(Extended Edition)

“I am fire! I am… death.”

The Desolation of Smaug continues the dwarves, Bilbo Baggins, and Gandalf’s quest to take back the Lonely Mountain from the dragon named Smaug, almost directly after the last film. However, because of their situation with Azog and the orcs, they need to find a place to stay for a little bit and take shelter before they enter the Mirkwood Forest. The rest of the film deals with the rest of their adventure, as they encounter new enemies and allies, and begin to bond more with one another. Meanwhile, Gandalf separates from the team and looks after a long-rumored returning evil that has been all but forgotten about.

I definitely would say I prefer An Unexpected Journey to this movie, but not by a landslide. I think this is still a really good follow-up to that movie and properly continues the buildup that’s been going on ever since their journey started. However, one thing I do think The Desolation of Smaug actually does quite a bit better is the action. This is definitely the film in the trilogy for me that has the most fun and energetic action, before it starts getting maybe a little bit too much and occasionally over-the-top in The Battle of the Five Armies. Some of the sequences here are just absolutely fantastic and an absolute blast; the three main standouts for me are the entire third act, some sword and bowfights, and yes, even the barrel sequence no one seems to like because of all the CGI.

When it comes to the CGI specifically, this is definitely when the heavier use of it starts to become a lot more apparent, but to be honest, I still think it is really well done. Once you finally get to see Smaug in all his glory, it’s pretty incredible, but even everything else looks really good to me, one of the standouts being all that happens in Mirkwood. Even though this is coming from someone who typically doesn’t mind subpar or heavily-used CGI, I still don’t really understand the heavy criticisms for the use of it in this trilogy. Yes, it would have been cool to have more practical sets, like in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but these films still look really good on their own.

Okay, now onto more of the story stuff. The biggest turn that The Desolation of Smaug takes from the book is that it slowly, over the course of this and the third movie, starts to transition the focus more from Bilbo to Thorin Oakenshield, the dwarf who is claimed to be the rightful king under the mountain. Bilbo might still be more of the main character, but his arc was pretty much completed in the last film, so it’s definitely more that we start to see a change in the character of Thorin here over Bilbo. To be completely honest, I probably wouldn’t have liked this change just thinking of the idea, but I think it really works. Thorin is a much deeper character in the films than he was in the book, so I think giving him more attention is actually quite justified.

Now, as you’ll start to see in my review, I’m definitely not as high on the story of this film as I was in the first one, which is why my positives with the story specifically kind of end with this last little section. When it comes to the best part of this whole movie, it is absolutely, without a doubt, the entire last hour. The entire last hour is pretty much just the third act, and it is, just like the action I talked about earlier, so much fun from start to finish. It’s full of a huge amount of tension and suspense, and the really fun kind where you just can’t wait for everything to crescendo, and when it does, it’s pretty amazing. This whole section of the movie is probably the best part out of any of The Hobbit trilogy in my mind, and if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know and understand exactly what I’m talking about. Yes, this part of the movie, again, controversially adds new material to what wasn’t in the book, but I think that this was absolutely one of the most necessary additions.

Speaking of the additions, however, I think the ones added in The Desolation of Smaug are noticeably weaker than An Unexpected Journey, and I think this is when Peter Jackson and the writers were sort of starting to run out of ideas with how to make this a three-hour-long movie, or in the theatrical release’s case, a nearly three-hour-long movie. There are some great additions, like what I already mentioned, but some not so great ones as well. Before I go totally negative, I’ll talk about the main one that is more of a mixed for me, rather than a complete negative, and that is everything that has to do with Gandalf’s side quest. I absolutely love all the scenes with him here, and love the story additions that actually show you what Gandalf was up to instead of it sort of feeling like he just abandoned the dwarves, but frankly, there aren’t nearly enough scenes with him in this movie. His runtime was cut significantly short, and there are two downsides to that. The first one is that the whole way his quest ties into, or rather builds up to, The Lord of the Rings trilogy is really intriguing, and the second one is that obviously Gandalf was one of the reasons that really made the first movie such a fun adventure movie in the first place.

The first completely negative addition the this part of the story of The Hobbit has to do with literally anything that has to do with the inclusion of the Elves. Anytime they appear on screen, it’s almost like the pacing screeches to a halt and, unfortunately, starts to get a little bit on the boring side. Thankfully, the worst of it is in the first hour, maybe an hour and fifteen minutes, but the reason it’s not interesting is that it doesn’t, at first, feel like they need to be in the story. Once they start to become a bigger part of the story, it does get a little more interesting. I also don’t like what they do with some of the dwarves, specifically one of them, and a not-so-subtle romance he has with one of the Elves, which kind of ties into my next section.

Another part of the movie where the pacing isn’t very good is when they arrive in a certain town around the halfway point. I’ll get to why I don’t like how some of the dwarves were written in the story in the next paragraph, but firstly, everything in this town is by far the most boring part of the entire movie. It’s not insufferably long, but it’s one of those sections in a movie where it feels like almost nothing is happening. There are also two people who sort of antagonize both our main crew, as well as a new character named Bard, who also gets a character arc by the way (more so in Battle of the Five Armies), being the master of the town, and a really annoying new character named Alfred. Their heavier inclusion in the story, especially Alfred (who I don’t even think was in the book), felt and still feels completely unnecessary to me.

Now, going back to the dwarves. What I don’t like about the way some of them were written is that almost half of them get hardly anything to do other than to help build up the romance I talked about between the specific dwarf and an Elf. I get what they were going for, but it just ends up coming off as super cheesy and, quite frankly, dumb. This is probably the most controversial addition they put into this story, and for good reason in my opinion.

I know I definitely sounded a lot more critical of this movie over the first Hobbit film, but it’s really not that far behind it in my opinion. I just think that, in comparison, it’s a little bit too long and starts to expand the story a little bit in ways that feel very much forced to fit the runtime. However, the action, Thorin, and the entire last hour/third act make this a really good Middle-earth movie in my mind.