The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) trailer review
- 2013-12-11
- 161 min.
- Adventure, Fantasy
- WingNut Films, New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
- Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Ken Stott, Graham McTavish, William Kircher, James Nesbitt, Stephen Hunter, Dean O'Gorman, Aidan Turner, Benedict Cumberbatch, Lee Pace, Luke Evans, Evangeline Lilly, Orlando Bloom, Mikael Persbrandt, Manu Bennett, Stephen Fry, John Bell, Sylvester McCoy, Terry Notary, Peter Hambleton, Cate Blanchett, Stephen Colbert, Jed Brophy, Sarah Peirse, Mary Nesbitt, Peggy Nesbitt, Mark Hadlow, John Callen, Adam Brown, Ben Mitchell
- Victoria Burrows, Amy Hubbard, John Hubbard, Peter Jackson, Howard Shore, J.R.R. Tolkien, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro, Carolyn Blackwood, Toby Emmerich, Callum Greene, Alan Horn, Ken Kamins, Carolynne Cunningham, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Zane Weiner, Andrew Lesnie, Jabez Olssen, Dan Hennah, Liz Mullane, Miranda Rivers, Bob Buck, Ann Maskrey, Richard Taylor, Paul Tobin, Sean Button, Arun Ram-Mohan, Hugo Dominguez, Matt Weaver
- 7.6 Count: 2830
- The Dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf have successfully escaped the Misty Mountains, and Bilbo has gained the One Ring. They all continue their journey to get their gold back from the Dragon, Smaug.
- elves, dwarves, orcs, middle-earth (tolkien), hobbits, dragon, sword and sorcerery, wizard, magical world, middle earth
Review
Some have been overly gracious in their praise of this film. I will not be. I've been reading Tolkien since 1976, when I first read The Hobbit. While I did enjoy the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which Jackson got about 80 percent right, I found this, a result of the greed of the studio and Jackson and his co-writers egos, unacceptable. It was boring, overlong and had just too much filler. Tauriel is unnecessary. Read the books - no Elven women fight. This is far too much of a stretch. Then to have a love triangle between two elves and a dwarf? Unacceptable. No elf or dwarf have EVER been lovers or in love. If Tolkien didn't write it, Jackson shouldn't have included it. Adding stuff from the appendixes was a great idea, but the whole scene was done poorly. And Beorn, a major character, used in a cameo? I was disappointed beyond words in this movie. Overblown and under thought, with a horrible ending (likely because of all the unnecessary filler), this wasn't anything like the great two part film the Hobbit should have been. And, among Jackson's many crimes against The Hobbit, he totally ruined the barrel escape. Oh and Azog is dead by the time of the Hobbit. DEAD. His son, Bolg leads the Orcs of the misty mountains. I could go on, but why bother? I'm not even looking forward to the last part. And I can only imagine what the EXTENDED version of this mess will look like on DVD. Imagine is all I can do, since I'm not going to buy it. Peter Jacksons 'The Hobbit' trilogy is really way behind 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy in terms of quality. Firstly its being stretched out as long as 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy, which is way too long for such a short book. It misses important points in the book and replaces them with over blown, drawn out action sequences. Way too much use of CGI. The sets look really fake and plastic, like a theme park. The soundtrack is uninspired as well.
Ideally 'The Hobbit' would've been made as one film before the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy as a prelude to 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy.
Overall, this film really lacks the magic, adventure, epicness and emotional depth of 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy and I feel that Peter Jacksons uninspired and just in it for the money.
Really feels like it was padded out so it could be a trilogy. Characters I don't recall showing up, CGI gets a little heavy handed with all the camera spinning during fights and falls, it gets to be kind of " look what we can to with the computer". This story could have been wrapped up with this film and I would have been OK with that. Now, seems like it will be more like a two-anda-third-logy, as I don't think there is much more left to the story- unless Jackson rewrites Tolkien, again. But, it kept my kid entertained for a couple of hours. Don't remember much act-ing, more like a bunch of act-ion. Didn't need the political infighting with the elves.
