Review: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

After successfully navigating them away from danger, wizard Gandalf leaves his party of thirteen dwarves (and hobbit thief Bilbo, played by Martin Freeman) to attend to go off on his own mission. Now it is up to Thorin (Richard Armitage) to lead Bilbo and the dwarves to The Lonely Mountain and defeat the dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch), so that the dwarf kingdom can be reclaimed. Along the way they are attacked by giant spiders, rescued and then imprisoned by elves. Luke Evans plays a smuggler named Bard, whom our protagonists ask for help at one crucial point in a town ruled by a red-bearded and frankly odious Stephen Fry as the Master of Lake Town. Orlando Bloom reprises the role of elf Legolas (or a younger version of him), with Evangeline Lily as Tauriel, another elf, and Lee Pace plays the rather cold-hearted elf king Thranduil, Legolas’ father.

 

I really never got into the previous Peter Jackson adaptation of the JRR Tolkien classic, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”. Unlike Jackson’s superlative “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, the seams appeared to be on display in every artificial-looking scene, the makeup looked cheap, and it seemed to me like something was askew with the forced perspective photography trick that worked so well in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Well, in preparing for my review of this 2013 sequel, I discovered that forced perspective was not really used in this “Hobbit” trilogy at all, stand-ins and digital FX were instead used, because 3D and forced perspective are apparently not a good mix. The idea of not doing it in 3D at all, doesn’t appear to have crossed Mr. Jackson’s mind, which is a shame, really since 3D is a fad and a stain on 2D films. I can say, however, that the artificiality of the earlier film is less noticeable in this second film, which improves upon that film in almost every respective. It does not, however, improve enough to result in a higher score than “An Unexpected Journey”. It’s a better film, but only slightly. This trilogy is a staggering disappointment to me, I just find myself removed from the whole thing in a way that wasn’t remotely true of “Lord of the Rings”. The fact that it’s from the same director, source material by the same author, and features some characters from “Lord of the Rings” makes comparisons awfully hard to avoid, I’m afraid, and boy does this come up short. Speaking of short, I still find it noticeable that Richard Armitage’s Thorin in particular, still stands way too tall alongside the other dwarves here. He seems to look down on his brethren, due to the height difference. Even if in the source material he’s meant to be a bit taller than others, it translates confusingly on the screen. Combined with the lack of makeup on him and the absence of forced perspective, he never looks anything other than human. He looks more like Aragorn than Gimli, in other words, and it’s constantly distracting. He needed more hair or at least a round belly, to make him look more distinctly dwarf-like, whether he’s taller or not. Luke Ford’s (boring and derivative ) human character, by the way, looks the same size proportion to the dwarves that wizard Gandalf does, which is also wrong. Thankfully, the other dwarves mostly look around the same size, however, so as I said, there’s a (slight) improvement here over the first film, even if it is still a noticeable problem.

 

Unfortunately, the CGI in this isn’t very good, crushingly disappointing in fact. The orcs look phonier than they did in the “Lord of the Rings” films, especially the lousy overhead shots of orcs running. It looks like something out of a computer game, to be charitable. The FX in the scene where Evangeline Lily’s Tauriel takes down some spiders come off as seriously phony. What happened to the excellent-looking Shelob from “Return of the King”? (Yes, I know what happened to Shelob, you know what I mean). This was released about 10 years after the “Lord of the Rings” films, so it simply isn’t acceptable that the quality is lesser. “The Life of Pi” it ain’t. It’s also a sometimes murky-looking film, which I believe is an unfortunate side-effect of digital filmmaking, something that certainly wasn’t the case in the “Lord of the Rings” films. Those films were visually stunning pieces of art, but I can’t say the same of late cinematographer Andrew Lesnie’s work this time. I guess what I’m saying is that I get the impression that more time, care, and thought went into the earlier trilogy than has this one.

 

I also have to say that the character of Legolas is a constant distraction here. It’s really unnecessary to have the character here, and more importantly, he doesn’t come across as a believable representation of a Legolas younger than the one met in “Fellowship of the Ring”. Orlando Bloom looks noticeably older, and casting Evangeline Lily alongside him merely accentuates this. Worse is the fact that he meets Gimli’s dad, whilst Gimli is meant to be very young. Given how…not young Gimli appeared in “Fellowship of the Ring” (not to mention that even under eyebrow-burning makeup John Rhys-Davies was quite clearly at least two decades older than Orlando Bloom), it all gets very weird. I’m not sure exactly what the aging process is for elves, but can we just agree that it was a mistake to put Legolas in this? Speaking of mistakes, Stephen Fry is simply too much of a distracting casting choice for me in an unnecessarily comedic role in a film that allows Martin Freeman’s supposedly important Bilbo Baggins to get lost in the shuffle. That’s a real problem right there.

 

Getting back to the elves for a sec, I have to say that here the elves come across as more violence and battle-loving than the dwarves, which goes against everything I’ve ever read in the fantasy genre (admittedly, Tolkien’s texts have never been my jam. Yep, just said ‘my jam’, feeling a bit awkward about it). As for the titular Smaug, he looks OK but you can barely tell Benedict Cumberbatch does the voice. His voice is electronically-altered (Why? His deep baritone is his biggest asset!), making his casting somewhat pointless.

 

Credit where it’s due, the story is more interesting and better-paced than the previous film, even though the story of Thorin going to reclaim the throne reminded me a tad too much of “Return of the King”. Pretty good music score by Howard Shore (The “Lord of the Rings” films, “Panic Room”, “Hugo”), as one might expect. I was pleasantly surprised by Evangeline Lily here. Like Liv Tyler before her, I didn’t think I’d enjoy her in this, but along with the always terrific Sir Ian McKellen, she’s the best thing here. It was also a hoot to briefly hear Billy Connolly’s voice as Gimli’s dad, who I think will be more prominently featured in the next film. I also wish more were done with James Nesbitt and the very Billy Barty-esque Ken Stott. Nesbitt just looks so wonderfully seedy as a dwarf, but he gets hardly anything to say or do. Like Armitage, Luke Ford and Lee Pace (who gives the same performance in everything) seem like cut-rate casting compared to the calibre of actors we got in the “Lord of the Rings” films (Viggo Mortensen, Sean Bean, Sir Christopher Lee, Brad Dourif, etc.) And if Pace’s Elf King wasn’t meant to be super-evil, someone forgot to inform the actor of this.

 

It’s a more engaging film, but only very slightly. The FX are dodgy, Richard Armitage’s Thorin continues to be a problem, and the character of Bilbo also seems to get lost somewhere in here. It’s just not very good. The screenplay is by Jackson, his collaborators Philippa Boyens & Fran Walsh (The “Lord of the Rings” films), and Guillermo del Toro (director of “Pan’s Labyrinth”, “Hellboy”, and “Pacific Rim”).

 

Rating: C