The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (***½)
Directed
by: Peter Jackson
Starring:
Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Orlando
Bloom, Evangeline Lily, Luke Evans, Lee Pace, Stephen Fry, Graham McTavish, Ken
Stott, Aidan Turner, Dean O’Gorman, Mark Hadlow, Jed Brophy, Adam Brown, John
Callen, Peter Hambleton, William Kircher, James Nesbit, Stephen Hunter, Cate
Blanchett, Mikael Persbrandt, Sylvester McCoy
Seen:
December 14th 2013
***½ Out
of ****
Of the five The Lord of the Rings movies from
director Peter Jackson, I would rate The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug right
in the middle. It’s nowhere near as good as The Fellowship of the Ring and The
Return of the King from the original The Lord of the Rings movies, but it is
marginally better than The Two Towers, and leaps and bounds better than last
year’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Where the first Hobbit movie went
wrong for me, catastrophically so, was with the singing and choreography of the
dwarves in Bilbo’s home – I believe I experienced physical pain. So it was
refreshing to reach the end of The Desolation of Smaug with not a song having
been sung, and only action and adventure having been had, by the bucketload.
The movie picks up where the previous one left of
after a quick interjection: Gandalf (McKellen) talking Thorin Oakenshield
(Armitage) into eventually recruiting Bilbo Baggins (Freeman) in his quest to
reunite the dwarves and retake their mountain. When the scene is over, the
action starts again with the dwarves fleeing for their lives from Azog and his
orcs. They evade initial capture by lodging with Beorn – a skin-changer who
becomes a massive black bear at night. After this they head for the forest of
Mirkwood, where Gandalf leaves them on another errand before they are waylaid
and captured by giant spiders. Bilbo’s heroic actions save them, but the
dwarves are captured again, this time by the Wood Elves, led by Legolas (Bloom)
and Tauriel (Lily). Bilbo again manages to eventually help the dwarves escape,
which leads into the iconic barrel run, which is frantically exhilarating as
the orcs show up again and the elves and orcs battle while trying to capture the
dwarves tumbling down the river below them.
In the meantime Gandalf meets with Radagast the
Brown (McCoy) and they discuss the Nazgul, who seems to have escaped captivity
themselves. The dwarves run into Bard (Evans), who takes them into the lake-town
of Esgaroth, where the dwarves are hunted but eventually accepted and
graciously sent off on their mission. Gandalf runs into the Necromancer (voiced
by Cumberbatch) and a short but epic battle ensues between them as the dwarves
set of for the Lonely Mountain and their first meeting with the enormous and
smug dragon Smaug (again, voiced by Cumberbatch), in the set-up for the final
movie, The Hobbit: There and Back Again.
I saw the movie in 3D, and in HFR (High Frame
Rate). The 3D was great, and the HFR added a new dimension to the movie which
is both good and bad. Good because I’ve never seen such visual detail in a
movie, such crispness on the big screen; and bad because this visual clarity at
times does not hide the fact that some ‘rocks’ on the set are made of Styrofoam
(looked like it…), and that the clarity at times ripped me out of the story for
a moment or two, as I thought for the shortest of times that this lighting and
camerawork feels like that of a daytime soap opera. Apart from such small
moments of distraction though, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is an
incredible achievement in adventure and visual splendour, a definite must see
for fans of fantasy.
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