The Desolation of Smaug – Thoughts

Like a lot of people (I assume), I was the movies yesterday watching the 2nd installment of the “Hobbit-Trilogy”; i.e. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings-prequel trilogy spun from Tolkien’s rather more lighthearted (and rather short) Hobbit book.

I thought I’d share some of my thoughts!

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#1 – The Hobbit and More

Boosting those not-even-300-pages into 3 movies of nearly 3 hours each was always going to stretch the material. For better or worse, this “middle” movie of the Hobbit-trilogy sees Peter Jackson moving further away from Tolkien and adding more things of his own than ever before. Puns about “The Unexpected Detour” seem to be a big thing in reviews of the film.

And, on one hand, the additions to the movie work surprisingly well for the most part. There is plenty of great action, including a long fight between the Dwarves and Smaug himself, that is pretty impressive to watch (and which we’d never seen from a Hobbit-movie that would’ve stuck closer to the book).

The downside though, I felt, was that for all the additions to the material, the core-story hasn’t changed and, as this movie is mostly full of new additions, doesn’t really progress in any meaningful way. All the “important stuff” is left to the third movie.

That said, it seems Peter Jackson had even more (!) stuff planned (which may or may not show up in the final movie). The first scene in the Desolation of Smaug, for example, sets up an appearance by “Thrain the Broken”, Thorin’s father, who even exists as a Games Workshop miniature. In the end, he seems to have been cut from movie.

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#2 – The Good & The Bad

It is probably impossible to “review” this movie based on the book. So here are simply some parts I liked or didn’t like.

Things I liked

• Smaug

Smaug the Dragon has been teased at for over a year now. It’s the big beasts everyone’s been waiting on. And I thought he was awesome. Visual effects and (ex-Sherlock Holmes) Benedict Cumberbatch voice-acting against (ex-Dr. Watson) Martin Freeman were top notch.

Smaug is one of those silver-screen-creations that made sitting through a decade of mostly bad and mediocre CGI in movies worth it.

I cannot really fault Peter Jackson for wanting to do a bit more with Smaug than the, all things considered, fairly short appearance he makes in the book.

• Lake-Town

I also thought Lake-Town and Bard the Bowman were pretty well done. There are some derivatives, a wanna-be Grima Wormtongue for example. For the most part, I think Lake-Town was worth expanding upon and it helps adding a bit of “Middle-Earth-culture/setting”, which the Lord of the Rings did so well (e.g. Rohan), but the Hobbit mostly glosses over.

The somewhat anti-climatic ending to Smaug (as presented in the book) is also set up well here. I always wondered how people would handle Smaug’s death in this age of “epic-movie-battles”. Smaug doesn’t die in this movie, but the spin Peter Jackson takes on it is awesome.

Things I liked Less

• Smaug Fighting the Dwarves

As said, I think the idea of adding a cool action-sequence around Smaug was a deserving addition to the story. However, I also thought the fight with the Dwarves we got in the Desolation of Smaug was a bit all over the place.

Without giving too much away…

… still, Spoilers ahead…

…there’s a fairly convoluted plan by the Dwarves to drown the Dragon in molten metal. The whole things, in theory, could have been set up similar to a heist-movie: a wild and daring plan that is first explained, after that we see all the characters trying to make it work, some “almost”-failures, and a bit “gotcha” when it all comes together in the end.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t go that way. If felt like a lot of random swinging and chasing about, with little structure and no sense of whether things are going good or bad for the Dwarves.

It kinda just happens.

• Soundtrack

This might be an odd one, but I found the sound direction in the Desolation of Smaug mostly annoying.

I really love how they did it in the Lord of the Rings-trilogy, where they used iconic musical motives for different parts: the Riders of Rohan, the Ring, etc.. .

It was effective in the Lord of the Rings (though hardly subtle), but they truly overdid it in the Desolation of Smaug. Everytime Bilbo is only looking at the ring, the doom-and-gloom-theme goes off, as if Sauron himself were about to set into the movie (and he actually does).

For me, they just used sound and soundtrack in this way far too much, far too often, and without any of the awesome timing it had in earlier movies.

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#3 – Thoughts?

All in all, I don’t think (and don’t expect) the Hobbit movies to live up to the LoTR-films, much less the books.

The best parts in all of these movies, for me, are still the parts taken directly from the books (think of the “Riddles in the Dark”-scene in the first Hobbit movie), and there is far less “Tolkien” for Jackson to draw upon in the Hobbit than there is in the much longer Lord of the Rings.

“My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail is a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!”

—Smaug

“I am King under the Mountain!

“—Smaug

That said, Peter Jackson does have a knack for expanding on some of the weaker aspects of Tolkien’s story (e.g. Bard the Bowman) and he clearly knows how to use his CGI to bring Middle Earth to life. I doubt there is a fantasy-fan out there who wouldn’t be awed by some of the visuals seen in this movie.

I only wish Peter Jackson would try a bit harder to build tension and excitement for his action scenes (“Drums, drums in the deep!“). These days, the action (to me) too often lacks the internal direction to “captivate” the audience (or me) like it used to.

Anyhow, what do you think?

• Did you see the Desolation of Smaug? Did you like it?
• How would you compare it to the first Hobbit movie?
• How would you compare it to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy?
• How would you compare it to the Book?

Leave a comment and let me know!

Z.