The second Hobbit movie is an improvement over the first simply because it stops for plot. There are two very long, insensibly edited, stupefyingly predictable action sequences, one toward the beginning and one at the end, but in between them there are a couple of hours of dialogue. That dialogue is mostly a string of clichés, and it has only a tangential relationship to anything J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, but at least the characters are talking instead of flinging themselves around in a glaringly artificial whirl of debris and Orc body parts. So that's the good news, if you can call it that. The bad news is that despite the opportunity to correct it, one of the main problems of the first movie is still unresolved: the Hobbit himself, Bilbo Baggins, a literary hero beloved the world over, is effectively absent from the movie that is ostensibly about him and his adventure. Tell me, what does Bilbo think about Lake Town politics, about which so many instantly-forgettable words are bandied? Who knows? We don't see or hear from him during our entire time there. Nor do we hear what he thinks about the intriguing history between the Elves of the woodland realm and Thorin's ancestors, because we are too busy watching the beardless Dwarf Kili (or, who knows, maybe it's Fili! They're all interchangeable and most don't talk!) flirt with a character that Peter Jackson invented! Bilbo, and this is a statistical fact (don't research it, just take my word for it), has less screen time than any title character since Godot. The movie is better when Bilbo is in it, which he is at the very beginning and again towards the end just before a Scooby Doo chase scene starts between Smaug and the Dwarvеs. But as appealing as the intrepid Hobbit is in his fleeting cameos, before you can say "second breakfast" Jackson's rickety roller coaster is off again and Bilbo's out of sight. Maybe in the three-hour final movie Jackson will somehow find time to squeeze Bilbo in, either during the action of the Battle of Five Armies or, if the film can accommodate such luxuries in such a short runtime, during moments of dialogue. For a refresher on how to achieve this sort of thing, Jackson should refer to his own beautiful and character-rich adaptations of the Lord of the Rings.
And not in a positive way.
This movie is another good example for Peter Jackon's flawed style of film making.
When I was 17, the Fellowship was released and I was blown away. Not by the storytelling or the portrayal of the characters. No, it was the amazingly detailed illustration of Tolkien's world that got me hooked. I loved the books and already felt that some things in the way the characters were presented were off, but I didn't care because of the spectacle. I watched it three times in cinema alone and was totally hyped when the trailer for the Two Towers was released.
I went to the cinema with great expectations and I disliked the movie almost completely. Too many Hollywood clichés and more noise than substance or heart made this one already a big let down, as well as Jackson's disability to be subtle and remain meaningful. Add to that many scenes that are involuntarily funny, and you arrive at almost B movie quality plot devices.
The Return of the King continued in the same way, while leaving out some great scenes from the book and having quite a few questionable (and laughable) stylistic decisions (Lighthouse Sauron, the ghost army for example). Add to that the very anti-climatic solutions to the great battles and some really atrocious changes to the books characters (again) and I was left with an empty feeling to what I first thought could be an enjoyable movie going experience.
So, when it was said that some other director than Jackson would be responsible for the adaptation of The Hobbit, I must have been one of the few, who was a actually glad about this bit of news.
And then Jackson got in again and in addition to his already annoying direction goes all Lucas with The Hobbit.
And this time I just hate it. My main problems among many are:
1. Catering to lowest denominator: Cram in more action, more romance and childish humour and people will love it. 2. CGI Overuse: Much like Lucas' Star Wars prequels, this prequel trilogy is marked by an overuse of CGI. And it completely takes me out of the movie. While the first trilogy (especially FotR) made a sensible use of its SFX budget, Jackson now has apparently way to much money to spend on CGI sequences. Maybe I've become too sensitive in that respect, but I get sick when I see CG orcs doing conversation. Especially Azog looks so out of place, I can't imagine any reason why they decided against using masks and costumes. Especially when it worked so well in LotR. 3. Trying to be like LotR: The Hobbit is a completely different tale than The Lord of the Rings, but Jackson tries to make it as epic and meaningful and it just doesn't work for me. It also distracts heavily from the original story and its main character. More so than in AuJ, Bilbo as character and main protagonist is completely underused and subdued. Now, you would expect that time saved here is used to make the other characters more interesting and memorable. And indeed, with the amount of time Jackson reserved for the adaption, there should have been plenty of time, to give the dwarfs some character and actually improve on the book, where the dwarfs remain quite bland. Unfortunately, it's not better than in the novel. 4. Way too much over the top action: Combined with the CGI, this absolutely shattered my suspension of disbelief. There's no feel of tension or danger. Combine that with the problem that I don't care for the characters and all I get is big yawn from the prolonged fight scenes. 5. Copying from the Lord of the Rings: This trilogy doesn't bring in any new ideas. Kingsfoil, the way the Ring slips on Bilbo's finger, a Worm Tongue look a like... it's just so obvious.
