THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG

It’s obvious that the narrative composition of The Hobbit trilogy is identical to that of the Lord of the Rings trilogy; a lengthy quest that takes three films to reach its conclusion. The Desolation of Smaug (TDOS) has more of the same material; the band of dwarves narrowly escaping one hairy situation after the next, the Orcs relentlessly hunting the dwarves and Gandalf taking more solo detours. But this time around we get to see numerous Middle-Earth creatures, two Elven cities and one intruding dragon. But all the action scene pomp and CGI pageantry doesn’t hide the fact that it’s a film without substance. The film’s running time is just too long, there are countless unnecessary shots that do nothing for the story, the score is undistinguished, and some of the CGI still looks like a video game. What’s worse is that even after the second film I can’t bring myself to empathize with the characters. Legolas is glaringly misplaced in this film, if he wasn’t in the book he really shouldn’t have been put into the movie. The story isn’t a Greek tragedy, so more humorous banter would have been appropriate, but that too is missing from the script. Although TDOS exemplifies the hard work and talent of the make-up, wardrobe, set design and cinematography departments, it is also an example of creative neglect by the producers, writers and director. They’ve taken a short book and mutated it into three drawn out films that really have no heart. If not for the edge-of-your-seat action sequences and the exceptional performances by all the actors this film would have been a wishy-washy mess. The desolation of writer/director Peter Jackson is far worse than Smaug’s.

Rating: 6/10

S. V. Fernando