Movie Review: “The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug”

It’s here! The face-meltingly awesome sequel to the first “Hobbit” movie is here and, oh my god, I love it. “Desolation” is a huge improvement over the first movie, which was mostly exposition. But “Desolation” is pretty much nonstop excitement; it hardly ever slows down or becomes boring. It’s as if the first movie was just a primer for this, the real meat of the trilogy. The heroes are on the way to the lonely mountain, to confront Smaug, the dragon.

Speaking of Smaug, I hear you cry, “is he a good villain?” Yes, oh yes he is. Smaug is huge, and the way he moves through the piles of gold in his lair really gives an impression of how mind-bogglingly big he is. Also, Benedict Cumberbatch absolutely kills it as Smaug. He just sounds… evil. He always sounds like he’s just completed his master plan, and he’s thinking about how to cook and eat Bilbo.

I also have to give serious props to whoever animated him. He looks like a dragon, which was great, after all the first movie showed was his eye opening at the end. Smaug just strikes me as one of the best dragons ever. He is a terrifying, conniving, scheming monster and really, really, loves gold. But for the scenes that aren’t being completely dominated by Smaug, Ian McKellen easily delivers as Gandalf once again. However, his spotlight is stolen by Martin Freeman’s Bilbo. Not only does he completely own the role, he seems like he was made for the job. He really does seem completely out of his element as Bilbo, from showing how scared he is of pretty much everything, to how extremely spoiled he is.

But on to the thing that I loved more than dragons and wizards: the pacing of the film.I don’t really understand pacing all that well, but what I do know is that this movie kept my attention for pretty much the entire time it ran.  “Desolation” does this by always having something awesome on the screen . It’s actually impossible to look away, because every second of this movie is awesome. The scence with the dwarves going down some waterfalls in barrels is actually one of the most memorable scences for me, because despite how boring it sounds, it’s about 2000 times more interesting when you’re actually seeing it for yourself. The scene with the spiders, on the other hand, is one of the few times that you may actually be able to leave the theater, because it really didn’t entertain me that much. Maybe it’s because I hate spiders. It’s still a good scene, but  Bilbo eavesdropping  on how the spiders are going to eat him and his friends just feels so boring compared to everything else.

So, in case you haven’t noticed, I really liked this movie. And while some of my friends didn’t like it, I thought it was an awesome sequel, as well as setting the bar for not only the final movie in the trilogy, but for the fantasy genre as a whole. So I’d say it’s worth a watch, especially if you liked the original trilogy, because this series is shaping up to be an awesome sucessor to some of the most iconic movies of all time.

0
0