The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Part 3: There and Whack Again LOL!)

Nick: Gandalf tells the dwarves he has to leave them and goes to meet Radagast, which culminates in him saying that there is war brewing, something I feel like Gandalf knew in the forest when he left the dwarves. He then tells Radagast he needs to leave and go back to the dwarves while not having any more information than he did before, but Radagast says it’s more important to face this head on, which is why I thought he left the dwarves in the first place. Gandalf seemed really unimportant in this film and his character was being forced away from the dwarves because he makes thing too easy for them.

Did you feel his character was forced in this film, and the only reason he’s there is because of how popular the character is?

Dustin: No. In the book, Gandalf left at the same point, and we don’t see him again until he turns up at the final battle. But it makes sense what he does here, because it is in line with what Tolkien mentioned in the book, that he was leaving to deal with the Necromancer, who we find out in The Lord of the Rings is Sauron. So if they needed to shoehorn Gandalf into this section, it made sense. Just like how they shoehorned in Legolas, who wasn’t in The Hobbit, in a logical place, i.e., when the dwarfs are captured by Legolas’s father.

Nick: I meant more of the logic of Gandalf’s decisions. He is with the dwarves and then chooses to leave (makes sense), but when he says the same thing in reverse with Radagast, I don’t think he finds out any more information, yet he feels he needs to go back to the dwarves, and all Radagast says is, “No, it’s more important that you go see if the Necromancer is back,” which I feel Gandalf knew from the image on the tree in the forrest. So his decision making was all for drama rather than logical conclusions. So when Radagast says, “Leave the dwarves up to fate,” we get a close up shot of Gandalf’s lovely “older” face saying “Leave my friends behind?”

Dustin: I think Gandalf wanted to confront the Necromancer.

Nick: I know he wanted to confront the Necromancer, but his scene with Radagast in the forest was 10 to 15 minutes long, gathering no new information, and yet he now felt he had to go back to the dwarves, and it felt like it was all leading up to the emotional line of, “I have to leave my friends behind,” considering it was the last line of the scene. I’m just saying that it was a long pointless scene besides allowing Radagast to return.

Dustin: Would you recommend The Lord of the Rings, Part -2: The Hobbit, Part 2: The Desolation of Smaug?

Nick: Hell yeah! When films can be attractive to kids and adults while not be a fully animated film it’s quite an achievement.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Part 2: The Desolation of the Middle Chapter)

Nick: The CGI in this film when in the dragon’s lair is remarkable. The dragon, Lonely Mountain and the vast amounts of gold make the scene where Bilbo meets Smaug all the more frightening. The castle is such an open space that it fits a dragon and more gold than any man has ever acquired.

Dustin: I agree the CGI was a huge step forward. The dragon looked awesome (voiced by Benedict Cumbersome [12 Years a Slave]). Peter Jackson does a terrific job imagining Tolkien’s Middle Earth. I remember in The Fellowship of the Ring thinking the Balrog looked exactly how I pictured it in the book, even though Tolkien gave a very sparse description. When I read books, I tend to cast the characters in my head to help me picture them, and I had actually cast Elijah Wood as Frodo a good five years before the movies were made. He just had a very hobbit-like look to me.

Nick: The films are casted superbly. The things that were concerning are throwaway lines like when we find out that one of the dwarves is Gimley’s father and the way we find out is Legolas being insulting while at the same time actually misconstruing the sexes of dwarves he sees in the picture. There are one too many gags about how the world sees the dwarves.

Dustin: I didn’t mind that too much. I would say for a movie called The Hobbit, though, the hobbit didn’t get much screen time, while the entire book was from Bilbo’s point-of-view. He was in maybe 15 minutes of the 4.5 hour movie. It should have been called The Wood Elf, since Legolas got more screen time.

Nick: I can guarantee that Legolas didn’t even have half the screentime of Bilbo, but if you said Kili, the she-elf, Gandalf or Thorin, I’d be more inclined to agree with you. Richard Armitage, who plays Thorin, is quite a good actor, and I’m a little shocked I have never heard his name before these films.

Dustin: I liked how his character developed in this installment. He is beginning to go mad with greed, where he started out courageous and generous, like Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It starts when he won’t promise the Wood Elves one treasure from Lonely Mountain in exchange for their release, and culminating in him going psycho on Bilbo when he thinks (probably correctly) Bilbo has the sought-after Arkenstone.

Nick: I’m pretty sure Bilbo does have it. He was reaching for something in his pocket, but then retreated his arm when he saw how mad Thorin looked.

