The Hobbit – Desolation of Smaug Review

So, two weeks ago I went to see The Hobbit – The Desolation of Smaug finally, at a huge cinema next to Kawasaki station in latest IMAX and 3D technology.

Overall I liked it, but I also definitely liked the first Hobbit movie or the Lord of the Ring movies better. It’s always an expectation game of course, too. I did not have high expectations towards the first Hobbit movie and was positively surprised that I could live with it despite being a bit of a LOTR fan.

Now of course the expectations towards part 2 were high and maybe that is one of the reasons for why I felt disappointed in several areas.

Before the “critique” here is what I liked about the movie.

Legolas is back and his evil daddy (I didn’t realize in the first part of the Hobbit that Thranduil was Legloas’ daddy) is pretty awesome. Half of a miracle that such a nasty father can have such a nice son. I found the blue artificial looking contact lenses of Legolas a bit thick, but anyway.

The humans were nicely characterized too, the honorable Bard and the nasty lord of Lake Town plus his sidekick were nicely done and portrayed.

But now let’s turn to the issues I had with Hobbit 2:

1) Movement:

Maybe it was not even such a good idea to watch it in IMAX 3D. My adrenalin level was high, due to driving to the theater by car, which still costs me quite some courage, and that may have played a part in it. But it was sort of a roller coaster thing and sometimes I had to avert my eyes and started feeling woozy… I found the whole movie very strenuous for the eyes. Usually I have no problem with 3D, this was the first time I did have a problem.

The constant movement got mightily on my nerves. Also with Smaug, just hold still for one second please so that I can take a good look at you! Constant movement loses its appeal if not counterbalanced with stillness. The barrel ride also didn’t knock my socks off. It was fun, yeah, but what does it add to the story? It was an action sequence for the 3D’s sake and not for the story’s sake.

2) Logic:

Of course this is fantasy, and yet… 5000 tons of gold do not liquefy in 5 minutes, not even with dragon fire….　This is about exceeding the strangeness budget – every story/movie has a strangeness budget (I’m sure I mentioned the strangeness budget in whatever other blog entry of the past three years or so). In principle every reader/movie goer is prepared to suspend his/her disbelief for a while. If I’m going to read a fantasy story or watch a fantasy movie the strangeness budget is of course much higher than when I watch a drama or a documentary. And yet, that does not mean that you can do whatever you want, things must be believable in the realm you are dealing with. I am ready to believe in dragons and wizards when I watch something like the Hobbit, but liquefying tons and tons of gold in five minutes is exceeding the leeway that I am giving the story as a reader/viewer, stuff like that throws me out of the movie and has this “pff” effect that usually you desperately want to avoid as the author or movie maker.

The thing that vexed me most though was the stupid back entrance. Why do they need to go in via the back entrance? Did I miss anything? Smaug is asleep, unless he has rigged the front entrance there is no reason why they couldn’t walk in at the front. Especially because in the end Smaug leaves via the front entrance and Bilbo too without any harm done, so what’s this whole show about needing to find the back entrance? Then, would Smaug leave his treasure and his enemies behind and fly an attack against Lake Town? Hmmmm….

3) Characters:

I can’t say I liked Thorin so much here… the tormented hero theme worked wonderfully in part 1 but not here, suddenly he abandons his heirs Fili and Kili? He is totally ungrateful to Bilbo all the time, despite him getting them out of the Elven prison and finding the key hole at the back entrance? And the entire key hole issue angered me too: Thorin and the other dwarves give up just like that, sun’s down, no key hole, see ya later? So it again has to be Bilbo who finds the key hole and stays until the moon comes up?

Then sending Bilbo into the dragon’s lair just like that? Smaug knows the smell of dwarfs, fine, but at least Thorin could send Bilbo off and not Balin. And when they meet again he gives him not even a pat on the back but – you got the arkenstone? and blocks his way with a sword? All this added up to me not liking Thorin anymore. I think there is a fine line between a villain being mean and a hero being unkind. You expect the villain to be mean and forgive him more easily, but a hero being unkind and ungrateful turns the milk sour…

Then I also have a great issue with Bilbo. I cannot shake the feeling that Bilbo is reduced to a back character when in a group. Alone he is fine and the initial confrontation with Smaug is awesome but otherwise Martin Freeman gets lost in the crowd. He just doesn’t fill a room. Elijah Wood managed to fill the room, he has a bigger presence than Freeman despite having been so awfully young when Lord of the Rings was happening.

The dwarves were also less distinguishable than before. Fili got a much bigger part and “shone”, but a bit at the expense of the others who would have deserved more time and room.

And last but not least, would Tauriel fall in love with a dwarf so easily? It was a nice twist, but it was all happening too quickly and came out of nowhere and was not believable to me either.

Oh, and Gandalf… also Gandalf is happily abandoning his friends to go off on a different quest? Hmmmmm… All this reminded me of the good old RPG rule – do not split up the group…

All in all the Hobbit has turned pretty darn dark. I admit that I never read the Hobbit, only the Lord of the Rings as a teenager, but it feels like nothing much is left of the original children’s tale.

Anyway, I shall buy it on DVD nevertheless once it comes out here and watch it again and I also want to watch the final part, but I am not entirely happy with part 2 I must say…