The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

[Deep Wang]

Lol, I meant Bilbo. See how forgettable he is in the movie?

For a trilogy of films called THE HOBBIT, based in a book called THE HOBBIT, there certainly isn't a lot of this hobbit character. I'm curious exactly how much screen time he will have out of the almost 8 hours it's going to be.

[Heretic]

Movie didn't drag at all. First half of AUJ was way way WAY worse than any sequence in DOS. 

[mattmav45]

A potential Gopher/Numbers debate is more intriguing than the film itself. Let the ego games begin.IMO.

Edited December 17, 2013 by mattmav45

[Gopher]

Of come off it Gopher, you know very well that when you express an opinion, you open yourself up to criticism of that opinion. You're too experienced and savvy a poster and film lover to play the naïve card here.

 

You're calling my opinion "wrong" and to me that's rarely okay unless you're willing to have a real conversation about it. But at the end of the day, with these movies, it totally comes down to opinion. I find it's very telling that the mass reaction to The Hobbit diverges wildly and on fundamentally different levels because I think it says a lot about the construction of these "movies" and what the fans in the audience are looking for compared to normal moviegoers like myself. I totally don't mind people enjoying Smaug, and I think fans who liked AUJ will like this one more. You're right: there's more going on in this film. But I have zero emotional attachment to these "movies" while the LOTR films are some of my favorites of all time. The reason behind that is a conversation I consider worth having. 

 

You say that neither AUJ or DOS can be considered movies, neither feel like part of a larger story, and unlike the LOTR films don't have an actual plot.

 

Let me ask you: do you think any of these films have individual arcs, either narratively or emotionally? Were you totally fulfilled by the beginnings, middles and endings of these two films without considering anything external (i.e waiting to be fulfilled in a year by There and Back Again)? If so then we just fundamentally disagree with these films. Which is okay! We don't need to come to one conclusion here, so forgive me if I come off as presumptive or mean towards you or these movies.

 

I don't understand how you can say that when the films painstakingly connect The Hobbit into the larger Middle-Earth universe, something Tolkien had to retcon into The Hobbit when he wrote LOTR and never actually do so satisfactorily, most of the connections being explanations in Fellowship or stuff in Appendices and Unfinished Tales. We know exactly what the larger story is: Thorin, his Dwarves, Bilbo, etc are being used as pawns by Gandalf to destroy Smaug and flush out the enemy forces to weaken and expose them. It is the story of The Hobbit, not the story of the original book mind you, but the story that Tolkien retconned into existence when he wrote LOTR. And every piece of both films fits in with telling that narrative.

 

Connecting The Hobbit to the larger Middle-Earth universe doesn't make The Hobbit films function as stories to me. I really don't like that everything is external now and we can't talk about individual stories anymore. Let's talk Screenwriting 101: what's the film's story? Who are the characters who are going to carry this story? Bilbo is front and center for maybe 30 minutes, Gandalf disappears for long sequences and Smaug, potentially the most interesting character in the whole series so far, isn't given a chance to be fleshed out by more than one conversation with Bilbo (which is admittedly almost worth the price of admission). So what's left? A barrage of action sequences and Orc dialogue worthy of a video game? A half-baked love triangle with a dwarf I had no idea existed in the first movie? Thorin was the lead character of this film and I found him to be too much of a dick to really root for. Armitage does a serviceable job with the role but his turn to madness isn't nearly as effective as Bilbo's or Frodo's in LOTR. I don't even know the other dwarves besides Kili, the fat one, the brave one, and the doctor one, and those are basically caricatures to me. i've spent 5 and a half hours with these movies and the film has never bothered to establish a relationship between the audience and these individual dwarves. IMO that's pathetic. There's shockingly little motivation, stakes, or genuine approach to characters in these "movies." Thus there's really no humanity amidst the CGI overkill. 

 

The films certainly have a plot. In fact AUJ's plot is no less a plot than that of Fellowship, a fact that numerous people here have remarked on over the past year. Desolation's plot suffers from the failure to kill off Smaug so it has an incomplete feeling, I grant you this, but it still plays into the larger story by confirming that Sauron = Necromancer and that Thorin's company's push to Erebor and Gandalf's investigations have spurred Sauronmancer into sending his army in Mirkwood out, in all likelihood well before he was ready to expose himself. We actually get deeper depictions of the Woodland Realm and Laketown than were provided in The Hobbit, giving them a sense of worldliness and building their relation to the Middle-Earth framework.

