The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug review: A pathetic part two

Adapting a children’s novel scarcely over 200 pages long into three mega-budget movies was always going to be a questionable decision on the part of Warner Brothers, but that’s by no means the only problem with Peter Jackson’s latest trilogy thus far. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug lacks almost everything that made Jackson’s incredible Lord of the Rings so fantastic, and as a film it’s about as close to an insult to J.R.R Tolkien’s iconic works as a movie that cost $225 million to make was going to be.  

Assuming that everyone has seen the first Hobbit anyway, the script jumps straight back into the story as mild mannered hobbit Bilbo Baggins and a company of dwarves continue their quest to take back the treasure stolen from their ancestors by the dragon Smaug. While Tolkien’s book didn’t spend too long dawdling on plot details, it’s immediately obvious that The Desolation of Smaug is taking it’s time, inevitable considering the combined films will clock in at over eight hours long. Individual scenes are gratuitously extended, culminating in the never-ending conclusion, which results in the movie overstaying its welcome by at least an hour. The sublime editing that made The Lord of the Rings coherent is totally missing here, removing all traces of excitement and tension from the affair and resulting in even the book’s strongest sequences becoming dull and predictable. It’s a disappointing mark of a sub-par script combined with lazy direction on Jackson’s part, and let’s face it: a fantasy film on such an obscene budget should not have been boring.

And being too long is not The Desolation of Smaug’s only issue. Character development is near nonexistent due to a reliance on soft jokes and lack of screen time rendering the majority of the twelve dwarves cardboard cut-outs, and the leads don’t fare much better with Martin Freeman’s excellent Bilbo underused and Ian McKellan’s Gandalf largely unseen. This results in total viewer indifference to the fates of the characters, so scenes which ought to wring with emotion become bland and clumsy. Compare this to Boromir’s shocking self-sacrifice in The Fellowship of the Ring and it’s obvious that Jackson has failed to recreate the bond between character and viewer during the transition between The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

And it doesn’t end there, as even the smallest problems are amplified due to the movie’s underserved hype and weight of anticipation. Cinematography has suffered; yes the aerial views of New Zealand’s mountain ranges are as stunning as ever but an occasional weak shot instantly destroys any sense of atmosphere; with several scenes which look like they were recorded on an iPhone submerged in water making for particularly grim viewing. Even the famed visual effects occasionally stumble, as several uses of magic look rather outdated by comparison to the phenomenally animated Smaug, also an excellent turn of voice acting by the great Benedict Cumberbatch. And a dire attempt to make the tale a little less sexist by introducing an utterly pointless female character seems completely contrived and near idiotic.

The Desolation of Smaug utterly fails to recapture the magic which rendered The Lord of the Rings trilogy three of the best films ever made, and is a colossal disappointment for any fan of Tolkien’s novels. It utterly misses the mark even more than the first Hobbit did, and it’s going to take something very special indeed from part three to save this inferior cinematic trio.

3/10