The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Year: 2013
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Richard Armitage, Orlando Bloom, Martin Freeman, Evangeline Lilly, Ian McKellen, Lee Pace & Aidan Turner
Runtime: 161 mins (Theatrical) 186 mins (Extended)
BBFC: 12
Published: 11/08/22
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Richard Armitage, Orlando Bloom, Martin Freeman, Evangeline Lilly, Ian McKellen, Lee Pace & Aidan Turner
Runtime: 161 mins (Theatrical) 186 mins (Extended)
BBFC: 12
Published: 11/08/22
Despite its troubled development, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey received generally positive praise from critics and earned over one billion dollars at the box office. As far as Wanrer Bros. were concerned the film was a smash hit, though there was an ever-growing vocal portion of the fanbase that were displeased with the direction the film had headed in, many of the aspects of which I covered in my review of the film. However, there were some significant hurdles that arose during the production of An Unexpected Journey that would go on to impact the future of The Hobbit significantly and detrimentally; and much like a dwarf’s insatiable appetite for gold, the decisions made were fuelled entirely by greed on the part of Warner Bros.
With the Misty Mountain in sight, the journey of one Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), and the band of dwarves he accompanies, led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), enters its perilous final stretch. Our party must travel through the treacherous Mirkwood Forest, endure the less than warm welcome of Wood Elves, pass through Laketown and the realm of men, and finally gain entrance to Erebor and face down the dangerous and powerful dragon, Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch).
The Desolation of Smaug, originally titled 'There and Back Again', was always conceived to be the final part of The Hobbit duology, however as we know now it is part two of a trilogy. As I covered in my Unexpected Journey review, by the time Peter Jackson stepped in as director and production began on Unexpected Journey, the plan was still to craft two films. However, with the first film being financed by five production studios (New Line Cinema, Warner Bros., MGM, The Weinstein Company, and The Saul Zaentz Company), the only profit that Warner Bros. stood to make from The Hobbit was with the second film. Seeing the potential for big bucks, it was mandated part-way through filming An Unexpected Journey that The Hobbit duology would become a trilogy in order for WB to get a larger return on their investment.
This of course put enormous strain on an already troubled production, as Jackson had not been given any time to put his version of the films through any kind of pre-production, and now he had to rework his two-film script of a three-hundred-page children’s book into three films. This had a knock-on effect to all of the films in the now trilogy, with An Unexpected Journey being arguably the least affected by these changes. But the now newly titled Desolation of Smaug and Battle of the Five Armies weren’t going to make it out so easily.
With the Misty Mountain in sight, the journey of one Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), and the band of dwarves he accompanies, led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), enters its perilous final stretch. Our party must travel through the treacherous Mirkwood Forest, endure the less than warm welcome of Wood Elves, pass through Laketown and the realm of men, and finally gain entrance to Erebor and face down the dangerous and powerful dragon, Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch).
The Desolation of Smaug, originally titled 'There and Back Again', was always conceived to be the final part of The Hobbit duology, however as we know now it is part two of a trilogy. As I covered in my Unexpected Journey review, by the time Peter Jackson stepped in as director and production began on Unexpected Journey, the plan was still to craft two films. However, with the first film being financed by five production studios (New Line Cinema, Warner Bros., MGM, The Weinstein Company, and The Saul Zaentz Company), the only profit that Warner Bros. stood to make from The Hobbit was with the second film. Seeing the potential for big bucks, it was mandated part-way through filming An Unexpected Journey that The Hobbit duology would become a trilogy in order for WB to get a larger return on their investment.
This of course put enormous strain on an already troubled production, as Jackson had not been given any time to put his version of the films through any kind of pre-production, and now he had to rework his two-film script of a three-hundred-page children’s book into three films. This had a knock-on effect to all of the films in the now trilogy, with An Unexpected Journey being arguably the least affected by these changes. But the now newly titled Desolation of Smaug and Battle of the Five Armies weren’t going to make it out so easily.
The Desolation of Smaug clocks in at three hours and six minutes, a rather brief runtime in comparison to many of the Middle Earth films. Now it’s no strange occurrence for critics to say that when a film feels a bit on the long side to suggest cutting out a scene or two, maybe ten to fifteen minutes at a maximum. The Desolation of Smaug could have an entire third of its runtime axed and still be a little bloated, so trust me when I say that sitting through this film is genuinely like wading through tar. It is a ceaseless trek through tedium as it draws out any element of the story it can, no matter how insignificant, to its most threadbare and foregone conclusions in the desperate attempt to create a film that matches the length of its predecessors. Allow me to break it down.