The film does have another triangle where we have three characters who are obsessed with objects. Bilbo with the Ring, Thorin with the Arkenstone and Smaug with every last bit of gold. It’s an interesting addition to have multiple characters dealing with greed which is like most Western films, as you correctly compared it to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Dustin: They never actually showed Bilbo take the Arkenstone. It was left ambiguous so when Thorin confronts him, you don’t know whether he’s right to be angry. But that’s actually what I liked, it didn’t matter if he was right, he was still wrong in his reaction, and it showed his greed. I think the movie was very graceful how it portrayed that ambiguity.

Nick: I know they were playing the ambiguity of the situation, but i think it’s fact that he does have it, unless you are going to tell me that in the book he for sure doesn’t.

Dustin: Bilbo eventually finds the Arkenstone in the book, but I don’t remember at exactly what point. So even I wasn’t entirely sure he had it when Thorin confronted him.

Nick: I’m probably being over confident in saying that I’m 99 percent sure that he does, just because of what Smaug had said of Thorin’s greed right before the scene when Bilbo sees Thorin and right when Thorin asks (demands) that the Arkenstone be presented to him Bilbo immediately pulls away his hand, which was enthusiastically in his pocket and his smile fades realizing that Smaug was correct in his depiction of Thorin. But I digress that I’m not certain and no matter what the scene was done phenomenally well because as you said his reaction was not very kingly. Well not a good king.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Part 1: An Unexpectedly Long Review)

Dustin: 4 of 5 stars Nick: 4 of 5 stars Average: 4 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is the second installment in the film trilogy based on a 300-page book. It picks up in the middle of the hobbit and the dwarves’ journey to the Lonely Mountain to reclaim their treasure from the dragon Smaug.

What did you think of The Hobbit, Nick?

Nick: A rare sequel that is better in every aspect when compared to the first.

Dustin: I didn’t feel like it dragged as much as the first. I remember about an hour into the first film, I got up to use the restroom, and when I came back 45 minutes later they were still standing around Bilbo’s hole in the ground and the story hadn’t advanced at all. This time the story moved more briskly, and it held my attention, even though it got overlong.

Nick: Going into the first Hobbit film, I had just finished half of the book for the first time wanting to get an idea of what the movie would be like. The book was more geared towards children’s fantasy than adult fantasy, which made the whole series a little less interesting to me. While the Harry Potter films gradually grew in darkness, we are treated to a new trilogy from Middle Earth that doesn’t seem as complexed or as dangerous. It’s hard to find their quest interesting when its not as interesting as the trilogy that came before. Where I stopped in the book was actually right where the first film stopped. While I’m not sure what was added in this adaptation, I assume it was most of the scenes I enjoyed and the film needed in order to be more than a straightforward adaptation would have allowed.

Dustin: I think I would have preferred a straightforward adaptation. My main complaint about the first film was that the things that were added didn’t add anything that wasn’t already in the original story (see my review of the first installment). Same complaint here as well. There is a love triangle subplot between Legolas, Kili and some girl elf who wasn’t in the book. This was given too much screen time. I realize Peter Jackson and co. wanted to have this to appeal to females dragged into the audience by their boyfriends, and to give a more human touch to the fairy tale world, but I think I could do without Peter Jackson’s fan fiction.

Nick: Although it was a love triangle, it wasn’t as melodramatic as recent triangles we’ve been forced to sit through. The she-elf is forced to look away from Legolas, which helps her romantic glances towards the dwarf Kili. She is also not considered special in the elf world while Kili makes her feel like one-of-a-kind. The film does a good job not laboring on this for too long considering that the screentime is around three hours.

Dustin: There was too much going on toward the conclusion. You had Kili suffering from a poisoned arrow shot to the leg while another dwarf searched for some herb that could save him, Bard the guardsman in jail, Legolas and the girl elf fighting orcs in Lake Town, all while the dwarves tried to force Smaug out of the Lonely Mountain in an overlong scene that reminded me of the Griswolds trying to force the squirrel out of their house in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

Nick: It’s like the end of a book chapter when all of these things are not summed up so it makes you anticipate reading the next chapter as soon as possible. Though the film should have summed up more and left some things till the next film. The first film did this, with one climax and one anticipating Smaug. This climax reminded me more of The Matrix Reloaded where it builds up so much then ends with basically saying to be continued. Both franchises were made the same way, with the two sequels being shot at the same time. When the film ended (for both movies) the audience groaned being annoyed with how much was still yet to be summed up.  The first Lord of the Rings franchise was better at having a large conclusion at the end of each film while leaving enough still yet to be done for our adventurers.

Dustin: For me, none of this stuff was in the book, and I knew what would eventually happen, so I was thinking, Can we just fast-forward through all this?

Nick: I’m happy I didn’t continue reading the book. Maybe the book would be more endearing to me if I’d read it as a child.

Dustin: I think so. I was 10 or so when I first read it. Seems like most people I know who’ve read it as adults didn’t much care for it. I felt that way reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as an adult. L. Frank Baum didn’t know what he was doing. The movie was much better.