 

Playing into the larger story = I don't give a damn. There's no immediate payoff, and I don't care about worldliness when there are no characters within the world to care about. The two or three part film structure has worked in the past, including in LOTR itself, which is why I can't let the Hobbit films off the hook for not being fulfilling. Catching Fire has a cliffhanger that obviously intends to set up Mockingjay but works as the ending to its own story too: Katniss undergoes a fundamental emotional change in the last ten seconds of the film. Deathly Hallows Part 1 ends in a moving funeral and establishes the emotion needed for the ultimate finale to pack a punch. Smaug could not have ended an a more arbitrary place. The only reason they couldn't have killed the dragon in this film and provided some kind of payoff to the audience is because they need something for the third film, and that's ridiculous to me. I felt absolutely nothing walking out of the theater. Certainly not a desire to put down $18 next December to get closure on this franchise.

 

The bloat complaint is IMO ridiculous. There's a difference between overstuffed and bloated. The two Hobbit films do have too much in them in the way of elongating action sequences or lingering character/world-building scenes here and there, but they're not bloated. Particularly in DOS where the film moves with electric pacing.

 

Electric pacing? Really? Do you think this movie flows as well as The Dark Knight, which is almost as long but feels an hour or two shorter? There's literally a three-minute scene with the king of Laketown talking with his servant about local politics. Would this have been a worthy addition to the fan-purposed extended editions? Maybe. But this scene tells us nothing that the brief dialogue bit with Bard directly preceding the scene didn't already tell us: the town is on the verge of revolution because they're desperate and hungry. That's all we need to know when it comes to Thorin's plea for the town to help the dwarves. Scenes like these need to be the first to go in a 160 minute film but nobody is going to tell Jackson's team what he can and can't put in his films. This is George Lucas all over again. Jackson needs someone to reign him back but nobody's going to do it as long as his movies keep making billions. 

 

Fan wankery is also ridiculous. AUJ sure catered to fans a good bit and was remarkably loyal. DOS is the opposite of fan wankery because of what PJ added to the text in terms of crafting action sequences and deepening characters and world-building and in diverging from the text with new characters and new interpretations. It seems here to me that you just shoveled a loaded term at the film knowing it would attract a response.

 

Fan wankery makes sense to me because I don't know who can watch these movies from start to finish and never be bored by them besides fans who want to see everything they love about Tolkien and Jackson on the big screen. And at this point I don't see how any of the new characters have added anything substantial to the heart of The Hobbit's story and that's part of why the story is being lost. 

Edited December 17, 2013 by Gopher

[Robertron]

Bored as hell for the first hour (actually left to go get good to keep myself occupied). Once I came back, the last half was somewhat redeeming.To be completely honest a bit of a step down from AUJ.7.0/10.0

[Robertron]

Oh and what the ACTUAL fuck was with that footage from in the water when they were in the barrels?!My iPhone would've produced better quality and survived the water.

[dashrendar44]

Oh and what the ACTUAL fuck was with that footage from in the water when they were in the barrels?!My iPhone would've produced better quality and survived the water.

 

GoPro. True story.

[Dementeleus]

Oh and what the ACTUAL fuck was with that footage from in the water when they were in the barrels?!My iPhone would've produced better quality and survived the water.

 

Those 2-3 brief (1 sec or less) white-water POV shots were GoPro (or at least looked like it). Their benefit is that they're super lightweight and tiny. The downside, of course, is they don't deliver anything close to an EPIC in terms of resolution or latitude.

 

I was surprised they chose that camera instead of building a custom EPIC rig (though admittedly it would've been way heavier and more unwieldy).

 

edit:  dash!

Edited December 17, 2013 by Telemachos

[dashrendar44]

edit:  dash!

 

[4815162342]

Gopher,

 

First, something's seriously up if you're willing to spew this much hate over a single film and get so ornery about someone challenging your opinion. This is the first time I can recall you lashing out at anyone who disagrees with your cinema opinion.

 

Now on to your points

 

1) I have said before in this thread and others that the cliffhanger bugged me since it deprived the film of a natural conclusion in the outcome of Smaug attacking Laketown. So yes, the film is narratively incomplete because we don't see

Smaug die

which would have ended a major plot string and finished the first stage of Bard's character arc. I don't dispute this. However it is not something that spoils the milk and shits the bed and denies me enjoyment.