The film begins with our company being pursued by Beorn (Mikael Persbrandt), a shapeshifter who dislikes dwarf’s. This lasts for approximately half an hour (could have been no more than ten really) before we reach the border of Mirkwood. Gandalf (Ian McKellen) departs to venture off on his own in search of a dark being called The Necromancer, something alluded to in the previous film. Mirkwood is easily one of the best sequences in the entire film with our band of adventurers battling the disorientating and confusing effects of the forest’s fauna and magical enchantments. It also introduces some horror elements into the mix with some clever use of disorientating camera angles, confusing editing, clever CGI that gives the impression of the forest looping on itself, and more. It also sees our group fight a horde of giant spiders, before being rescued by Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) and Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and taken as prisoners to be presented to King Thranduil (Lee Pace). Thanks to Bilbo the dwarves escape captivity and float down a river in barrels (in what is one of the most disastrously tedious sequences in the film). Once out of harm’s way they meet Bard (Luke Evans) of Laketown. He agrees to smuggle the dwarves into Laketown, but once there discovers they intend to enter Erebor and disturb the slumber of Smaug. This causes panic amongst the townsfolk and after much discussion (honestly this goes on for the best part of forty minutes and it’s just so dull) the dwarves are allowed to go to the Misty Mountain. Once there Bilbo enters Erebor to find the Arkenstone and comes face to face with Smaug. Eventually the dwarves come and help too leading to another long and overdrawn unnecessary action sequence (approximately thirty minutes) that lasts until the credits roll.
The film begins with our company being pursued by Beorn (Mikael Persbrandt), a shapeshifter who dislikes dwarf’s. This lasts for approximately half an hour (could have been no more than ten really) before we reach the border of Mirkwood. Gandalf (Ian McKellen) departs to venture off on his own in search of a dark being called The Necromancer, something alluded to in the previous film. Mirkwood is easily one of the best sequences in the entire film with our band of adventurers battling the disorientating and confusing effects of the forest’s fauna and magical enchantments. It also introduces some horror elements into the mix with some clever use of disorientating camera angles, confusing editing, clever CGI that gives the impression of the forest looping on itself, and more. It also sees our group fight a horde of giant spiders, before being rescued by Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) and Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and taken as prisoners to be presented to King Thranduil (Lee Pace). Thanks to Bilbo the dwarves escape captivity and float down a river in barrels (in what is one of the most disastrously tedious sequences in the film). Once out of harm’s way they meet Bard (Luke Evans) of Laketown. He agrees to smuggle the dwarves into Laketown, but once there discovers they intend to enter Erebor and disturb the slumber of Smaug. This causes panic amongst the townsfolk and after much discussion (honestly this goes on for the best part of forty minutes and it’s just so dull) the dwarves are allowed to go to the Misty Mountain. Once there Bilbo enters Erebor to find the Arkenstone and comes face to face with Smaug. Eventually the dwarves come and help too leading to another long and overdrawn unnecessary action sequence (approximately thirty minutes) that lasts until the credits roll.
The events of The Desolation of Smaug play out like a videogame. It’s just a case of our characters being shuffled from one gimmicky environment to the next through little agency of their own, only to end up where they needed to be all along and then the film ends. Compare this even to An Unexpected Journey, where the group were forging their own path and overcoming any challenges that got in their way through their own wit or might. In Desolation of Smaug however they just seem to bumble along aimlessly until they get lucky or get help. Hard to inspire connection as an audience member when the characters you’re supposed to root for are as hapless and clueless in their own quest as these lot are. I don’t feel that this would have been the case, or at least not as blatantly obvious, had the runtime been shrunk to a more agreeable hour and a half to two hours. But because there’s so much long-drawn-out dissection of every single thing our heroes are doing it becomes increasingly clear that they don’t know what they’re doing or how they’re doing it.
What’s worse is that what few side-characters there are, the role they play has been either massively overblown beyond the scope of what the character is even there to do, or that they have been created for the film because the studio wanted it. I’ll present three examples, Tauriel, Legolas, and Bard.
