Big Screen :: The Hobbit – The Desolation of Smaug

January 7th 2014

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG

The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug is the second part of the epic three-part, nearly seven-hour film series that has been adapted from 200-odd page children’s book about a bunch of dwarves, a wizard and a hobbit who walk to a mountain. In this two and a half hour middle instalment, they meet some elves and then visit Lake-town. You still won’t be able to tell the difference between the dwarves, or figure out why they are being stalked by orcs, but they do eventually get to the mountain.

Don’t worry though, it’s not like anything gets resolved or wrapped up in a satisfying way. It starts right in the middle of a sequence, and finishes the same way, so you are guaranteed to walk out annoyed.

Maybe I should start out with the things I enjoyed about this one…

So I guess the dragon Smaug looked cool. And I thought the behind-the-scenes footage I saw of Benedict Cumberbatch using motion-capture to attempt to play a giant winged serpent (but instead just looking like he was having multiple orgasms) was hilarious!

Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug

Also, for a little while the movie tries to generate sexual tension between a dwarf and and an elf. Call me racist but I thought that was funny too.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got.

This is a long, slow slog that you know is going to get you no where. I love a good long movie, but I have no patience for movies that waste my time. If you’re going to put something on screen you’d better have a godamn reason. Every decision Peter Jackson has made when adapting this story has been in the service of stretching it out, loading it up with indistinguishable characters just sitting around.

There are so many characters in this film that poor old Bilbo is pretty much left out. A passenger in his own damn movie. Gandalf even leaves the dwarves and goes off on his own little self contained 45 minute Lord Of the Rings prequel that only served to make the Lord Of the Rings retrospectivly worse.

I can’t finish without mentioning the garbage special effects and dreadful looking CGI that the whole thing is drenched in. Remember watching The Lord Of The Rings and feeling like Middle Earth was a real place? Well that’s all gone. Great chunks of this look like a something you would see on on old Playstation 2 Game.

So yeah. I hated the new Hobbit movie.

 

 

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