A year ago, I told you what I thought of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first instalment of Peter Jackson’s latest Tolkien adaptation. Looking back over my review, I see I was in a forgiving mood over a film that I mostly enjoyed, but which left me unsure of the wisdom of adapting the material.
Having now seen The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, I see no reason to change that stance. If anything, I’m feeling less forgiving that I was back in December 2012. Once again, the episodic nature of the story trips it up quite badly. For example, I’m sure Tolkien die-hards were happy to see the character of Beorn on the screen, but, as far as this film’s concerned, he exists solely to give our heroes some ponies when they happen need a ride, and is thus superfluous. Beorn is just one of a plethora of characters who are given inadequate screen time for solid character-building.
Things improve as the film goes on. I was initially sceptical about the idea of Tauriel, a wood-elf character created entirely by the filmmakers. However, Evangeline Lilly’s convincing performance makes her thoroughly engaging, more so than Legolas, for whom you might think she exists only as love interest. Likewise, Luke Evans (who recently impressed me in the BBC drama The Great Train Robbery) puts in a good turn as Bard.
If I found it hard to care about what all these thinly-drawn characters were up to, I did at least enjoy the action sequences. The barrel ride through the rapids is a bravura piece of choreography, executed with tremendous wit and style. Bilbo’s grand confrontation with the dragon Smaug is a triumph. The subsequent running battle between dragon and dwarves teeters on the brink of Jackson-excess, but overall it works much better than the comparable escape from goblin town in the first film.
I wrote recently on the Cinefex blog that dragons are difficult. So, is Smaug any good? My answer is an enthusiastic “yes” … although I still have a few reservations about the challenges of putting dragons up on the silver screen. Smaug is enormous, sinuous and threatening, the epitome of the fire-breathing dragon of traditional European myth. Jackson’s staging is clever and unpredictable. He blocks the action and places the camera ably in order to balance some truly dizzying shifts of scale. Smaug himself is a digital marvel, as are the shifting dunes of gold coins through which he surges. Still, it’s the issue of scale that leaves me with a lingering doubt about scenes like this. It’s just so hard to get real interplay between characters when the size difference is so vast. All the same, Jackson makes dragon-wrangling look pretty effortless.
I saw The Desolation of Smaug in IMAX HFR, just as I did An Unexpected Journey. I’m unsure what to make of High Frame Rate. I don’t share the hatred expressed by many people, whose views I respect. For many scenes, especially big digital set-pieces, or lyrical landscape reveals such as the gorgeous wide shots of Laketown at sunrise, I think I love it. At more intimate moments, talking head shots, for instance, it still looks like cheap TV. Scenes that are heavily comped have a tendency to look heavily comped, with textures and colours appearing overwrought. I felt something was different about the HFR in this second film. Maybe the apparent shutter angle was tweaked or something. Overall, I felt it intruded less this time around. Or maybe I’m just getting used to it.
So, there’s a year to go until The Hobbit: There And Back Again wraps up the trilogy. Will Jackson manage to end the series on a high? We’ll just have to wait and see. Right now, it’s Christmas, which means I have a mountain of food to eat and more than one seasonal bottle to uncork. Got to get my priorities right!
Enjoy the holidays and I’ll see you all next year. Merry Christmas!
Graham Edwards 