 

The emotional/character arcs are not complete, but they don't have to be because we are witnessing a continual change in the two most important characters as each movie moves along.

 

2) Ok, let's not use a term like Screenwriting 101 since it's a loaded term that's condescending, because it simply makes it appear that you think you know a lot more and you're "educating" me.

 

Story- Asking what the story is has to be a rhetorical exercise on your part because the story is obvious. It's the same story as AUJ, progressing forwards with new developments and revelations. The same with LOTR and how the overarching story of the quest for Mount Doom and the War of the Ring being the same in each movie, but with new progressions and developments based on geography and chronology. Here, we learn just how keyed into Middle Earth politics Thorin's quest really is. It's only external if you view The Hobbit as a distinct, standalone entity. It was that when it was first written, but no longer. It's now merely the first entry in Tolkien's series about the Ring and Sauron's return. So it playing into other films/sources is no crime or fault at all. As for who carries the story, it's obvious that the Erebor storyline is carried by Bilbo and Thorin. Bilbo is not the center for a lot of the film, but considered that he is the outsider in a group dominated by Thorin and the plotline revolves around Thorin's decisions, it makes perfect sense for us to catch Bilbo as the main figure here and there, when he is not forced to be merely one of a group. Your other issues come down to personal feelings. Yeah Thorin is kind of a dick, but it should be clear by now that he has a huge chip on his shoulder and has to deal with every major Middle-Earth power figure either trying to stop him or having previously abandoned/dishonored his people. If anyone has a right to be dickish, it is Thorin.

 

Gandalf disappearing for long stretches of the movie is not a valid complaint when if PJ had followed the novel more closely in DOS we would not have seen Gandalf at all once he leaves at the edge of Mirkwood and likely would not have seen him again until about an hour or so into Film 3. So, blame Tolkien for that, not PJ, who at least gives Gandalf something to do that is tied into source material Tolkien wrote after the fact. But even here Gandalf's story is clear: He is investigating the mysteries that Radagast uncovered in the first film and is tying them into his theory about Sauron returning. I have no problem with his truncated storyline here since it's a fine cliffhanger opposed to the Smaug one.

 

Another broken record, but Smaug's depiction is faithful to the novel here. You can't show him earlier in the movie (or in AUJ) without spoiling the reveal, but at the same time he isn't an important enough character to justify tacking on extra conversations and backstory for him. He's a dragon. He's greedy, he takes Erebor because of the wealth, and now he is hoarding it. That's all you need to know and it's all presented in the film. The fact that he is articulate, intelligent, etc is a bonus.

 

If you didn't notice Kili in the first movie then that's simply a failing on your end since AUJ clearly highlights him in several scenes. As for the handful of background Dwarves, PJ's depiction of them is no worse than Tolkien shoveling them in with no real backstory or explanation. If anything PJ tries to give more depth to each Dwarf than they got in the novel. So really the problem here is PJ not cutting a few of these Dwarves out, but he didn't do that because that's a form of adaptation tinkering that would have gotten huge backlash the minute it was found out in production. It's a problem where the solution may not be worth it.

 

3) There is payoff in one main storyline and not much in the other. The Gandalf/Dol Guldur storyline has a big payoff in that it reveals Sauron has returned and it shows his armies on the march in his first campaign against Middle-Earth. As for the Erebor storyline, I have already said I disagreed with it using a cliffhanger there. Really nothing more to say here. Also, your DH1 point is incorrect. DH1 goes on an additional few minutes to end on a stupidly executed cliffhanger of Voldemort graverobbing and making a light show.

 

4) Yes, the film moves fast. Sorry that you don't think so. The Laketown scenes I did not mind at all because they build the world around them and they help slow things down after the Forest River action setpiece. You also say it tells us nothing. I disagree, it informs us about the character of the Master (which shows us how easily Thorin manipulates him with a promise of wealth) and it adds further character to Laketown. Many reviews have praised the Laketown section for showing a quasi-Dickensian aspect to a piece of Middle Earth. I couldn't agree more.. I have to disagree with you about The Dark Knight. Once the ferry plot begins the film's pacing hits a brick wall and it trudges through the rest, ending 10 minutes too long because of forcing Two-Face into the movie awkwardly. Even then the first hour 45 has some pacing issues in the middle prior to the truck convoy setpiece. The things that needed to be trimmed in DOS were not those scenes, but instead the final act action chaos which could have been tightened up by several minutes easily.

