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The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Movie Review

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is a 2013 epic high fantasy adventure film directed by Peter Jackson and starring Ian McKellen and Martin Freeman. It’s inferior to its predecessor.

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“I’m going on an adventure!“

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Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, and his companions face great dangers on their journey to Laketown. Soon, they reach the Lonely Mountain, where Bilbo comes face-to-face with the fearsome dragon Smaug. First and foremost, the overall narrative has very little relevance or purpose. It has the purpose for the dwarves, but otherwise it felt very low-key in its ambitions.

While the first movie was very adventurous and it focused on so many fun creatures, a spirited adventure and a lot of endearing humor, this sequel does have all of these elements too, but in a significantly lesser capacity. The movie is also darker and less humorous, which led to the diminishing appeal for me personally.

Clocking in at over two and a half hours, this movie dragged quite a bit. It is an obvious middle chapter in a story as it feels somewhat slower and less important in the bigger scope of things. The film is called The Desolation of Smaug, but you only get to the dragon after the two-hour mark and I wanted him to appear sooner because he was awesome.

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Yes, Benedict Cumberbatch did a great voice for him and the dragon looks incredible due to spectacular work from the VFX team. What was also admirable was the depiction of this very traditional dragon sitting on a pile of gold protecting it. That imagery was instantly iconic and all the action scenes with him were superb as was the dialogue. The final cliffhanger was so intriguing as well.

I always found the elves very boring in this franchise, so the middle act focusing so much on them was disappointing to me. The elven chief played by Evangeline Lilly was a strong addition, but the love triangle that was introduced padded the story significantly. The humans were also rather boring with the added Luke Evans not helping matters much himself.

Martin Freeman is reliably excellent as Bilbo. His relationship with the dwarves is still very endearing. Gandalf gets to disappear a lot and he still doesn’t get to use his powers all that much, but the moments where he did were quite cool. The dwarf dynamic is still terrific and they are a very feisty bunch, but the movie was missing some of the humor that the first one had in spades.

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The Desolation of Smaug looks just as gorgeous as its predecessor with particularly inspired creature VFX. Everybody looks fantastic and very believable. New Zealand was again used to glorious effect as a shooting location and the various natural landscapes are truly breathtaking. The score, sound and production design are expectedly top-notch. My issues lie in the slow pace and uneventful narrative that definitely felt like fan-made filler at times. It needed more adventure and a more streamlined instead of episodic narrative.