9 out of 10 Noodles
The movie I've
been looking forward to the most in 2013 has finally come. And while it's still
not the perfection I hoped for, it's still quite a treat. The second
installation in The Hobbit trilogy (serving as a prequel to The Lord
of the Rings trilogy) brings us back to Middle Earth with style and houses
a grand feeling of adventure which is the main element I wanted out of this
series. The Lord of the Rings, if you didn't already know, is
collectively my personal favorite movie of all time. The trilogy perfectly
captured the fantasy, wonder, and amazement of the lore from Tolkien's literary
classics, as well as blending components of action, adventure, humor, and gave
viewers moral senses of hope, friendship, courage, among tons of other things.
The trilogy escalated from amazing character development to extremely epic in
such a seamless fashion, that it's truly something to marvel at. That trilogy
is taken from three 400-page books, whereas The Hobbit trilogy is taken
from one 300-page book, with ideas from Tolkien's other books as well as new
story elements that fans of the books won't see coming. As one of those people,
I can say that it's pleasant to have read the book yet not completely know how
all the events in the film will unfold. Though some die-hard fans (or hipsters)
will say that it's too starkly different from the book, I say that that's what
we should come to accept now. The outside story arcs that aren't in the book
(such as Gandalf's personal quest to see if darkness has returned), all make sense
and, for the most part, don't feel out-of-place at all. Desolation of Smaug has
the right tone throughout the movie; it's the tone I was looking for in the
first movie. In the first one, it held more of a familial tone, and while this
film is still a fun-for-the-family movie, I feel like it definitely grew up and
became more like a Lord of the Rings movie (and that's exactly what we
all want!).
Something that's
consistent throughout all the Lord of the Rings movies (which includes The
Hobbit movies) is the characters are so well done. And that is the case in
this movie, too. The casting is so well done that the actors/actresses fit
their roles so well. They look like essentially exactly what I would imagine
them to look like while reading the books or thinking about the characters.
Just as well, the acting is pretty much stellar. Martin Freeman proved to me in
An Unexpected Journey that he is the definitive Bilbo. He kills it in
this role and he nails every expression, mannerism, hobbit-ism, and line in the
exactly the way that he should. Also, you can see that his character has grown.
I like to see character growth, especially when it's not overtly-cliched. We
saw in the first movie that he was still a homesick peaceful guy, even on the
adventure. But he grew since then, and we can see here that he's grown quite
courageous, as well as cunning. He even is responsible a lot of the time for
getting the gang out of trouble in a bunch of situations. The company of
dwarves is still well acted done and the leader, Thorin Oakenshield, feels even
more heroic and leaderlike in this film. As well as Gandalf, but we all already
know that he's an inherent badass.
And then we have the elves. Legolas, who was
my favorite character in The Lord of the Rings trilogy for most of my
life, is still awesome in this movie. His actions scenes make this movie so
much cooler and appealing, since he's a such a fluid fighter with his
bow-and-arrow and his two swords. However, it's incredibly noticeable that he's
sort of like a different character in this movie. He's arrogant and sometimes
comes off as a jerk. But I realized that this comes to play into his overall
character arc over the span of the entire series, and imagine he'll grow into a
more humble warrior in the next movie. The other elf is Tauriel, who, like
Legolas isn't in The Hobbit book. However, unlike Legolas, she's not in
any of the books whatsoever; she was completely made up for this movie.
However, she definitely feels like she belongs there and she's acted well by the
beautiful Evangeline Lily (plus she's got her fair share of badass action
moments!). The one thing is just that there's a bit of a small romance and it
feels a little bit forced and childish, so I don't think that really fit, but
it was partly essential for some story segments to move forward. A lot of
things in this movie, you can tell were shoehorned in by Peter Jackson,
especially the involvement of Legolas and Tauriel, but it's executed in such a
way that it feels like it belongs there. But the character who really belongs
here is Smaug (his name's in the title, duh). In case you live under a rock,
Smaug is the dragon who lives in the Lonely Mountain, which is where the
Company of Dwarves is journeying to in order to reclaim it as their kingdom. Smaug,
is voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch; and let me tell you, they could not have
picked anyone better. Cumberbatch is already one of my favorite actors and his
voice is such a chilling an awesome one. He lends to Smaug just the right tone
of voice and speaks so articulately; it's honestly amazing. Smaug just gives
off the perfect vibe of arrogance and you can tell he condescends upon
virtually everyone. He was such a memorable character and he was so menacing
that I don't think I'll ever forget him as a movie antagonist. When Bilbo first
encounters the incredibly huge Smaug in the mountain, it is the ultimate
"oh shit" moment and it keeps you so invested throughout their
conversation.
The special
effects, as expected, are also breathtaking. The dragon is designed so
flawlessly, that you don't just feel like he's there; you KNOW that the dragon
is right there about to roast some poor souls. The CGI in other scenes was
mostly on point; however it did slack a little bit at some moments. The effects
are done by WETA (pretty much the gods of computer-generated special effects);
we can't just let them off so easily, so there's a minor gripe there. The orcs
are done better in this movie though. One of my major gripes with the first
movie is that firstly, the orcs were done with CGI, and secondly, I could
easily tell they were. Thankfully in this movie, a lot of the orcs are done
with makeup and prosthetics so there's a more realistic and gritty feel to
them. The feel of the entire movie is much more exciting. One of my main
problems with An Unexpected Journey was that it had pacing issues and a
lot of it felt slow or uninteresting. But Desolation is turned on for
pretty much all of it 161-minute runtime; in that, I mean that it's exciting
and something's happening, almost all the time. When they get to Laketown, it
slows down a bit, but that could just be in relativity because the rest of the
movie there's so much stuff happening. I mean, hey, we can't have action every
second of the film; so that makes sense.
All in all, Desolation
of Smaug a greatly welcomed installment to the series, and it's a great
improvement over the first movie. It's moreso like An Unexpected
Journey was actually just building up to the events of this film.
This movie capitalizes on a lot of what it's got; the characters and action are
spectacular, while the overall scope and tone are going in the right direction.
Hopefully, the final film in the trilogy will veer towards even greater
excellency, as there is still room to improve. However, The Desolation of
Smaug as a movie is the opposite of a desolation, as it rightly earns 9
out of 10 noodles.
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