The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

After the very uneven disappointment that was An Unexpected Journey, I was fully expecting this follow to kind of follow in its predecessor's footsteps. Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised, and this film actually ended up being a lot better.

The story continues the story of Bilbo, played by Martin Freeman, Thorin, played by Richard Armitage, and the rest of the dwarven company as they journey ever closer to the Lonely Mountain, home of the deadly dragon Smaug, voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch. In addition, there are a few other plot threads that are there to set up things we would learn about in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

While I still have to dock this film points for having a ridiculous abundance of plot threads in it (I counted five as I was watching), there was a lot less dead space, and despite the fact that a lot of these scenes were embellishments over the source material, they still were engaging all the same, which made me a lot less bored with this one.

Another thing I noticed is this one has a lot more action, and things move a lot quicker from point to point, where there's a lot of time in the first film in which the story grinds to a halt so the characters can spout more exposition.

I think the action and storytelling is where this film stands out the most because of that. The acting is fine, and Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, and Ian McKellen, as well as Luke Evans, playing the human bargeman Bard, were standouts, but I wasn't as focused on the performances as much as the spectacle, which made sense to me, anyways, with the Lonely Mountain scenes and the Mirkwood spider battle being standouts.

Overall, this film is still not to the level of storytelling that Lord of the Rings was, but compared to its predecessor, it did a lot more things right than wrong. Most people say this is the best of the Hobbit trilogy and I can see why.

Next time, we will get to see how the Hobbit story ends after this film's shocking cliffhanger ending. Will the Dwarven kingdom of Erebor be restored, or will all of Middle Earth perish in fire and ruin? Find out next time when I review The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

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