The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

[merlinofchaos]

I saw The Desolation of Smaug this weekend.

The unspoilery review is: Some *great*, some *mediocre* and a lot *terrible*. Overall it was unsatisfying.


I'm going to break this up into three categories.

Things that were awesome

• Dwarves. I realize that some folks have felt that some of the dwarves had little personality -- but PJ did a great job of providing a lot more than what we had in the books. If you watch, even in the background a lot of the dwarves get a lot of little things that give them personality. Bofur got a LOT of personality with very few lines -- mostly a few meaningful looks. You might not remember his name, but I remember his face (and his hat).


• Tauriel. There are many reasons I liked Tauriel, and a few things about her storyline that I didn't entirely like (see below). But in general, Evangeline Lilly sold the elven warrior girl very well, and I wish Arwen had been more like her.


• Sets. Except for Mirkwood, I thought everything was absolutely beautiful. There was something a bit plastic-looking about Mirkwood that didn't work for me, but Laketown and Erebor and the Elvish caves...they did a beautiful job there. Absolutely gorgeous.


• Smaug. I agree with Kit: Best CGI dragon I have ever seen.


• Bilbo. I still adore Martin Freeman in the role.


• Bard. He did a GREAT job with a role that, in the books, is pretty sparse.


• The Master. Stephen Fry KILLED that role.


• Thranduil. While he said and did things that were not really in the books or any of the source material, he *nailed* my impression of the character in his vanity, shallowness and generally being a tool.


• It's a little thing, but I noticed late in the movie that Legolas was wielding Orcrist. In the book, Bilbo had retrieved it for Thorin; in the movie rewrite, they had no weapons in Laketown and needed them. Obviously, Thorin has to be able to have Orcrist by the end. Legolas will presumably give it to him (or have it stolen back) at some point.


• The dwarven runestone. I liked that as a nice touch.

Things that were mediocre

• Action sequences. In general they were all long and the choreography was surprisingly poor. Too often it looked more like dance than combat.


• HOW much gold was in Erebor? I think the mountains of gold were a little overdone.


• Mirkwood. Somehow the trees looked really plastic to me.


• I don't think a relatively low-status elf like Tauriel has any business knowing how to cure the poison from a Morgul weapon. Elrond found that difficult, and Arwen couldn't do it for Frodo!


• Bilbo made too much noise while walking. Yes this was a tiny little thing, but one of the whole points is that hobbits are NATURALLY SNEAKY. When he was in Erebor, "sneaking" around he had these loud echoing footsteps. WHY WHY WHY? What good is a burglar who can't walk silently while barefoot?


• Azog. Ignoring that he's dead 20 years before in Tolkien's mythology, I can understand bringing him back to have an antagonist. But he's BORING.


• In the books, Gandalf never intended to accompany them to Erebor. He KNEW he was going to Dol Goldur and everyone knew it and the company begged him not to go and he left anyway. That would've had a much better emotional impact than the sudden "Oh crap there's bad shit here." Yeah, Gandalf knew Mirkwood had bad shit, and he was going to go deal with it.


• I just didn't really like that whole fight in Erebor. I think it got thrown in to make it look like the dwarves had a plan to deal with Smaug (one of the silly parts of the book. They didn't.) but, um. I dunno. It was long and kind of dull and I didn't like the molten gold effect as much as a lot of people.


• Beorn. Beorn didn't show up at all in the previews, though I knew Beorn showed up. Now i see why. They shouldn't have bothered; for everything they cut from his appearance in the book, he added absolutely nothing to the movie. Of course, he gets to show up again in the Battle of the Five Armies, so maybe that's why he's there. But...that doesn't help THIS movie at all.


• Bolg. It was hard to make sense of what was going on with Bolg. Bolg is Azog's son, and ultimately should be the leader of the orc army at the Battle of the Five Armies, but probably won't be because I imagine he's going to get skewered or crushed by someone before that battle happens. But even knowing that, I can't make sense of why the bothered giving him a name and a speaking role.