 

 

So, it really seems like we're of two very different minds about this, so I won't say anything further on the matter since I doubt either of us will make the other convinced.

[Gopher]

N/A

Edited August 1, 2018 by Gopher
n/a

[4815162342]

Then we'll just let it be.

[John Marston]

Didn't see the first and won't bother with this, but surprised at all the vitriol on here. Elsewhere the consensus is that it's the movie the first should have been. Oh well.

 

 

yep I definitely know people who have problems with these movies but the i mostly see this kind of extreme vitriol towards them here

[MrPink]

Then we'll just let it be.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOykCYDMKBs

[Hiccup]

Just got back from seeing this. I had very low expectations going into the movie and I actually enjoyed it a lot. It dragged way less than AUJ and had much more action. Smaug was visually well done and his voice was excellent but I wish he would have kicked a  more ass. Altogether it was a good fantasy film but a weak one if you compare it to The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yeah it is bloated but hey that is Peter Jackson for you so you have to expect it. The cliffhanger ending didn't feel right and the audience was confused. The next film better kick-ass because I am excited for it. Jackson better show us that Smaug is actually a powerful villain instead of a crazy psycho dragon who can't do sh!t. 

 

7.5/10

 

Compares to the other.

 

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King- 10/10 (Best fantasy film out there)

Lord of the Rings: Two Towers- 9.5/10

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug- 7.5/10

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring- 7/10

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey- 4.5/10 (Dropped a lot after repeated viewings. Even still as I think about this movie i hate it more)

[The Dark Rock]

Didn't see the first and won't bother with this, but surprised at all the vitriol on here. Elsewhere the consensus is that it's the movie the first should have been. Oh well.

 

The consensus is mixed really...and even though RT rating is 6.8 which is marginally better than 6.6 of AUJ, overall this hardly does anything to have much difference in terms of quality from the first part. Actually I enjoyed AUJ more.

[lilmac]

I could watch it again just for the Smaug scenes. The way he looks about as he brags about how great he is...fantastic.

[ladyevenstar22]

how do you think things with this 'triangle' will shape up in TABA?? any hints in DoS? (i mean Id hate for it to be a triangle really, I meant is there a chance that its all platonic betw Tau & Kili)???

 

btw I saw rumours that Aragorn will be in TABA   (along with Denethor apparently)

Its only rumours so idk take it with ahuge graaaaain of salt

i don't remember what happens to kili in the books and since PJ is lightly following it from comments dunno!

personally since she's a fictional creation they can go where they want to but, i can see legolas getting over her eventually time is a long time (lol) for an elf 

he just strikes me as more seasoned and grave in LOTR so who knows if this has something to do with that , and he's a staunch supporter of arwen and aragorn  union  (always thought he was a great bff to aragorn) so who knows if because things went awry with tauriel , he wants his friend to get the girl who should be out of his reach socially , elrond did all he could to deter them nearly got arwen to leave by insisting on their differences him human and her elf-kind 

 

as for rumors of aragorn , i heard viggo said no to appearing in the hobbit because his character isnt in the book so yeah grain of salt indeed, i'd love to see how they make him look younger ha ha ha 

i half-expected to see him in the prancing pony pub thorin flashback 

 

i did not notice the gandalf staff thing ,cannot wait for saturday to come so i can go see this again

[Heretic]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOykCYDMKBs

LMFAO

[druv10]

I saw it last night. After all of the hate, I was pleasantly surprised by it. Bloat was nowhere near the first 40 mins of AUJ and overall pacing was much better. I never looked at my watch thinking when it's going to end. Now for the movie it self, barrel scene got the biggest laughter. Smaug was just brilliant and man, I love Cumberbatch's voice, it's just godly. I actually enjoyed the heroic burglar from saving dwarfs from Spiders or from the elves to looking for Arkhan stone. Bilbo's character grew on me more in this movie. I really loved the banter between Bilbo/Thorin vs. Smaug. I really enjoyed it, much better than AUJ. I gave it 8/10 after my first viewing, a solid B/B+ from me.