The Desolation of Smaug picks up from an unexpected journey, as Bilbo Baggins and his dwarf companions head towards the mountain of Eribor.
The first thing to say about this film, is that like the LOTR films and the first Hobbit movie, it is at nearly 3 hours, stupidly long. Although this film has a bit more of a feel if urgency and a sense of the quest about it than An unexpected Journey, so perhaps doesn't feel quite so slow.
That said, just how many times can one group of dwarfs get caught? They don't seem to be able to do anything without getting into some trouble.
Regular readers of my blog will know that I enjoy surprising plot twist, and I don't like huge pointers of later plot early in a movie. My major issue with this film, is it's setup for the third, in order for a trilogy to work the films need to work independently of each other, there is so much in The Desolation of Smaug that points to the final conclusion of There and Back again, that without having read the book, I can pretty much tell you how the story is going to end.
This is marginally better than the first Hobbit film, but still a film with a few issues, like previous Tolkien movies it labours through a lot of dialogue and unnecessary rubbish, and the ending "cliff hanger" is slightly ruined by a key piece of information that we really didn't need until the third film 8/10
The first thing to say about this film, is that like the LOTR films and the first Hobbit movie, it is at nearly 3 hours, stupidly long. Although this film has a bit more of a feel if urgency and a sense of the quest about it than An unexpected Journey, so perhaps doesn't feel quite so slow.
That said, just how many times can one group of dwarfs get caught? They don't seem to be able to do anything without getting into some trouble.
Regular readers of my blog will know that I enjoy surprising plot twist, and I don't like huge pointers of later plot early in a movie. My major issue with this film, is it's setup for the third, in order for a trilogy to work the films need to work independently of each other, there is so much in The Desolation of Smaug that points to the final conclusion of There and Back again, that without having read the book, I can pretty much tell you how the story is going to end.
This is marginally better than the first Hobbit film, but still a film with a few issues, like previous Tolkien movies it labours through a lot of dialogue and unnecessary rubbish, and the ending "cliff hanger" is slightly ruined by a key piece of information that we really didn't need until the third film 8/10
Nice review Jonathan. I was immediately pulled into what was going on and I'm glad to say that pacing wasn't an issue this time around, although the movie itself was still a bit longer than it needed to be.
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