d20 Despot Reviews The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

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In keeping with my role as cultural arbiter of all things 'fantasy', I think it is about time for a review of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.  I think you will agree that this is a timely review, especially compared to my last one, which was of a book that came out almost 30 years ago.

In short, I really enjoyed The Hobbit II: Hobbit Harder.  I was also disappointed with it, but less so than I was disappointed in the first Hobbit (which I also enjoyed).  I thought that the added content fit in to this movie much better than in the first movie, and Desolation was a more solid and enjoyable movie as a result of its addition.  But there were a lot of things that were lacking, particularly in the content that was actually from the book.  But I'll get to that later.

Spoilers for the movies and the book follow

How the Hobbit Movies are not Adaptations of the Book, and Why it Would be Bad if They Were

As has been pointed out elsewhere, the Hobbit movies are not a direct adaptation of the classic book The Hobbit, but rather an adaptation of the larger story known as the Quest of Erebor.  The Hobbit showed only Bilbo's perspective of his role in that larger story.  The Quest of Erebor story was never told in full novel form, but information about it can be found in other works of Tolkien's, particularly in the appendices to The Lord of the Rings.  So complaining that "it isn't like the book" will not get you very far with me, laddie.

The movies also don't need to be direct adaptations of the book.  The Lord of the Rings movies were excellent, but by no means are they an incredibly faithful adaptation of the books.  In the films, you will not find Glorfindel, the badass elf who saves Frodo from the ringwraiths, never to be heard from again for the rest of the story - instead, you are introduced to Arwen, who is only hinted at in the books until she shows up at the end and marries Aragorn.  You will also not find any reference to Tom Bombadil, the barrow wight, the Druadan Forest,  Prince Imrahil, or the Scouring of the Shire.  The films tightened up the story to fit it in to their 47 hour run-time.  Film and literature are very different storytelling media, and for something from one to be adapted to the other requires a translation into this new format - some things are lost in translation, and others gained.

Furthermore, a direct adaptation of The Hobbit would just be a bad idea in this instance.  I am not saying it could not be done, or that it would be bad if it were done properly.  But these films are being made as a prequel trilogy to the wildly successful Lord of the Rings trilogy - and let us be clear: there is no way that the Hobbit was ever going to be less than three movies.  Given the success of the Lord of the Rings movies and the pre-existing fanbase of moviegoers, anything less would just be the studios throwing money away.   In any case, The Hobbit is a very different story from The Lord of the Rings, and it is told in a very different manner for a different audience.  But the Hobbit movies, as a prequel trilogy for The Lord of the Rings, must tell that story in a manner similar to The Lord of the Rings, for the same audience as The Lord of the Rings.  That necessitates major changes from the book, and makes perfectly logical the inclusion of additional material, both canonical and non-canonical.

In The Hobbit book, the perspective is limited to just Bilbo.  This means that Gandalf just appears and disappears randomly whenever he leaves the group to do his own thing.  While it works in the book, because Gandalf is this mysterious figure with manifold concerns that are not any of Bilbo's business, it can't work in the film because Gandalf is a beloved character that needs screen time, motivation, and things to do.  Fortunately, that is provided elsewhere in Tolkien's canon: Gandalf is interested in Thorin's quest because he knows Smaug would be trebly dangerous in the hands of Sauron, and he spends all his free time investigating Sauron's rise in the guise of the Necromancer.

In the book, Smaug is killed by a random, heretofore unknown character completely unconnected to the rest of the story, who learns of Smaug's weak-spot because a passing bird sings it to him, and he happens to speak bird.  This works in the book because it is whimsical and characteristic of the type of classical stories that Tolkien was paying tribute to.  It wouldn't work in the film because it would be super dumb.  It completely clashes with the type of storytelling we are familiar with from the Lord of the Rings films, where important characters are the ones that do important things, and only wizards talk to birds.

And sometimes moths

Most significantly, in the book, Bilbo spends almost the entire Battle of Five Armies unconscious.  This works in the book because he is just a character in over his head.  Plus, he hears about it later, which means we, the reader, still get to experience it.  In the film, you just can't have your main character asleep for most of the climax, especially if he would be your only point-of-view character.  I assume that the movie will not be staying true to the book in this case, and I would not want them to.

Things I did not Like about the Film

Let's start with the negative aspects of the film, because those are always the most interesting parts of reviews.  No one wants to read a review that just talks about how awesome something is - that's boring.  So without further ado, in we go to the negatives.