Another thing that bugged me is that Jackson has to show us how evil the ring is with Bilbo as an example. Now, some people actually think that the scene in question is one of the best from the movie, but it just doesn't make sense in the long run. If the ring gets a hold on Bilbo this early, shouldn't Bilbo have changed drastically by the time his 111th birthday arrives? And it's not because Gandalf reminds him that killing is bad, that he doesn't take Gollum's life. It's because of his peaceful Hobbit nature (Murder is basically unheard of in the shire). All this makes Bilbo/Frodo so resilient against the influence of the ring. Now it just doesn't fit in the context anymore.
I could go on and on, there is so much that is off, but the typical moviegoer with his craving for action and show wont notice anyway.
The truth is, that these movies have become boring and stale. Sometimes less is more. A good story, told with heart and soul is much more compelling than this CGI extravaganza, hailed by the people who are satisfied with seeing Middle Earth on the big screen again. But sorry Peter, that alone wont make a good movie. At least not in my book.
Easily a contender for one of the worst blockbusters of the decade, The Desolation of Smaug crushes everything good about the beloved story The Hobbit and bakes in every stale trope of modern action movies. The bitterest part is how obviously this script was drawn out to fill up three films, when it could have been a more intimate work, just as the novel had been.
Too many other elements have been forced into the story, attempting to create conflict where none need exist. The worst of this is the love triangle between Legolas, Kili and a character, Tauriel, who was invented precisely for this purpose, making the movie read more like a soap-opera than an epic fantasy. The barrel ride, for example, was made into some complicated Rube Goldberg plot device to arrive at a romantic climax later in Laketown. For purists, the characterizations are all off, with Bard as a fisherman scorned by the townsfolk, an all-too-prominent Radagast sketched as an addled hobo, and the Laketown mayor far too paranoid about some imaginary revolution on the edge of erupting. The dragon, who was to have been the pièce de résistance, gets mired in an action sequence that takes all the gas out of the character, and the tête à tête between Bilbo and Smaug is devoid of the mischievous streak in our hobbit hero that made the book version so entertaining.
The movie had a weird light to it, and left me wondering if I was watching some PBS video drama from the 70s or 80s. Most of the movie lacked the natural light that made the Lord of the Rings so breathtaking in its sweep. In that series, the beauty of New Zealand really shone through, but this series has an artificial quality to it, reminiscent of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The action sequences were cartoonish and over-the-top, suspending the laws of physics in a brazen manner, creating an almost campy tone. Directorially, the actors seemed to be struggling with dialogue that felt out of place in the story (though that could just be my bias for the original).
This movie seemed to have all the elements of a success: a well-established franchise, the founding director, an ensemble of great actors and stunning VFX technology, but the script was far too crowded and the action too muddy to entertain. I want to say the producers filled the movie to overflowing as an apology for poor script choice, but then I remind myself that the overflowing was the problem in the first place.
Ugh. This movie is painful to watch from beginning to end. First there is the atrocious editing. The beginning of the movie is simply difficult to follow. Then there is the fact that the plot unravels fairly quickly. Orcs are relentlessly pursuing the party for what reason exactly? Oh right, it's to give Orlando Bloom and elf-girl a reason to be in the movie. Gandalf's cut-away scenes make no sense. The scenes in the forest are just plain ridiculous. The final scene with Smaug is similarly ludicrous, poorly written, and overly dependent on CGI. Smaug the terrible comes across as pretty inept at killing for a creature that purportedly wiped out an entire army of hard ass, armored dwarfs and a city of humans.
There are a few places where the movie rolls well. The fighting on the barrels is very well done and the scenes with Bard and the town kingpin mesh well.