Starting with Bard as he is the only character of the three to even appear in Tolkien’s novel. In the book, Bard shows up very briefly near the end of the book and slays Smaug. The book can be a bit underwhelming because Bard is given little to no build up and kind of steals the thunder away from Bilbo and the dwarves. So, I understand why his expansion in Desolation of Smaug happens, so that his killing of the dragon is given more weight and he doesn’t just feel like some randomer. That being said, Bard is given far too much screentime without actually having anything to do. He’s considered a disturber of the peace by Laketown’s ruler, The Master (Stephen Fry), and so spends the majority of his time in the film running around Laketown fleeing guards that could nicely be synced up to the Benny Hill theme. It tries to give us an emotional connection to the man by presenting his three children, but literally all they do in the film is convey information to their father about something they did wrong and why he will now have to escape guards all over again. As I said before, I understand why they’ve tried to give Bard a bigger role, but they’ve gone about it in entirely the wrong way and just given him screentime with no purpose.
As for Legolas, well this one’s easy really. He was added in as fan service to people wanting to see more connection to Lord of the Rings. However, it doesn’t make any sense for him to be there…and even worse his character is entirely different to how he is in Lord of the Rings. In Desolation of Smaug, Legolas is mean spirited and cold. He is a capable leader and appears to have a decent enough knowledge of the world beyond Mirkwood…which is exactly the opposite of Legolas in Fellowship of the Ring who is worldly unwise and comparatively meek. He also serves his purpose as one third of a horrendously crowbarred in love triangle which I’ll address in a moment.
But first, Tauriel, an original character created specifically for this film. Tauriel only exists because Warner Bros. executives were concerned about the lack of women in the film. A justifiable inclusion then, to broaden representation and appeal to a wider audience by having a prominent female character in the mix. However, she is written entirely wrong. As a prequel to Lord of the Rings her inclusion dampens the incredible moment when Eowyn goes to battle in Return of the King, previously the only female character to have engaged in combat in the Middle Earth franchise and a moment that is given a great deal of weight because of what she represents. Even then, Tauriel’s inclusion in The Hobbit is simply to have Legolas and Kili (Aiden Turner) fawn over her. She is the centre of a love triangle so out of place and unnecessary that is almost entirely derails both the second and third films. Whilst I can agree that The Hobbit could probably have done with more female characters, and making one entirely for the film isn’t such a bad idea given the fact that the book doesn't have any prominent female characters, the way in which it has been done essentially presents viewers with a choice: would you prefer no female representation, or bad female representation? As author Lindsay Ellis once said about the character, she is out of place in her own universe.
Then comes the exacerbation of the tonal inconsistencies carried over from An Unexpected Journey, as well as the inclusion of the inability to stick to the defined rules rules about what can hurt and can’t hurt our main characters. The physical trauma that the dwarves in particular endure throughout this film is astounding; they are thrown around like literal ragdolls and keep getting up, they are practically impervious to fire, and they can hold their breath for a seemingly endless period of time. Unless the script calls for it of course, and by that I speak of Kili getting shot in the leg with an arrow that then puts him out of action for the rest of the film. It’s this exact moment, during the river barrel sequence, that all suspension of disbelief falls flat because the filmmakers can’t adhere to their own logic about what can hurt our heroes.
Mere moments after Kili is shot and gravely wounded, we see Bombur (Stephen Hunter) bounce around in a barrel like he’s made of rubber and sustain injuries far worse than Kili’s arrow injury and yet he is completely unscathed by it. It’s this imbalance of the cartoonish and the realistic that was a problem in An Unexpected Journey and is now a complete dealbreaker in Desolation of Smaug. What makes this even worse is that despite the tonal imbalance being more present than ever, the dwarves have been marginalised in their roles to the point of being glorified extras. It was difficult for any of them to get a decent amount of screentime in An Unexpected Journey due to how many of them there are, but in Desolation of Smaug the vast majority of them don’t even get lines. In doing so the heart and soul of the story, about these dwarves trying to get their home back, is entirely lost.
What’s worse is that what few side-characters there are, the role they play has been either massively overblown beyond the scope of what the character is even there to do, or that they have been created for the film because the studio wanted it. I’ll present three examples, Tauriel, Legolas, and Bard.
Starting with Bard as he is the only character of the three to even appear in Tolkien’s novel. In the book, Bard shows up very briefly near the end of the book and slays Smaug. The book can be a bit underwhelming because Bard is given little to no build up and kind of steals the thunder away from Bilbo and the dwarves. So, I understand why his expansion in Desolation of Smaug happens, so that his killing of the dragon is given more weight and he doesn’t just feel like some randomer. That being said, Bard is given far too much screentime without actually having anything to do. He’s considered a disturber of the peace by Laketown’s ruler, The Master (Stephen Fry), and so spends the majority of his time in the film running around Laketown fleeing guards that could nicely be synced up to the Benny Hill theme. It tries to give us an emotional connection to the man by presenting his three children, but literally all they do in the film is convey information to their father about something they did wrong and why he will now have to escape guards all over again. As I said before, I understand why they’ve tried to give Bard a bigger role, but they’ve gone about it in entirely the wrong way and just given him screentime with no purpose.
