Thoughts on: The Hobbit 2: The Desolation of Smaug


Definitely a mixed bag. So mixed, in fact, that it didn't really feel cohesive, and the high highs and low lows are easily examined separately. I'll start with the lows:

From start to finish, there was a vibe of an amateur editing job. The first 20 minutes were muddled, boring, and frustratingly lacking in anything for the audience to invest in. The plot soon recovered, but putting me in a bad mood straight out of the gate isn't what I was hoping for. And as painfully long as the beginning was, the end was shockingly abrupt. Even on a shot-by-shot level some of the editing choices seemed odd, and the whole affair left me disappointed far too often.

As if to hammer the point home, somehow someone thought it was a good idea to assault the audience with fucking GoPro footage. It was hideous. It was jarring. It was just plain embarrassing. How such grainy and unnecessary footage made it into the final cut is beyond me. Not only was it far, far below the quality of the cameras used by every movie under the sun, but it flew completely in the face of the CGI-heavy aesthetic these particular films were aiming for. You'd be hard-pressed to find a movie where such ridiculous footage would be MORE out of place than The Hobbit.

And that brings me to my next point: the CGI. Again, this is a mixed bag. On the one hand, you have the absolutely incredible Smaug, where the CGI had me agape for about 10 minutes straight. Then on the other, you've got shots of tall humans and short dwarves being clumsily spliced into the same scene, or completely ordinary environments that were for some inexplicable reason entirely CGI.

The entire movie reeked of self-indulgence, excess, and hubris. CGI was used far too much, scenes went for longer than they had to, dialogue was overdramatic, and the editing was phoned in. I appreciate Peter Jackson's push for HFR (High Frame Rate - 48 FPS), removing a large barrier from the kinds of camera movements that are possible. However when combined with the GoPro footage and an oversaturation of CGI, it seems more like a fetishization of new technology than it does an altruistic effort towards the film industry.

And don't get me started on the god-awful love story. One sentence each, and suddenly they're madly in love? Random cliché romance scenes scattered throughout the movie? Really? In a movie that's clearly not lacking in length, the entire romance subplot could have been removed and nothing would have been affected.

Now with that rant out of the way, here are the high points that almost entirely made up for everything:
- Gandalf's "Light vs. Dark" battle was fucking awesome. 
- The 15 minute river chase between elves, hobbits, and orcs was fucking awesome. 
- Bilbo talking with Smaug was fucking awesome (right up until the dwarves got involved and it got silly).

Also a special mention to Gandalf exploring the empty crypt – that scene felt truly foreboding, and made me nostalgic for the darkness of the original LOTR trilogy.

"Mixed bag" sums up The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug. I'm looking forward to re-watching the awesome bits (in HFR no less), and fast-forwarding through the rest.
6/10 – above average, but only just.

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