If the first Hobbit film was hampered by a treacherously slow introduction as the dwarves wooed Bilbo, here Jackson jumps right into the action - and make no mistake, this is an action movie above all else. Teased in the last film as one gargantuan eye, Smaug laid waste to Erebor decades before, and now sleeps within the Lonely Mountain, guarding its treasures - and one particular artifact that is essential to Thorin’s quest.
Along the way they grapple with cold-hearted elves, the horrors of the Mirkwood forest, and the mighty dragon Smaug himself (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch). Led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) and Ian McKellen’s Gandalf the Grey, the group is heading towards the Lonely Mountain, where Thorin will assume his rightful place as the king of the dwarf empire Erebor. The film follows a young Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman, who continues to prove how charming he can be no matter the circumstance) on a quest with 13 dwarves. The result is an entertaining adventure with some truly masterful moments - but they still fail to justify the film’s nearly three-hour running time. At the same time, it doesn’t transcend the fundamental problems that plagued the first outing. Heavy on grandeur but light on the drama and memorable characters audiences fell in love with 10 years ago, the film raised a new question: could Jackson and his creative team build a more robust adventure now that they had the initial set-up out of the way.Īs a feat of sheer technical excellence, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is a marvel: imaginary creatures come to life, fantastic worlds are realized, and breathtaking sequences demonstrate what an accomplished action director Jackson has become. Pulling from appendices to The Lord of the Rings, he and the writers reshaped the story in the image of his own incredibly successful Rings trilogy, but last year’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey didn’t quite pull off the feat. Tolkien’s children’s book The Hobbit to the big screen, Peter Jackson didn’t go for a straightforward adaptation.
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