As for Legolas, well this one’s easy really. He was added in as fan service to people wanting to see more connection to Lord of the Rings. However, it doesn’t make any sense for him to be there…and even worse his character is entirely different to how he is in Lord of the Rings. In Desolation of Smaug, Legolas is mean spirited and cold. He is a capable leader and appears to have a decent enough knowledge of the world beyond Mirkwood…which is exactly the opposite of Legolas in Fellowship of the Ring who is worldly unwise and comparatively meek. He also serves his purpose as one third of a horrendously crowbarred in love triangle which I’ll address in a moment.
But first, Tauriel, an original character created specifically for this film. Tauriel only exists because Warner Bros. executives were concerned about the lack of women in the film. A justifiable inclusion then, to broaden representation and appeal to a wider audience by having a prominent female character in the mix. However, she is written entirely wrong. As a prequel to Lord of the Rings her inclusion dampens the incredible moment when Eowyn goes to battle in Return of the King, previously the only female character to have engaged in combat in the Middle Earth franchise and a moment that is given a great deal of weight because of what she represents. Even then, Tauriel’s inclusion in The Hobbit is simply to have Legolas and Kili (Aiden Turner) fawn over her. She is the centre of a love triangle so out of place and unnecessary that is almost entirely derails both the second and third films. Whilst I can agree that The Hobbit could probably have done with more female characters, and making one entirely for the film isn’t such a bad idea given the fact that the book doesn't have any prominent female characters, the way in which it has been done essentially presents viewers with a choice: would you prefer no female representation, or bad female representation? As author Lindsay Ellis once said about the character, she is out of place in her own universe.
Then comes the exacerbation of the tonal inconsistencies carried over from An Unexpected Journey, as well as the inclusion of the inability to stick to the defined rules rules about what can hurt and can’t hurt our main characters. The physical trauma that the dwarves in particular endure throughout this film is astounding; they are thrown around like literal ragdolls and keep getting up, they are practically impervious to fire, and they can hold their breath for a seemingly endless period of time. Unless the script calls for it of course, and by that I speak of Kili getting shot in the leg with an arrow that then puts him out of action for the rest of the film. It’s this exact moment, during the river barrel sequence, that all suspension of disbelief falls flat because the filmmakers can’t adhere to their own logic about what can hurt our heroes.
Mere moments after Kili is shot and gravely wounded, we see Bombur (Stephen Hunter) bounce around in a barrel like he’s made of rubber and sustain injuries far worse than Kili’s arrow injury and yet he is completely unscathed by it. It’s this imbalance of the cartoonish and the realistic that was a problem in An Unexpected Journey and is now a complete dealbreaker in Desolation of Smaug. What makes this even worse is that despite the tonal imbalance being more present than ever, the dwarves have been marginalised in their roles to the point of being glorified extras. It was difficult for any of them to get a decent amount of screentime in An Unexpected Journey due to how many of them there are, but in Desolation of Smaug the vast majority of them don’t even get lines. In doing so the heart and soul of the story, about these dwarves trying to get their home back, is entirely lost.
I mentioned weird special effects in my conclusions about An Unexpected Journey but hadn’t had the time to elaborate on what I meant. I had intended to save my conversation about The Hobbit’s peculiar technical decisions until this review, because Desolation of Smaug has a number of particularly offensive uses of bad special effects, or technology getting in the way of the overall product.
The Hobbit trilogy was shot in IMAX 3D and at a rather uncommon forty-five frames per second. What does that mean? Well, with the IMAX 3D that means that all physical sets and costumes needed to be made significantly more vivid in colour due to 3D sapping all of the brightness out of a picture. This isn’t necessarily a problem when a film is converted to 3D in post-production because it gets a different treatment to the 2D version, but a film that is shot in 3D will need to compensate for the visual drawbacks of 3D on set. Sure, it produces better 3D effects than handling it all in post-production, but it can mean that a 2D version of the film looks extremely bright and oddly coloured.
