Last time, I was taken by surprise by HFR and the 48-frames-per-second+3Dformat. This time, when seeing “The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug”, it didn’t seem as strange to me as I had seen this film format style before in the previous film. Although, I still don’t think it is necessary.
“The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug” the second installment to “The Hobbit: Unexpected Journey” where reluctant Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins played by Martin Freeman has joined Gandalf played by Ian McKellen, and a group of spirited dwarves to help them reclaim their mountain home which was stolen by a dragon named Smaug, voiced by the talented Benedict Cumberbatch.
Like the first film, I wanted to love this film, but only just liked it. And even just thinking about it makes me dislike the film even more. Let me explain. The Hobbit is just one book. ONE. And what Peter Jackson is doing is somehow stretching this small tiny book into three 3 hour long movies. And when you make one book into three movies, surely there will be extra space/time and not enough content to fill the minutes of the film. So what does Peter Jackson do? He adds characters that are not in the book. It’s like the people behind this film forgot that this is based on a book!
Whilst the action scenes in the film mostly done by Legolas and Tauriel played by Orlando Bloom and Evangeline Lilly were entertaining and somewhat amusing, I found this time wasted when it should have been spent more on character development with the dwarves. I assure you that many people don’t even know the names of all of the dwarves travelling with Bilbo in this film.
Although I did like Evangeline Lilly‘s character Tauriel, the character not only does not exist in the book, but does not exist in any J. R. R. Tolkien book. I thought this was meant to be a book adaptation? And we’re only scratching the surface, but with spoilers and everything, I’ll leave the rest up to you to see for yourself.
Peter Jackson‘s big mistake is making the films a prequel to Lord of the Rings instead of a stand alone story. What was meant to be a fine tribute to a beautiful book, has now turned into three horribly shocking films. Now I am not a purist when it comes to book adaptations, but The Hobbit film series takes the cake for book adaptations done wrong.
Unlike many, I am not blinded by the cinematography, costumes and all the pretty elves. I know a bad movie when I see one, and this was bad. The sad part is, Martin Freeman‘s portrayal of Bilbo in this is actually great, but it’s not enough to hold this film together. Disappointing is an understatement.