Just saw The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
Good time, great film. I’ve heard some
negative reviews and honestly I don’t agree. I thought it was heaps better than
the first one and its plodding scrotal chinned goblin king section.
The barrel ride has been described as
overlong, but I wonder how short of an attention span do you need to think so. PJ
turned a short, boring page in the book into tense, action packed ride followed
by some humour and subterfuge. There was a hint of rubber leg CG Legolas, but
on the whole actors and CG flowed well.
One minor flaw that came later was a bit of
CG lingering. CG effects work best when the camera spends little time on them,
like the great dragon chase. The CG lingering on the gold king felt overlong
and muddled the meaning, but didn’t ruin the film at all.
If there is one complaint, it is that in
making characters and dialogue out of whole cloth, PJ sometimes doesn’t know
when to stop. Case in point is Tauriel. I am all for adding in tough female
characters in Tolkien – in LotR, we get tough women like Eowyn, who gets
promised action and agency only to get cut off at the knees figuratively and
relegated to a handmaid.
Tauriel seemed about to break that mold. She
did her own thing, turned away love from a friend, then saved an enemy because
it was the right thing to do. When this dwarven enemy deliriously remarks that
she shouldn’t be there, this would have been a great place to end the scene. Instead he asks, “Would
she have loved me?” and marks the return to the sappy chains of womanhood. Didn’t
ruin the film, but made me wish PJ had taken a chance and let one strong woman
stand alone.
My Report Card:
Hobbit 1 = B
Hobbit 2 = A minus
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