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| Friday, December 13, 2013 02:12 PM |
| On the Viewer - The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug |
 by Fëanor |
I just saw the second Hobbit movie! I enjoyed it immensely. Gonna drop some spoilers on you below, but come on, the book is pretty old, people.
First of all, Martin Freeman is just fantastic as Bilbo. His performance is funny and subtle and deeply insightful. The Mirkwood sequence, though missing some of the neat details from the book, is still fantastic, with wonderful visualizations of the surreal enchantment on the place. The scene where Bilbo climbs the tree and looks out over the top of the forest was always a memorable one for me in the book, and they handled it well here. And the spiders! So creepy! So cool!
I also really enjoyed all the added scenes with the elves. The movie makes clear that there's a lot of history between the Elven King Thranduil (wonderfully embodied by Lee Pace) and Thorin's people - and lots of history between Thranduil and dragons. There's some fun foreshadowing of Legolas' relationship with Gimli, first in a silly scene between Legolas and Gloin, Gimli's father, but also in the unlikely relationship that springs up between Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) and Kili (Aidan Turner). Tauriel's character is a wonderful addition to the story, and it's great to see the dwarves fleshed out as individuals. Ken Stott stands out as the wise and sadly knowing Balin, and I like the brotherly bond between Fili (Dean O'Gorman) and Kili.
Thranduil wants to protect his son and his people from danger and disgrace, but his solution to these problems is to simply lock all the doors and let the people outside fend for themselves - and to coldly tell Tauriel to stay away from his boy because she wouldn't be right for him. But Tauriel sees that there's a world outside that has its own beauty and wonder, and that it's in danger. And she draws Legolas out with her to protect it.
The fight that takes place as the dwarves float down the river in their barrels is ridiculously fun, impressive, and exciting, and is definitely the grand centerpiece of the film. Turns out Bombur is a bad-ass! Not to mention Legolas and Tauriel.
Stephen Fry has a fun little part as the scheming, power-hungry, self-important Master of Lake Town, and Luke Evans is great as Bard - a simple man with legendary origins who just wants to protect his people. I thought it was a little silly that they turned what was originally just an arrow that happened to be colored black into a secret dragon-killing harpoon called the "Black Arrow." But whatever, it works.
Gandalf's subplot is very exciting. He and Radagast investigate some old tombs and find them empty. Oh, and the tombs? There are nine of them. Dun dun DUN! Even more amazing, Gandalf walks into Dol Guldur alone and goes head-to-head with Sauron himself. This I had a bit of a problem with, as I feel like Gandalf would have acted differently during Lord of the Rings if he'd found out years before that the Nazgul were abroad, Sauron was rising, and he had actually personally fought Sauron. (I'm pretty sure in the books, Gandalf mentions at one point that he's never personally faced Sauron, but I could be remembering that wrong.) But it was so cool to see I think I'm generally okay with it.
I also really liked the foreshadowing of the terrible effect the ring will have on Bilbo. In one scene, he almost tells Gandalf about it, but then stops himself at the last moment. Then later, in Mirkwood, he viciously beats a monster to death in order to get the ring back, and then freaks out a little about what he's done. Did I mention that Freeman is fantastic?
Oh and hey, there's also a dragon in this movie. He's pretty great. Benedict Cumberbatch does a fine job on the voice. It was nice of Pete Jackson and friends to make the dwarves much braver and more selfless here than they were in the book, and have them actually have a go at fighting the dragon before he takes off to destroy Lake Town.
Really the only thing about the movie that I found disappointing was the sequence with Beorn. One of my favorite bits of the book is the way Gandalf kind of tricks Beorn into taking them all in. He and Bilbo show up first, and Beorn is cranky about it, but is okay with taking in a couple of people. Then Gandalf starts telling him all about their adventure, and as he does, more and more dwarves keep showing up in ones and twos, interrupting the story. Beorn puts up with it because he wants to hear the rest of the story, and by the time they've all got there, he feels like he has to take them in. It's a clever, funny scene and it's completely missing from the movie. There's also a lot of mystery around Beorn in the book and it's only very slowly that Bilbo works out that he's a skinchanger. In the movie, Gandalf blurts it out as soon as they meet him. And then before you know it, Beorn's gone. It seems like they could have spent a bit more time on recreating this scene as it was in the book, and less time adding in a bunch of crazy running around in Erebor that they made up out of whole cloth.
But I'm just being a cranky old Tolkien fan. Overall, I really enjoyed the movie, and I'm looking forward to the last one. It should be a doozie! |
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