As for the frame rate, almost all mainstream films are shot at twenty-four frames per second (twenty-four still images shown in sequence in a single second to give the impression of a moving image). Peter Jackson elected for The Hobbit to be shot at forty-eight frames per second to give the illusion of increased realism. The result it that movement looks considerably smoother because there’s double the number of images being shown in the same period of time. These two technical choices are all well and good when shown in a facility than can handle such things, as many cinemas can do. However, when viewed at home on a TV, computer, or God forbid a phone, those technologies are often unavailable. No home release of the film supports forty-eight frames per second, and only the initial run of the film on Blu-Ray supported 3D (and even then, you needed a compatible display and glasses). The result then is that when viewed in 2D at twenty-four frames per second, The Hobbit trilogy looks a bit peculiar. The colours are all overblown and the CGI often looks a little juddery (because the CGI hasn’t been designed to be shown at half the speed it was rendered at).
These moments are most obvious during the barrel sequence and during the action sequence with Smaug at the end. It’s kind of off-putting when you know what you’re looking at, and if you don’t then it just has something about it that doesn’t seem right. Either way, there’s no way to watch The Hobbit the way it was supposed to be anymore, and that means that the film will be permanently tarnished by some dodgy colour grading and iffy special effects because of the technology used in its production.
The Desolation of Smaug is just the first half of a total disaster. I find that there’s almost nothing to enjoy in this film. I see people often jump to its defence quoting Benedict Cumberbatch’s excellent performance as Smaug but he’s hardly in the film so it’s tough to defend a three-hour mess when there’s one great element right at the end of the film. I actually dislike Desolation of Smaug the most out of all three films, a bold statement I know considering the quality of The Battle of the Five Armies, but at least that never shied away from the fact that it was just going to be a CGI fistfight with little to no substance; Desolation of Smaug meanwhile is still trying to lure you in with the false pretence that this will be a high quality adaptation of one of the most beloved children’s books of all time and a prequel to one of the most beloved film franchises of all time. It’s a total sham is what it is, and whilst I have definitely seen worse films, The Desolation of Smaug is one of my most hated films of all time, and a film I would be happy never watching again, forgetting it exists entirely.
The Hobbit trilogy was shot in IMAX 3D and at a rather uncommon forty-five frames per second. What does that mean? Well, with the IMAX 3D that means that all physical sets and costumes needed to be made significantly more vivid in colour due to 3D sapping all of the brightness out of a picture. This isn’t necessarily a problem when a film is converted to 3D in post-production because it gets a different treatment to the 2D version, but a film that is shot in 3D will need to compensate for the visual drawbacks of 3D on set. Sure, it produces better 3D effects than handling it all in post-production, but it can mean that a 2D version of the film looks extremely bright and oddly coloured.
As for the frame rate, almost all mainstream films are shot at twenty-four frames per second (twenty-four still images shown in sequence in a single second to give the impression of a moving image). Peter Jackson elected for The Hobbit to be shot at forty-eight frames per second to give the illusion of increased realism. The result it that movement looks considerably smoother because there’s double the number of images being shown in the same period of time. These two technical choices are all well and good when shown in a facility than can handle such things, as many cinemas can do. However, when viewed at home on a TV, computer, or God forbid a phone, those technologies are often unavailable. No home release of the film supports forty-eight frames per second, and only the initial run of the film on Blu-Ray supported 3D (and even then, you needed a compatible display and glasses). The result then is that when viewed in 2D at twenty-four frames per second, The Hobbit trilogy looks a bit peculiar. The colours are all overblown and the CGI often looks a little juddery (because the CGI hasn’t been designed to be shown at half the speed it was rendered at).
These moments are most obvious during the barrel sequence and during the action sequence with Smaug at the end. It’s kind of off-putting when you know what you’re looking at, and if you don’t then it just has something about it that doesn’t seem right. Either way, there’s no way to watch The Hobbit the way it was supposed to be anymore, and that means that the film will be permanently tarnished by some dodgy colour grading and iffy special effects because of the technology used in its production.
The Desolation of Smaug is just the first half of a total disaster. I find that there’s almost nothing to enjoy in this film. I see people often jump to its defence quoting Benedict Cumberbatch’s excellent performance as Smaug but he’s hardly in the film so it’s tough to defend a three-hour mess when there’s one great element right at the end of the film. I actually dislike Desolation of Smaug the most out of all three films, a bold statement I know considering the quality of The Battle of the Five Armies, but at least that never shied away from the fact that it was just going to be a CGI fistfight with little to no substance; Desolation of Smaug meanwhile is still trying to lure you in with the false pretence that this will be a high quality adaptation of one of the most beloved children’s books of all time and a prequel to one of the most beloved film franchises of all time. It’s a total sham is what it is, and whilst I have definitely seen worse films, The Desolation of Smaug is one of my most hated films of all time, and a film I would be happy never watching again, forgetting it exists entirely.