Beorn:

I don't like to be reminded of Harry Potter when I'm watching The Hobbit

Everything about Beorn was wrong.  First off, you are introduced to him in his bear form first, and told that he is a shapeshifter up front, before even seeing his man-shape.  This kills any mystery about him.  Plus his bear form just looks like a giant warg.  In fact, I just thought it was a warg when it showed up on screen, because it made sense in context and I had no visual cues that it was anything else.  It was only when Bilbo told Gandalf that he saw something weird in the woods that I realized it was supposed to be Beorn, at which point I thought, "Wow, that really didn't look like a bear."  So yeah, whoever approved that design should be fired.

Then, when we see Beorn's man-shape, he is super ugly.  Like, it looks like he got attacked by a swarm of man-eating caterpillars.  I think he might have accidentally wandered over from a low-budget 1980s stage production of Beauty and the Beast.  Whoever approved that design should be fired.

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Then, once Beorn is introduced, he serves no purpose in the story.  Thorin's party is supposedly in grave danger, but when they run to Beorn's house, it is only him that they are running from.  Then he warns them that the orcs are everywhere and super dangerous, so he gives them horses, but they don't see or outrun any dangerous orcs on their way to Mirkwood.  The movie could have just avoided Beorn all-together and nothing would be different - just say that the ride they took on the giant eagles gave the party the head-start they needed to get away from the orcs.  Since the movie did such a good job of tying Bard into the story, I was surprised at how Beorn was so underdeveloped and marginalized.

Heck, they didn't even get much good sight comedy out of the dwarves interacting with Beorn's oversized household objects or his giant, bad-CGI bees.

The orcs:

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I thought Azog the Defiler was pretty dumb looking in the first movie (I believe he was in full armour in the books, which would have been cooler), and his inclusion was awkward, but I let it pass because the first movie would otherwise be without a villain - just a series of unfortunate events.  But in Desolation, I guess Sauron really needs him to hang around in his tower and wait for Gandalf to show up.  Instead, we are introduced to Bolg, son of Azog, an actual character from The Hobbit.  Bolg, who will now lead the half-hearted pursuit of Thorin's company.  He has apparently had his head cut open and, instead of dying, just replaced his skull with metal.  I am not convinced that any orc outside of Warhammer 40k has the surgical chops to perform or survive this procedure.

In the books, Bolg is the leader of the orcs of the Misty Mountains after his father, Azog, was killed in the Battle of Azanulbizar.  In the movies, Azog survives, hunts the dwarves for a bit, then just has his son do it.  Why not have Azog killed when he was supposed to be, and have Bolg out for revenge.  They could have just had Thorin instead of Dáin behead Azog at the battle, and then Bolg could be the villain that he is supposed to be, rather than just filling in for his father whenever he's too busy hanging with Sauron to continue his revenge quest.  Simple as that.

So the orcs are lead by Bolg Metal-Skull this time, not Azog the Stretch-Marked.  What do they do in the film?  Mostly they show up whenever Action needs to happen, whether or not it makes sense.  They show up at random points along the river to shoot at the dwarves in their barrels.  Then they show up in Esgaroth so that Legolas can kill them all.  Whoo!

The Action:

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This is a big one.  It was a problem in An Unexpected Journey too, and it is really surprising because the Lord of the Rings films had a lot of very competently filmed and choreographed action sequences.  But in the Hobbit movies, all the action feels really cartoony.  The big action sequences like the fight in Goblin-town in the first film and the barrel ride in this one seemed like they belonged in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, not a Lord of the Rings movie.  It is all over-choreographed and goofy, to the point where you never feel like the characters are in any peril.  Why should I worry about falling when the characters can fall hundreds of feet out of trees, off of scaffolding, or down rocky chutes?  Why should I worry about orcs when they are so easily killed by barrels that just happen to bounce out of the river at the right moment, roll along the rocky riverbank, and bounce back in without harming the dwarf hanging half-out of it?  Why should I worry about fire and heat when everyone can survive Smaug's breath by hiding behind a pillar, or when Thorin can so harmlessly ride an ancient wheelbarrow down a river of molten gold?  It sucks all the tension and excitement out of the action sequences, which I'm pretty sure is the opposite of what is supposed to happen.

