SPOILERS:
One year after the massive billion dollar box office hit that was The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Peter Jackson’s visionary tale continues with The Desolation of Smaug. And lost somewhere in there amongst elf-dwarf love triangles, unnecessary subplots, and overzealous CGI, the tale of Bilbo the hobbit continues as well.
Picking up the story where the last one left off, Bilbo and his companions must make their way through the dangerous forest of Mirkwood as they continue their trek towards the Lonely Mountain. They make this journey without Gandalf however as he separates from their company to deal with the menacing looming threat at Dol Godur that can escape his attention no further. Once through Mirkwood after an encounter with the fickle wood elves that dwell there, Bilbo and the dwarves head towards Lake-town, the last remnant of a once great and prosperous city of men. These are ominous times. Evil creatures are multiplying in Middle Earth and orcs are rampant in the countryside. Darkness is growing and all of it portends to what Gandalf has long suspected: The Dark Lord Sauron has returned.
A brief look at positives before getting bogged down in the drawbacks: the world building here is great as always and the CGI is astonishingly seamless (although an occasional CGI overload does occur). Lake-town is something we haven’t seen before in Middle Earth and a refreshing change in environs from the endless callbacks and revisits to locations and visuals from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. A mention should also be made about the great performance of Martin Freeman. Perfectly cast as Bilbo, he doesn’t have many moments to shine here but he seizes them when they do arrive (his scenes with Smaug are particularly entertaining)
Now to the drawbacks. As is often the problem in the second chapter of a movie trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug isn’t very effective as a standalone film and feels like just an overlong teaser, much as the first one did. Too many of its working parts are too dependent on resolution in the finale. The objective here is simply to get bums into seats and give you just enough of a tease to compel you to come back for another go around next holiday season. And while we do finally get introduced to the dragon Smaug and Bard the Bowman, much of this film makes for an unsatisfying experience as all we get are those introductions and bits and pieces of the overall story. The storyline is crushed by the headier weight of the looming events of the Lord of the Rings; The Hobbit isn’t given much room to breathe as its own separate story and it shows. While The Two Towers had the strong driving narrative of the last stand at Helm’s deep and the downfall of Sauron’s puppet Saruman to propel events and give the film a compelling structure, no such events push the story in The Desolation of Smaug. It doesn’t have a villain that is subdued and defeated or a single subplot that is resolved; Azog the Defiler and his mysterious master are still hanging out in the periphery and the obvious fate of Smaug is set up for the trilogy closer. Bilbo is simply lost in the shuffle of all these events and perhaps the best character in the Lord of the Rings arsenal, Gandalf, is grossly underused. Gandalf’s screentime is minimal in this film and his storyline is woefully simplistic. All he basically does is go to Dol Godur and promptly and inevitably get captured. Perhaps another one of those eagles will pop up and rescue him from his confinement in the final installment; I guess we’ll have to wait another year to find out.
Forced dramatic moments abound aplenty in this film. The point that Bard the Bowman carries the heavy burden and legacy of an ancestor who failed to kill Smaug is bluntly hammered in for the audience. And a particularly bizarre moment occurs when the dwarves bafflingly easily give up on finding the entrance to the Lonely Mountain (just to have that scene where Bilbo heroically refuses to give up on his friends). A perilous months long journey that the dwarves have waited to embark on all their lives is dropped with the swiftness of someone going to a restaurant and finding out that it unfortunately happened to be closed that night. And finally, we come to the Elf-dwarf love triangle. While the return of Legolas and the creation of the character of Tauriel don’t really make sense in terms of the story being told, they do make sense in financial terms. Although the book version of the Hobbit lacks a strong female character or a compelling romance angle, both are forced in here with a confounding and surprising lack of subtlety. You can blatantly see the cynical machinations at work here and you can easily envision the board room meeting where these decisions took place: “Oh, well we NEED a female character to appeal to the women demographic and we MUST have a love triangle to keep people interested. A love triangle with whom, you ask? Umm, well just pick the best looking least make-up wearing dwarf I guess. And people love Legolas, don’t they?” Don’t get me wrong, there's absolutely nothing wrong with artistic license, but when it comes for the wrong reasons at the expense of the story being told, it is truly a shame.
Verdict: What will the legacy of the Hobbit Trilogy be when all is said and done? Of course, they still are competently made and visually imaginative films that are nowhere near as bad as the shoddily put together Star Wars prequels were. With all that being said however, you still can’t help but feel like there was a lost opportunity here somewhere. Perhaps The Hobbit: There and Back Again will redeem this venture slightly when it hits theatres in December 2014. This writer isn’t counting on it.
B-
Trailer:
Movie info:
Runtime: 161 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Cast: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Luke Evans
Director: Peter Jackson
Screenplay: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Guillermo Del Toro
Cinematography: Andrew Lesnie
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