Middle Earth is always a nice place to visit. For fans of High Fantasy, you could do a lot worse than The Shire, bellowing wizards and orcs ripped from glimpses of nightmares. Even though both films released so far in The Hobbit trilogy have proven that they are a lesser product than the Lord of Rings films that preceded them, they are still highly entertaining mega-spectacles that are well worth the price of any admission.
Why is this new crop of celluloid not as good as Frodo’s quest to toss a ring into a lake of magma? There are plenty of reasons starting with the inherent problem with all prequels: We know that it’s all going to be alright. The stakes are so much lower that it’s hard to invest too much. The world isn’t coming to an end. There is no King to Return and bring order to a fallen race. Here in The Desolation of Smaug we continue with a quaint adventure from a children’s book. And despite director Peter Jackson’s attempt to flesh it out, it’s still just quaint adventure.
Actually it’s this attempt to flesh everything out that is the film’s biggest flaw. You will find that this second chapter is much better paced than the first film but it is still bloated. Jackson has added a character, a female elf named Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) that proves to have little purpose. I understand the need for the character- otherwise you have nothing but boys playing dress up and fighting with sticks- but he doesn’t do anything of interest with her. She’s merely involved in a very underdeveloped love triangle that is pointless. Sad stuff and a waste of an opportunity.
Also Jackson has yet to actually capture the same vivid world he created in the first Trilogy. There is a constant sense of trying to recapture instead of creating. Orlando Bloom is the perfect example of this. His Legolas character returns here in Smaug but he barely feels like the same elf. The delivery is off, the eye contacts look like eye contacts while the wig looks like a wig. Lord of the Rings, probably better than any film in history, created a very lived-in environment that was so detailed you could see the wear and tear in every piece of furniture. This new world it too glossy, too fake. The sets look like something you’d find at Disneyland instead of a village where actual people live.
To battle this issue DO NOT SEE THIS FILM IN 48 FRAMES. It only compacts the problem. My screening for Smaug was in standard 24 frames while I saw the first Hobbit in 48. The standard frame rate helps remove the artificial feel and Jackson should just leave it alone. Too much.
With all this bitching aside, I did enjoy this film. The Desolation of Smaug is filled with mammoth action sequences that had me giggling like an idiot. Martin Freeman continues to prove to be a perfect Bilbo and then there’s the dragon. Smaug is a fantastic villain and Benedict Cumberbatch breathes sinister life into him. The final sequence in the mountain is killer and will rattle your chest.
One final question: With the action so cartoony and apparently aimed at children, why so many orc decapitations? I like orc decapitations. In fact, Jackson could make a forth film filled with nothing but orc decapitations and I’d catch it in IMAX. It’s just if you are making a kid’s movie, make it for kids.