And Some Minor Nitpicks:
-Thranduil seals off his kingdom because of the news that Sauron is back.  But is he sealing off his kingdom, or just the Elven halls?  Because earlier he was all obsessed with having his warriors keep the spiders and orcs out of his borders, but now he want them all to stay inside, behind the gate (the gate which protects his halls, not his whole kingdom).  Wouldn't he have his warriors redouble their efforts and their patrols, not just keep everyone in his tree palace?  I mean, if he wants to protect his kingdom so badly.  I'm just sayin'.

-If Esgaroth is such a super-paranoid city that Bard has to smuggle Thorin's party in in barrels full of fish, how does a band of orcs get in?  Doesn't anyone notice when they start climbing up walls and leaping from roof to roof?

-Why are they setting it up so that Bard will kill Smaug with a ballista?  Haven't they already established that he is a good bowman? Isn't that good enough?  When did he get a chance to practice with those weird ballista things?  Firing a bow and firing a ballista require completely different skill-sets.

-So, was Gandalf trying to get captured?  Because it sure seemed like it.

-How does Smaug get in and out?  It seems like all the entrances are pretty well sealed.  He can't have just gone in and never come out, or he wouldn't be able to keep the desolation of Smaug all desolated.  Plus, it seems like he breaks stuff whenever he moves.  Wouldn't he have broken all of that stuff long ago?

-So did the dwarves build a massive furnace complex solely to make a giant gold statue of Thrain?  It certainly seems like it, since the gold all flows there with no further input from the dwarves.  And why was it all set up to make that statue, but never activated?  Did Smaug invade the Kingdom under the Mountain right after they built the stone statue-mould and the gold-sluices and filled the giant furnaces with gold, but before they had a chance to light the fires and begin the automatic-statue-making process?  That seems highly unlikely.  I mean, it was cool when they did it, but it doesn't make any sense.

-So at first I was a bit weirded out that Tauriel used Athelas to treat Kili's wound, because I thought it was just a thing that the line of Kings could do, but I guess she's an elf and elves can do anything because they're perfect and whatever.  Lúthien used Athelas to heal Beren, after all.  But I am still pissed off at that bit because it just felt like a "Hey, remember that bit from Fellowship?  Here it is again!"  Athelas should be used to heal people after momentous battles against great evils, not after taking an arrow to the knee from an orc in the woods.  This would have been so much better:

Bofur: He needs Kingsfoil! Do you have any?

Bard: Kingsfoil? It's a weed.  We feed it to pigs!  Instead of just feeding them fish guts because they eat anything and we live in the middle of the lake, far away from weeds.

Bofur: Feed it to pigs eh?

[Bofur runs out, comes back minutes later with a handful of pig shit]

-Wait, why did the orc shoot Kili's knee with a Morgul arrow?  Were all the arrows Morgul arrows?  I thought Morgul weapons were pretty special, and basically wielded just by the ringwraiths.  Did Sauron issue 20 quivers of Morgul arrows to the random group of orcs out hunting the other random group of dwarves?  If so, Sauron must just be churning out Morgul arrows like nobody's business, in which case, why didn't every orc in The Lord of the Rings have Morgul arrows and blades?  Ugh.

Ok, that's kind of a lot of stuff wrong with this movie.  Why do I even like it?  Am I just a sucker?  Well, to some extent, yes.  I am just so damn happy to see more of Middle Earth on the big screen.  But there are also a lot of things to like about this movie.

Things I Liked About This Movie

The Elves, including Legolas and Tauriel:

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This is kind of unexpected, because I think Tolkien's elves are pretty boring for the most part (except in the Silmarillion), and Peter Jackson does a good job of capturing how boring I think they are.  Plus Legolas is easily the least interesting character of the Fellowship, and I was not confident in Jackson's ability to insert an entirely made-up elf character in there too.  But I really really liked the elves in this movie.

Ok, I will admit that I was looking forward to the Mirkwood Elves.  I really liked how they played an antagonistic role in The Hobbit and I was excited to see how that would play out in the film.  I was very pleased to see that they stayed true to the book and made the elves totally dickish, especially Thranduil (who has apparently turned his megaloceros mount into a bitchin' throne).  Thranduil's kingdom also looks very cool and visually distinct from either the Lothlorien elves or the Rivendell elves.  And elves can get drunk and pass out!  Whooo!

"I feel something..."                                     source

I was not sure if I would like Tauriel, but it turns out I really did.  She doesn't seem like a character made up out of whole cloth and stuffed awkwardly into the movie just so that there would be a female character.  She seems fully-realized and actually interesting (perhaps the most interesting elf in the movies, along with Thranduil).  I can even kinda see the love triangle they've got going on.  It is decidedly non-Tolkien, but that's okay; if you take elves off the high pedestal that Tolkien created them on, they get more interesting.

