Watched: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
While I won’t deny that this was mostly fun (barring a long, drawn-out series of blurry action sequences in the last half hour that just weren’t very well-directed), it’s hard not to feel short-changed by this film. One gets the impression that Peter Jackson’s grand vision involved making one nine-hour feature, rather than three individual films, as this opens fairly noncommitally and ends on a cliffhanger.
That might be alright if there was enough resolved by the end of this film, but almost nothing is. The big bad orc who doesn’t really exist runs off, as does his dwarf-hunter lackey; an elaborate plan to stop Benedict Cumberbatch the dragon from escaping the ruins of the city of Erebor doesn’t work; Gandalf discovers that the utterly invented Necromancer is actually Sauron, but even that trails off. Oh, and we never learned what happened to Laketown Spy #1, also known as Stephen Colbert.
It’s hard to judge something like this, because it’s the second instalment in a trilogy, and if we accept the legitimacy of each plot strand (Big White Orc aside, they all feel fairly earned) then there is very little that could be cut here. But as a film, with three acts and its own solid place, it’s a mess. You walk out of the cinema feeling unfulfilled. It’s as if you’re on a rollercoaster, and you start out climbing the last ten feet, then just begin the sudden decline before waking up and realising it was all a dream. You want to hit the bottom, but you have to wait until next Christmas.
I’m not sure what would be the best thing to recommend with something like this. Cut one or two of the invented plot strands, and pare it down to two films. Don’t make this a three-film prelude to The Lord of the Rings, which this is definitely starting to feel like. Give us more screen time with Stephen Fry. Just not this.