I will admit to a certain amount of trepidation when settling in for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, director Peter Jackson’s second of three planned Hobbit films. I found the first one (subtitled An Unexpected Journey) to be a big tease, and wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of enduring another 160 minutes of fantasy frolic that’s ultimately just a set-up for yet another movie. Added to that, I don’t really remember the first flick all that well.
Oh, sure, there was Richard Armitage as Thorin, leader of a bunch of dwarves with names that all sound the same (Kili, Fili, Nori, Ori — yikes!) that have been displaced by a nasty (and largely unseen) dragon living in a foreboding mountain. Gandalf (Ian McKellen) was involved, as was the hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who pilfered a special ring from Gollum and started calling himself a burglar. They were all chased around by a baddie with a barbecue poker for an arm, though for the life of me I can’t recall why.
The first Hobbit ended with our heroes gazing upon the still-off-in-the-distance Lonely Mountain — a place they had been trying to get to for the whole movie — and basically declaring, “OK, halfway there.” Good grief.
It comes as a relief that The Desolation of Smaug is a far more enjoyable experience than The Unexpected Journey. Though it still suffers from bloat and overkill (this wouldn’t be a Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movie without them), Smaug maintains a clear forward momentum, sprinkles in some rip-roaring set pieces, and culminates in a thrilling showdown with a dragon that makes the extra few bucks for the 3D glasses worth it. I still may not have a clue which dwarf is which, or understand the evil plan of the Necromancer (the youngish version of Rings antagonist Sauron), but at least I was smiling at the on-screen action this time around.
And action is where The Desolation of Smaug really shines. An early encounter with a nest of giant spiders is but a prelude to an exhilarating chase involving the dwarves floating in barrels down a raging river while pursued by deadly Orcs and even deadlier elves. Jackson has always had a schoolboy’s gross-out wit, and here he engages in some of his most spectacular (and hilarious) arrow piercings, limb hackings and decapitations — and yes, I mean that as a compliment.
The director keeps the titular Smaug off-screen for the first two hours, but when the dragon finally shows up to toy with Bilbo (the hobbit is trying to find a specific gem that the dwarves need for some inscrutable reason) you know immediately that the wait was worth it. Looking like a massive winged sea serpent and voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch on Quaaludes (evil, apparently, speaks … very … sloooowwwllllyyyyy), Smaug is a triumph of special effects artistry that carries the last 45 minutes of the movie to its satisfying though torturously unresolved conclusion.
I suspect that fans of the previous Lord of the Rings movies will love The Desolation of Smaug, while diehard J.R.R. Tolkien fans will probably bristle at the variations from the source material. (For example, I thought Evangeline Lilly was quite good, but her role was created specifically for the film and may cause consternation among the traditionalists.) And for those who don’t know an orc from a hole in the wall? I wish you good luck on what’s sure to be an unexpected journey to the multiplex.
