Review: THE HOBBIT. THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG

Peter Jackson shifts into 5th gear and spreads Smaug's wings in the second chapter of his prequel saga to LOTR. Enjoy our review of 'THE HOBBIT, THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG'.

By Staff

As you're aware, the first chapter of The Hobbit left us quite disappointed. We felt like nothing had happened through all 3 hours of tale and then finding out that it was going to be 3 movies instead of the original 2, well, we weren't exactly thrilled.

Part two is now on the books and this is what we have to say about it:

The story continues as Bilbo and the dwarfs are making their way to the mountain and reclaim their land and riches within. About 20 minutes in, Gandalf the Grey takes off in a different direction than the rest of the group to take care of some serious business.

After getting captured by like the fourth time in two movies, Bilbo rescues the dwarfs and a pretty cool, though a bit childish, action sequence ensues.

After barely escaping and making friends with their old neighbors, the dwarfs finally make it to their destination.

Enter Smaug. The reason the whole saga exists.

Unlike a few other aspects of these films, IT IS FREAKING AWESOME!

You get plenty of him too, about an hour's worth to be precise.

But since we don't want to spoil anything for you, we'll leave all the details for you to discover as you watch.

Other sub-plots, the much-talked-about stories in other Tolkien novels, stretch the film to death. Fortunately, these details and added characters are MUCH better than the ones we saw in the first flick, especially the one involving 'Kili' and 'Tauriel' which provided some nice and cute moments (along with some neat fighting sequences as well).

Analysis:

We're gonna keep this as short as possible.

We LOVED the cinematography and the visual effects. They were absolutely stunning and well worked.

The art direction wasn't as great as what we've seen in these films before, but they worked anyway.

The editing... geez, what can we say? It is S L O W. The movie is three-hours long and feels like almost four. There are a lot more action sequences than the first film but you still feel like they stretched every moment, stare and detail until they couldn't anymore.

The performances by Evangeline Lilly as 'Tauriel' and Ian McKellen as 'Gandalf' were the best ones, though the rest of the cast was pretty good as well.

The screenplay is much more improved, especially the parts with Smaug, though again, the story could've been told in two movies.

Opinion:

We liked the film. We really did. It was an improvement in pretty much all aspects both technical and narrative. Last time we were hesitant about watching part two but now we are certain and positive part three will be something worth watching (it has to be, we are sure to hear complaining about this next comment but, nothing of ACTUAL importance, except for Smaug, happened in this one, they left everything for next December).