Peter Jackson's Hobbit Sequel Is Still More Fun Than Any Of The Lord Of The Rings Movies...

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

I was rather happier with the first Hobbit movie than everyone else, to say the least. I've read all the Lord of the Rings books and I'd generally been pretty unhappy with the films Peter Jackson made. It's not so much that I thought they were awful, but I was generally pretty disappointed. I could not begin to understand the recognition given to the movie of "Return of the King" when the movie I saw in the cinema was essentially one great big long battle scene finishing with 15 consecutive endings. Admittedly I preferred the extended editions, but not enough to wax lyrical about the movie series.



Immediately I preferred "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" because I felt it did a much better job at capturing the mood of the book. I was also surprised to find myself extremely pleased with the decision to extent the Hobbit to multiple films. For the first time, The Hobbit movies are introducing me to the various elements from the appendices that even many Tolkien fans could never be bothered to read. Finally these movies reveal what has been happening in the background and what information Bilbo Baggins was always missing. The Arkenstone, introduced to us in the first movie, is actually found in the original "The Hobbit" except neither Bilbo nor the reader ever fully understand its significance. Finally the mystery has been solved.

Naturally, as with any adaptation, some liberties have been taken with the original material, but perhaps the most interesting changes here involve the character of Bard. In the original novel Bard had one task to complete in the story. While the importance of that task is made pretty clear in the novel, not much time is spent on it and the character of Bard was never really developed very far. In the movie Bard is a fully-fledged character with a wider importance for the central narrative of the story. This allows us to understand his character properly without it feeling tacked on. (And we also get a rather neat little character played by Stephen Fry in relation to this section of the film.)


( Read the rest of the review under the cut... )