, the “other” woodland elf and some of the best
scenes in the film were of her relationship with Killi. Lilly is a much better
elf than Liv Tyler ever was.
Smaug was a great character. His dialogue was well written
and he was menacing. He could have killed the hobbit and dwarves dozens of
times over, yet he always had a reason not to. He wanted to make Thorin and
Bilbo suffer for different reasons. Just the threat of that power was a
thrilling thing. I very much enjoyed Smaug and it was worth the rollercoaster
ride of the first two thirds of the film.
I knew this movie would stop somewhere with a cliffhanger.
In the book, once the dwarves get to the Lonely Mountain, the story is pretty
much over, yet the there is one more movie to get through here. So when Bilbo
finally stood before the “greatness” of Smaug, I was waiting for the inevitable
cliffhanger. There were almost a dozen places after that where they could have
cut if off. However, they kept it going and I was glad for it. After seeing the
cliffhanger, I have to agree that it was the logical place to stop.
I saw the movie in 3D with the new 60 frames/second format.
This was the worst part of the movie. The 3D was good, but the video looked
like a low budget BBC TV show shot on a handheld video camera. Some fast motion
blurred strangely and the video look of the picture made some of the sets look
artificial. It really took away from immersion in the film. It just looked fake
(or maybe too real for a fantasy film). That said, the detail was incredible
and seemed to be beyond HD.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie, but was wished they had
finished the story in this second film. The next movie is “There and Back
Again,” and, as expected, will have to stretch out the final battle against
Smaug or add a lot more of the Gandalf side-plot in order to make it to two and
a half hours.
Overall Score: 8 out of 10
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