“Another year another Hobbit, and so it goes. While I didn’t necessarily dislike the film, there’s so much about it that still doesn’t sit well with me. My main gripe is that I don’t think there was any reason to try and squeeze three movies out of one tiny book. Last year, with Unexpected Journey, I felt like all of the new material was kinda disjointed from the core story. But it still had the sense of adventure and fun of the original and brought back some of the LOTR magic. This time, I felt like the tone was so drastically different from the source book. Anytime someone asks me what I thought about this film, I go on a rant. The fact that I did still enjoy it tends to get lost in the rant, but I feel I can’t justify a simple like or dislike.
So here’s the rant. The Hobbit was originally a children’s story. Much lighter than LOTR, and just a fun adventure. LOTR is a lot heavier and ominous. It also means more epic which is kind of awesome, but Hobbit isn’t meant to be that. But with the movies, all the extra material Jackson has added in ends up giving Hobbit that same darker tone. He’s trying to tie it in to be a more legit prequel. I think the thing that upset me most was the way that the company was brought into Beorn’s home. I get it that with adaptations a lot gets changed or left out. Normally I can forgive that, but instead of a fun exchange (where Gandalf has the dwarves come in two at a time so Beorn doesn’t know how many there are), they’re chased in by orcs. Completely. \m/. Different. They took a silly moment from a children’s story and swapped it for a suspenseful scene from an epic. That’s the type of thing that I have a hard time getting past. End rant.
That said, it was still enjoyable. The journey in the barrels on the river was a lot of fun, and Smaug was incredible. I loved the animation and his design. Using motion capture on Bennedict Cumberbatch was totally the right call because he was just so expressive. Not a lot going on plot wise, since the already thin plot to begin with is being stretched even thinner into multiple films, but the big adventure was still there. I just wish that it was true to the original adventure and not trying to mimic its film predecessor
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug – \m/ \m/ \m/