• So in the source material, Bard's black arrow is just a lucky arrow. It's not a ballista bolt. I'm not sure I like that change. I'm not against it yet, it's just made me a bit uneasy. I can see where maybe a ballista is a bitter choice for actually killing a dragon.


• I could TELL where they switched from Tolkien-written dialogue between Bilbo and Smaug and non-Tolkien written dialogue. That made it feel particularly artificial.


• A bit too much emphasis on Sauron and the ring. One of the reasons Bilbo never got an evil sense from the ring is that Sauron wasn't aware that it was found, and wasn't focusing his power on finding it. He was busy getting himself back together. This is important, because why else would Gandalf have let the ring sit for 60 years in a hobbit's house? He honestly didn't have enough information to think it was the One Ring.


• Orlando Bloom's face is a lot wider than it was in LOTR. I'm surprised they didn't use techniques like in Captain America to slim his face down a little.

Things that were terrible

Warning: Grousing ahead. I may be a bit unreasonable on some of this.

• A MORGUL ARROW? WHAT THE FUCK PETER JACKSON? The Morgul blades were deep nasty magic associated with the Nazgul. How the fuck does some random orc shlub have magic this mighty? Also, at what point do they JUST WIN because with morgul weapons they'll pretty quickly turn their enemies against them? In case you forget, the wounds of a Morgul blade turn the victim into a Cargul, which is a low level wraith that is completely controlled by one of the Nazgul.


• The whole Kingsfoil/Athelas BS pulled out of Fellowship. Ugh. You could've just had it be a nasty orc poison, PJ. Seriously.


• In the fight inside Erebor, I couldn't tell the difference between the rivers of water and rivers of molten metal. Except at one point I thought Thorin was riding in a wooden wheelbarrow down a river of molten ore. I realized later it was just water, though.


• So there was a long rewrite of the barrel sequence, which involved them being open so they could have what amounted to a stupid and utterly useless fight (Except for the part where Kili was injured, important to later plot). TOTALLY IGNORING the realistic consequence that those open barrels would tip and SINK. In the book, Bilbo had to seal them in.


• We spent 30-45 minutes smuggling dwarves into Laketown, which was curiously buttoned up and they almost got caught twice. However, 30 some odd orcs were able to sneak in and walk on top of the houses UTTERLY UNDETECTED. And then two elves show up without even SNEAKING. And nobody even fucking seems to notice. I mean yes, Laketown does business with elves so maybe it's not that big of a deal, but THEIR ENTIRE ECONOMY depends upon Thranduil's people. It's a big fucking deal.


• 5 more minutes (actually, 1 hour less, and then 5 minutes more at the end). Because Smaug should take off, burn the fuck out of Laketown, and then end it there while there's wailing and figuring out what to do. Much better cliff-hanger. But even if you go on until Bard takes down Smaug, that's a better ending than what we had. There's a reasonable pause. Because hey, we've won, right? Oh wait, I guess not...


• That thing where The Necromancer comes out and there's the eye and then a very 70s swoop swoop swoop. DOUBLE EWE TEE EFF. Because YES WE GET IT IT'S SAURON why are you hitting us over the head with that? It was a big deal that the White Council didn't *know* it was Sauron in the source material. They thought it was one of the Nazgul, probably the Witch-King of Angmar. And in general, Sauron outsmarted them, he didn't make a giant fight of it. And even though I can kind of see the rewrites, that whole sequence was just silly and boring.


• Did I mention the lame sequence with the barrels pissed me off?


• I'm sorry, at no point with Thorin Oakenshield get all the way to the door at Erebor and give up because he couldn't figure out a dwarven riddle. You don't go through all that and go "Oh well I guess it's over then, sucks to be us." Seriously.

In general, the big problems with the movie are that Peter Jackson has fallen in love with overly long action sequences that don't really add to the movie, and there are way too many of them. And enough plot changes happen in order to create these long sequences that lead things happening that are either unbelievable, impossible or out of character in order to implement them.