But ultimately the movie is ruined by too many big names demanding close-ups and screen time. It would have been better to sharply cut back on both Gandalf's and Legolas' appearances or at least connect them back to the central plot more cleverly.
When The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey premiered on silver screen as the first in a trilogy of films based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, the response it received was mostly positive to mixed. The majority of criticism was targeted at the needless expansion of a single film story into three features but, in my opinion, it did commence this latest Middle-Earth adventure on the right note and, despite its sluggish pace, ended up providing a largely satisfying experience.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is the second chapter of The Hobbit film series & picks the story right from where it was left off in An Unexpected Journey. Continuing the adventures of Bilbo Baggins who's accompanying thirteen dwarfs on their quest to reclaim the kingdom of Erebor, the film covers the journey ahead for these fellows which is full of dangers and even if they manage to get away with it & reach the Lonely Mountain safely, they have a stupendous dragon to deal with.
One thing I have always admired about this Middle-Earth franchise is the filmmaker's strong intent to keep the story very much within the realms of Tolkien's spirit. But this latest chapter marks a significant departure from such faithfulness & ends up being an immensely frustrating experience. There are a few things The Desolation of Smaug gets right but there are also way too many things that are wrong with it. Let's start with the things it gets right first.
Since the previous chapter was criticized for its sluggish pace, the filmmakers have vastly improved the pacing in this middle chapter with addition of many more action sequences to keep the entertainment going throughout its runtime. Production design continues to amaze. Cinematography encapsulates the picture with a darker layer which suits its tone. Visual effects has its share of highs n lows & Howard Shore's score is good but it also stumbles a little for the very first time.
Now coming to what's wrong with it... First, it slaughters the book in a manner that's plainly insulting to Tolkien. Second, the absurdly introduced love triangle, overindulgence of Elves & eye-rollingly cheesy dialogues are poor filler substitutes. Third, this film had a great opportunity to further develop its characters but thanks to its rushed pace & more emphasis on over-the-top action over a riveting narration, we still have difficulty in recalling the correct names of all the Dwarfs.
And that's not all. Martin Freeman is brilliant as Bilbo Baggins but his character is demoted into a secondary role for the centre stage is taken by Richard Armitage's Thorin. The remaining Dwarfs get only as much screen time as they did in the last chapter. Elves have never been as annoying as they are in this film for Legolas wasn't even needed in this adventure & Tauriel, who doesn't even exist in the novel but was created to bring a feminine energy to the series, is given a stupid love story to work with instead.
At last, I would like to talk about Smaug. Exquisitely designed, remarkably portrayed & meticulously detailed, this splendid beast of CGI is a jaw-dropping wonder to look at & the painstaking work that went into bringing this magnificent dragon to life truly deserves a bow. But thanks to its inefficient handling by the filmmakers, the cunning, proud & intelligent dragon of the novel is turned into a foolish creature here which is a shame because Smaug could've been as memorable to this trilogy as Gollum was to The Lord of the Rings.
On an overall scale, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is an emotionally unappealing but visually spectacular sequel which features a much more exciting, fiercely paced & action-packed entertainment that'll satisfy most filmgoers but for the devoted fans of Middle-Earth, it's a heartbreaking disappointment that adds even more insult to injury by abruptly ending at one of the most frustrating cliffhangers in cinema history, thus leaving the experience very much incomplete in the end.
As The Two Towers is my favorite film of the previous trilogy and I was told The Desolation of Smaug was darker than the first Hobbit film, I was looking forward to this one. But my god, was it disappointing. Why? Well, here's why:
- Gandalf and Bilbo have to be the most important ánd most interesting characters of this trilogy. But where are they in this film? Gandalf leaves the group pretty early in the film and we hardly see him again. And also Bilbo isn't really used to his maximum capability, it almost looks like Peter Jackson forgot the film has Bilbo.
- So, who gets all the screen time, then? Well, there is this dwarf that gets his leg hurt and an elf who randomly falls in love with him and wants to heal him. And then there is Legolas, who also loves this elf or something? This love triangle is apparently so interesting that during the big scene with Bilbo and Smaug, they keep cutting back to the dwarf and his leg that hurts. Yeah, I really didn't wanna miss that.
