The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

I skipped the second installment of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit, being underwhelmed by the first. I caught it on DVD yesterday, and while it's heaps better, it still pales in comparison to The Lord of the Rings.

Subtitled The Desolation of Smaug, the film continues the quest of 13 dwarfs, a hobbit, and one wizard trying to steal a jewel from underneath a dragon in the heart of a mountain. Along the way they tangle with giant spiders, ticked-off elves, and murderous orcs, who trail them and attempt to stop them, directed by a mysterious figure known as the Necromancer.

Some of this in J.R.R. Tolkien's book, much of it isn't, and as with the first film, it inflates The Hobbit, which was a smiple children's adventure story, into something more epic and dark, which Lord of the Rings was (there is a theory that LOTR was a metaphor for World War I). This grim tone just doesn't fit, and makes watching it seem like a duty rather than a pleasure.

But there are some highlights, notably Smaug himself, who appears at the end of the film. He is an articulate dragon (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch), and his tete-a-tete with Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is the best part of the film (as was the scene between Bilbo and Gollum in the first film). The special effects are the best here, as well.

The rest of the film is a bit of a drag. The sequence with the elves isn't very good, as it introduces a character that is not in Tolkien, Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), a kick-ass elf who develops an attraction for the one cute elf. Orlando Bloom, one of the Fellowship of the Ring, returns as Legolas. There is also a long section set in Laketown, which is corrupt and ruled by Stephen Fry, and I don't remember this from the book, either.

While the dragon looked good, I didn't like the way the orcs looked, or the beasts they ride, which looked animated. The orcs, incidentally, must be the world's worst fighters, for they are routinely defeated by just a few elves or dwarfs. They are like the expendable red shirts in Star Trek.

The film does have one of the best lines I've heard in a long time: "Why are there dwarfs coming out of our toilet?"

I guess the main problem with this trilogy is that Jackson seems to have made it because he could, and there is no underlying intention behind it. It's both too respectful and has too much hubris, as he has constructed scenes that are only referred to in the book. I suppose I'll end up watching the third installment, eventually, but don't burn to do so.