Last year’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was something of a mixed bag. Fans of the book enjoyed it for the most part, and fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy generally liked it, but it ran long and was a tad boring for the wider audience. I thought it was pretty good, all things considered, but it was hard to judge it without having the “rest of the story” released in theaters. A few days ago, I finally got to see the second film in the series, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and I can safely say I liked it more than the previous outing.
The story of The Hobbit centers on the, er, hobbit named Bilbo (Martin Freeman), and how he joins a band of dwarves as they attempt to reclaim their ancestral mountain kingdom from a dragon named Smaug. The first film set up their meeting and initial travels, and its story suffers because of it: you feel like you’re just getting started in the story by the time the credits roll. There’s much more going on in this movie to hold the viewer’s interest. There are fewer obvious “comic relief” points cluttering up events. You aren’t being introduced to Bilbo for an hour on end. In short, the pacing feels much better in this film. However, as all of the introductions are now out of the way, the story shifts focus from Bilbo himself to the party and threat at large, adding some additional diversity to the tale.
I’m no Tolkien geek, but Peter Jackson definitely took some liberties with the plot this time around (he always does…but these feel a bit more egregious). Elves live longer than humans, and as this movie is a prequel to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Jackson took the opportunity to bring Legolas (Orlando Bloom) from the previous trilogy forward in time to play a badass in this new iteration. As the original trilogy came out 12 years ago, it’s pretty obvious he’s aged, but it’s still cool to see the character back on-screen. Jackson even created a new main character in Tauriel (Evangeline Lily) and I think it was a wise addition. The original movies had Sam Gamgees (Sean Astin) as an emotional character to help the audience know when they should feel sad, happy, scared, and so on. In the first Hobbit movie, I can’t say I felt much of an emotional connection with anyone. Tauriel adds some much needed empathy to the story and brings out some more emotion in the other characters. That, and Evangeline Lily made for a very awesome elf.
Basically, any action scene with the elves was awesome. Totally over-the-top and kinda stupid. But stupid awesome.
The last bit of “heavy changes” I’ll mention is the addition of the Necromancer, a character that’s only referred to in the book and never seen. Part-way through the book, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) leaves the party and deals with the threat of the Necromancer, then inexplicably, he returns later in the book after having battled him. We aren’t even explicitly told in the book that the Necromancer is really Sauron, the main villain from The Lord of the Rings, though Jackson makes it more clear here in the movie. I was hoping when they said that they’re making three movies out of a single book, they’d explain where Gandalf went for half the book. I’m happy they included it here.
The main dwarf character, Thorin (Richard Armitage), was improved over the previous movie. Perhaps it was because he was doing something rather than just sitting and brooding, but I felt like he was more fleshed out and interesting than in the first film. Benedict Cumberbatch also did a wonderful job voicing the entirely CGI character of Smaug. His voice was heavily obscured, but you could tell it was him in his phrasing and tempo. There’s only so much “life” you can bring to a giant CGI character and I thought he did a pretty good job.
The special effects were still great, as always, but while I saw a lot of New Zealand in the first movie, I felt like I saw a lot more green screen in this one. The locales just weren’t as expansive as in the first movie, or even the original trilogy. You didn’t need to see characters running across fields or climbing in the mountains. In this movie, they are literally going inside a mountain, so that can be done on sound stages and using heavy CGI. And it was pretty obvious. It still looked good, but not perfect.
In total, I enjoyed this one more than the previous one. If they can keep this up, the third movie will be even better. It’s a pity we have to wait until late-2014 to see it.