- And this film is filled with a lot of boring and pretty much useless characters and appearances. Boring characters such as that leader of the elves. And useless appearances like Cate Blanchett showing up for 2 seconds. Or that Radagast dude, who only appears so he can lift his hat and show there is a birds nest underneath. Exciting AND useful.
- Anyway, you can really tell that Hobbit 2 is mostly filler- material. I guess you can just walk in the film during the third act and you wouldn't have missed any essential part of the story. I'm even assuming you can just skip the entire film and go right to There And Back Again and you wouldn't be all that confused with what you've missed.
- Also, I find it frustrating that Jackson didn't even take the time to give this movie a proper ending. Fellowship, Two Towers and even Hobbit 1 had cliffhangers too, but at least they felt like they had an ending. Here the film just stops in the middle of a scene, like it's a cliffhanger for an episode of a TV-show. Only difference is; this is a three hour movie! A little more effort wouldn't be too much to ask, right? I mean, the man who had 20 endings for Return of the King didn't have one left for this film and so he just simply cuts to black?
- The one thing I would look forward to with this film, was the dark tone. I thought the first Hobbit was a little too childish, with all these trolls and goblins with funny voices. But Peter Jackson apparently liked this, so he even gave the giant spiders a voice. Yeah, that just what Shelob, one of the scariest and most awesome creatures from the original trilogy, needed; a funny voice. Only cool thing I can say about that is, is that one of the voices was done by Peter Verne- Jones (Lord Crumb in Bad Taste). But still, why would you give those spiders a voice?
- I guess the voice of Smaug seemed a little more appropriate. Benedict Cumberbatch does a pretty decent job on the voice of the dragon, really dark and mysterious. Only problem is.. the dragon just won't shut up. I guess this scene had to be stretched to reach the 3 hour mark, but my God, couldn't the dragon just shut up for one minute? He really got a lot less mysterious and threatening when he just kept talking and talking. Too bad.
- So, is that all the problems I had with The Hobbit 2? Not really, there were still two things that really annoyed me. First of all, there were these horrible scenes in this little town, with Stephen Fry as the mayor/leader/master- guy. It looked like an unfunny episode of Blackadder, did they really except us to take this stuff serious? Stephen Fry was totally inappropriate and out of place, his Wormtongue- ripoff- sidekick was really annoying (the guy obviously isn't a Brad Dourif) and that Bard and his family were far from interesting characters. And still, we stay in that town for a very, very long time.
- Last thing I really hated was the 3D- HFR. I saw the film in HFR and I can't remember ever seeing something so incredible ugly. I really can't believe someone actually chooses his film to look like that. And they say that's the future for cinema? God, I hope not!
Last but not least, is there anything positive to say about The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug? Yes, there is. Like with the previous film (and also the first trilogy), the effects look great and the action sequences are well put together. And Martin Freeman is a great leading man, much better than Elijah Wood for the Lord of the Rings films. But still, Freeman doesn't get to do a lot, because of all the other uninteresting characters showing their faces.
Best scene of the movie? That is, without a doubt, Gandalf showing up at Dol Guldur and seeing the return of Sauron (with that Mordor- theme playing). That gave me some chills, as a true Lord of the Rings fan. But it was only for a short while, because right after Gandalf vs Sauron, we had to return to dwarfs with leg pains, elves in love and Stephen Fry.
The problem with the LotR trilogy was the sheer size of the opus. There was so much material that a lot would have to be left out in order to streamline the movie and make it work. Usually it tends to work and it did in that context. Here, however, the book is considerably shorter and one would think it would be easier to adapt to a movie.
The original plan was to make two movies, correspondingly to the structure of the book. Now with the second movie the bad story telling decisions made early at the scripting phase are beginning to snowball out of control. There's just so much bloat and unnecessary alterations without which a much more compact and to-the-point end result could have been achieved. Not much is left to expect from the third movie anymore. Maybe somebody could do a fan edit after the third movie is released.
The brilliance of Tolkien's work is in the fact that he wrote what he wanted the way he wanted to. The error here is trying to force the story to a mold it originally refused to fit into. It makes not sense. The original story captivated millions of people. Why could a true to the original adaptation not do it?