I even kinda enjoyed Legolas in this movie, which I was really not expecting.  It makes perfect sense to have him in this movie, because he is Thranduil's son.  Bilbo would not have known him from any other elf, but the movie-watching audience certainly would.  He even felt more interesting than he did in The Lord of the Rings, perhaps because he had something to do other than bromance with Gimli.  That said, it's kinda weird to have him and Tauriel pursuing the orcs all the way to Lake-Town.  It would have been even better if Legolas was just another elf in the court of Thranduil, maybe with a few lines.  Just as a cameo.  I have an uneasy feeling that Legolas will play too big of a role in the next movie, but I liked him in this one.

The Spiders:
Another thing I was not expecting to like, because I am deathly afraid of spiders and generally avoid looking at giant ones in movies.  But I was somehow able to watch the whole spider scene with a minimum of cringing, and I liked what I saw.  There was a lot of good action making use of three-dimensional space (something I like to do in D&D when I have the time to prepare it).  This was one of the action sequences that seemed the least cartoony, except for everyone falling from tremendous heights with no injury, and when the elves show up at the end and start using CGI-archery-skillz.

I also really like that Bilbo understands what the spiders are saying when he puts the ring on.  And I like that Bilbo doesn't annoy them with a silly song - another thing that works in the book but would not in the movie.

Smaug:

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This goes without saying, but Smaug is super awesome.  Benedict Cumberbatch's voice is perfect.  They kept much of the book's dialogue between Smaug and Bilbo intact, and it really worked.  Smaug is immense and terrifying.  I liked how they kept the idea that Smaug's underside has a bunch of treasure stuck to it, but they did not keep the idea that that treasure provides his otherwise unprotected underbelly with a coat of armour (works in the book, not on film).

It was cool to have an action sequence in the Dwarven halls, if just to see more of Smaug and more of the dwarven architecture.  I know it wasn't in the book and there were parts of it that did not really make sense, but the needs of the movie necessitated a climactic sequence here that was not in the books.  It was fun to watch, at the very least.

Bard and Lake-town:

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As I said above, they really had to introduce Bard earlier than they do in the books, or else it would have been jarring.  I think they did a good job of it, using him to take the party into Lake-town and introduce some of the stuff going on there.  And Lake-town is a lot more fleshed-out than it is in the book, making it an interesting location rather than just a stop on the way to the Lonely Mountain (and a target of Smaug's wrath).  I think adding in the elements of intrigue and politics in Esgaroth really help to show that this is a bigger story than that told by The Hobbit.  And it gives us something to care about when Smaug comes to destroy it all.

Plus, Lake-town looks really cool.

And some other stuff I liked:
-Gandalf never explains himself to the party.  He's just like, "I gotta go, have fun without me!"  Perfect.

-The Necromancer.  So badass.

-Gandalf and Radagast investigating the Witch King's tomb.  Interesting and foreboding.

-I like how they depicted Mirkwood messing with everyone's heads.  Especially the bit where Bilbo looks down and sees his feet walking backwards.  Really well done and disorienting, in a way that seems difficult to do on film.  Bravo.

-In the books, the party comes upon the elves by repeatedly stumbling into their feast in the middle of the woods, at which point all the elves and their feast disappear, leaving the dwarves confused.  I am glad they did not do this.  It meshes really well with the Scandinavian elf/fairy folklore Tolkien was working with, but it does not fit well with the elves as they have been established in The Lord of the Rings and the movies.

-Stephen Fry.  And the portrait of Stephen Fry.

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With Unexpected Journey, I felt like the elements from the book were clashing with the added elements, creating a movie that was very tonally inconsistent and kind of jarring to watch.  I enjoyed it, but it felt slightly off and I came away hoping the next one would be better.  Well, the next one is better.  This part of the book was darker than the first part, so the added elements blend well together.  Not only that, but (almost) all of the added bits really helped to tie the story together while growing it into something bigger.  I took issue with some of it; there was a lot to take issue with.  But in the end I really enjoyed it, and I enjoyed it more than the previous one.  The Hobbit movies thus far are not nearly as satisfying as the Lord of the Rings movies were, but the extended editions will surely sit on my shelf, ready to be watched and re-watched many times over.

-your Morgul d20 despot