Free Post: Movie Review #1

Yesterday, I saw The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in the movie theater.

I'm sure you're all expecting me to bash the movie, so I'll start off from a candid viewpoint. Objectively, it was a good movie, if not better than simply "good." It is Peter Jackson, after all, and he doesn't disappoint often. Personally, I liked this movie better than the first. There was much more character development here, turning the superficial individuals of the first film into characters with depth, being swayed by a variety of factors and having legitimate arguments. As someone who breathes the books, I wasn't too upset; there was a great deal of foreshadowing I picked up that someone who hasn't read the books would overlook. Thorin Oakenshield's obsession with wealth, specifically a gem known as the Arkenstone, is portrayed as a sickness akin to Bilbo's fascination with the peculiar ring he's found, both of which are acted beautifully. Both of these are hinted at by Tolkien, but as The Hobbit is told from a third-person Bilbo, the author doesn't really go into detail, as the characters themselves don't truly realize what's happening. Perhaps best of all, the effects were spot-on. What had disappointed me about the first film regarding the orcs was the fact that they were mostly C.G.I. In The Desolation of Smaug, there was clearly a great deal more makeup done on the orcs. And Smaug was simply fantastic. The dragon looked like a living, breathing animal, not something done on a computer. The tie-ins to Jackson's take on The Lord of the Rings, in spite of their seeming prominence (Legolas, a character whose appearance in the novel is hinted by Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings), are subtle and well-placed. The Gandalf-Sauron plot line, while not featured in the book, is hinted in the literary Fellowship of the Ring, although Tolkien doesn't go into detail. Jackson ties this into a reference to the Ringwraiths, which does nothing to hinder the plot and actually engaged the audience (including myself) in the Sauron plot line when it came up, even those of us who knew and loved the books. And I'll deny it, but I got a laugh when Legolas finds a locket on the dwarf Gloin containing a sketch of his son Gimli, who became the former's best friend in The Lord of the Rings. The fact that Legolas called his future friend a goblin mutant didn't hurt the effect. So why don't I think the film was excellent? Well, something about some of the scenes struck me as being overdone, whereas every scene in Jackson's first trilogy was perfect. It didn't help that most of these scenes, including one where the dwarves trap Smaug in molten gold, aren't in the books. So while from an objective viewpoint the movie was better than fine, The Hobbit is still straining to reach Jackson's first films, and neither trilogy can even hope to touch Tolkien's masterpieces.