In regards to the original ‘Lord of the Rings’ film trilogy,
the hardest one to make would have to have been ‘The Two Towers’, basically
because it was the ‘middle chapter’ of the story; it didn’t have a proper
beginning or end. In fact, when Peter Jackson first pitched his adaptation of the
story to Miramax (before the project was picked up by New Line Cinema), it was
originally supposed to be two films, which then turned into only one due to
budgetary concerns. But overall, ‘The Two Towers’ ended up being my personal
favorite of the trilogy. It did manage to work around its ‘middle chapter’
status, it had some incredible action sequences, and it was the film that
introduced audiences to Andy Serkis’ incredible interpretation of the creature
Gollum (why the Oscars have never recognized Serkis for his work, we’ll never
know). But anyway, as Peter Jackson continues the story of ‘The Hobbit’ with
the second entry in this trilogy, ‘The Desolation of Smaug’, can Jackson
deliver another satisfying ‘middle chapter’ like he did 11 years ago? Or, to be
more precise, can this film improve on its predecessor’s major weakness; its pacing?
At the end of ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’, Bilbo
Baggins (Martin Freeman), Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), and the company of dwarves
led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) had escaped from both the Goblin
tunnels and the pack of Orcs led by the hunter Azog with the help of the Great
Eagles. As this film begins, the group continues their journey towards the
Lonely Mountain AKA Erebor, the dwarves’ former homeland, in their quest to
take back the mountain from the dragon Smaug (portrayed through motion-capture
by Benedict Cumberbatch). While on their quest they come by new allies,
including the elf warriors Legolas (Orlando Bloom, reprising his role from the ‘LOTR’
trilogy) and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), and the archer Bard (Luke Evans), who
help them along the way. Meanwhile, Gandalf investigates the hill Dol Guldur,
where a mysterious Necromancer (also portrayed by Cumberbatch) could
potentially spell doom for Middle-Earth and this string of events ultimately might
have something to do with that mysterious ring that Bilbo found back in the
Goblin tunnels.
As I’ve said before, the biggest problem of ‘An Unexpected
Journey’ was its length and pacing. Yes, it was the film that was supposed to
set up the story but as a whole it just felt too long, like we were already
watching the Extended Edition of the film when it wasn’t supposed to be (and
ironically there is a special Extended Edition now). Then again, this trilogy is
based off of a book that is only about 300 pages long compared to ‘The Lord of
the Rings’, a trilogy of books that were each at least 400 pages long so they
did have to add plenty of stuff in to make it a trilogy (I’ll get into that
more in a bit). Thankfully, this film fixes those issues to a certain extent.
The film is still very long but the pacing is much faster, allowing us to get
more engrossed in the adventure at hand now that the story and its characters
been effectively established. Sure, you do still kind of feel the film’s length
at times, but not really as much as the previous film. This one is far more
exciting with a far greater scale.
However, perhaps the film is… too big. Again, this is going
back to the whole idea of making a trilogy out of such little material to work
with. So in order to deal with this situation, Jackson and the writers add in
plenty of new characters, some of which were not in the book (like Legolas) and
one of whom, Tauriel, is a completely original character. It is sort of like
the previous trilogy in that there is a whole boatload of characters in this film,
so much so that admittedly they start to overtake the movie. In fact, for a
movie that is titled ‘The Hobbit’, the actual Hobbit himself, Bilbo, sort of
becomes a minor character in fact for most of the movie. Not only are there
starting to be far too many characters, there is perhaps too much going on in
this film. For the record, I’m not saying that’s entirely a bad thing because it
allows the film to have much better pacing than its predecessor, but that also
means the film doesn’t really stop that much in the whole span of its 160+
minute runtime… and I must add, this film kind of ends rather abruptly. Still,
considering all that goes on in this film, that was probably the best place
they could’ve reasonably ended it at.
Like the last film, the acting is very good from all who are
involved. The returning cast from the previous film (including Martin Freeman,
Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, and the others who make up the company of
dwarves) are excellent once again and the new additions for this film like
Evangeline Lilly and Luke Evans are welcome additions as well. While his
character may not have been in the book, the return of Legolas to the story is
nice and I think Orlando Bloom has gotten a bit of a bad rep as far as these
movies are concerned. He was perfectly cast in the role in the original trilogy
and while he is sort of overshadowed by his fellow cast members in both
trilogies, he still does a very good job in the role. The same can be said for
Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel, who’s given a pretty good dose of character
development, especially when considering that she’s an original character.
But then you have one of the most standout aspects of the
entire film; the dragon Smaug. Not only is this dragon incredibly menacing and
well-designed, but then you have the character portrayed by Benedict
Cumberbatch, who is excellent as always. I’m impressed with how they were able
to do a motion capture performance for a dragon, which is something that I did
not think was even possible considering how most of the characters created
through motion-capture are mostly human in form (e.g. pretty much character
Middle-Earth alum Andy Serkis plays). There are quite a few times throughout this
movie where you can certainly see Cumberbatch’s facial features in Smaug’s
design, and you really have to hand it to the effects team for creating one of
the best dragons ever to be put on film. Like the ‘Riddles in the Dark’ scene
from the last film with Gollum, the scenes involving him are the best scenes in
this movie, whether they’re just with Bilbo or with both Bilbo and the dwarves.
‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ is a major improvement
over its predecessor; a film which, for the record, I did like save for the
fact that it was a bit too long. This film might be as long, but it does fix
the pacing problem that plagued ‘An Unexpected Journey’. On the other hand, I’m
now kind of worried that this trilogy is going a bit too far in terms of the
number of characters/plotlines/action sequences that occur in this film. In
fact, I’d argue that there’s enough in this movie that there could have
actually been another whole movie considering how much is going on in this
film. Still, this is another fine entry in Peter Jackson’s Middle-Earth film
series as was the last film. Sure, they’re not really as good as the trilogy of
films that came before them, but at the very least it’s just nice to be back in
Middle-Earth. I eagerly await (though with some caution) to see how this series
will come to an end next December with ‘The Hobbit: There and Back Again’.
Rating: 4.5/5
