The Desolation of Smaug: A Review

Last night, I did something that I haven't done in a very long time: go the midnight premiere of a movie, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. It was an enjoyable flick, but I did have my gripes with it. There will be spoilers below so if you're planning on viewing the movie and don't want it spoiled, stop reading here. 

Firstly, and perhaps most minor, was the deviation from the book. This is to be expected when you pad out a two-hundred page children's book into three two and a half hour films - there were a lot of extra subplots and a lot of characters (Beorn, Bard) that had either no backstory or very minimal backstory were significantly expanded upon. Scenes played out very differently from the book and some made me tilt my head. 

For example, early on in the story they go visit Beorn, like in the book. However, here Beorn is first met in his bear shape - for those out of the loop, he's a skin-changer and can go back and forth between human and a giant black bear. In the book, Beorn doesn't like strangers and thus Gandalf devised a plan to introduce the Dwarves gradually: he slowly told Beorn their story and brought them in small groups of two or three. 

Here, they rush into the house together, which apparently enrages Beorn in bear-shape as he attempts to kill them. So, they lock him out of his own house until he changes back into human, and this is never mentioned again. 

I could go on literally forever with the changes from the book, but that, I think, would be fairly pointless overall. I personally am of the opinion that it's really best to approach film adaptations of books as alternate continuities that can stand (or fall) on their own. (As an aside, that's my biggest problem with the Harry Potter films, but that's a topic for another day)

But the deviation from the book and all of these extra subplots does lend itself to my biggest problem with the movie: it doesn't like it's about Bilbo, our titular Hobbit. He feels like a bit player in his own movie - this is crystallized in one of the Mirkwood sequences, whenever the Dwarves are being attacked by giant spiders. 

In the book (yes, I know another book-movie comparison after I said I was done with them, but bear with me here), it's Bilbo who is all kinds of awesome and kills the spiders by insulting them and leading them on a chase through the woods. It showcases his character growth, and how valuable he's become to the party. Here....Legolas and Tauriel (the love interest of one the Dwarves - we'll get to that in a second), show up and kill them all, then capture our heroes and lock them up. Also: Legolas is a effing jerk. (seriously, he had the Dwarves searched and ridiculed a family portrait one of them was carrying, and called his son a 'goblin-mutant'. Bonus points for that son being Gimli. Oh, irony.)

Back on point. It doesn't feel like he does all that much. All  the movie's attention is on two things: Thorin and setting up Lord of the Rings films. He feels lost among the shuffle of the film's characters and its tons and tons of subplots and that honestly is my biggest problem. It doesn't feel like it's about him anymore. He still does the stuff from the books - getting the Dwarves out via barrel, getting them into the Lonely Mountain itself, conversing with Smaug (who, by the way, is awesome. Benedict Cumberatch did a great job as the dragon and its design is top notch) - it just feels lost among everything else going on and it doesn't feel consequential.

Now, onto the whole Tauriel/Kili romance that was added - this was a sore spot for fans, when it was announced. And I would be lying if I said I wasn't also irritated. Elf/Dwarf pairing is something I don't think I'd ever see outside of really bad fanfiction. And here - it wasn't as bad as I had feared and didn't take up too much screen time, but it was still unnecessary. And there's a implied love triangle happening here, which just made me roll my eyes and wonder why Kili, of all Dwarves, was singled out for this random subplot.

My final complaint: the climax. It was really confusing. I'm still not quite sure what happened - there was a chase around the mountain, the forges re-activated, all of which led to coating Smaug in molten gold...? I really didn't follow their plan very well.

All that said, I still enjoyed the movie. It had amazing visuals and there were some scenes that left me, as a Middle-Earth fan, gleeful. The opening scene from the movie, for instance - a scene lifted pretty much straight from the Lord of the Rings appendices, set shortly before the events of the book/movie in which Thorn and Gandalf bump into each other in Bree and discuss the matter of the dragon. The scene where Sauron reveals himself to Gandalf is amazingly terrifying and does a great job of incorporating both Sauron's humanoid form and the Eye in one.

My final score: 8/10. Definitely worth a watch.