Review: "The Hobbit III: Well, I Guess That's It"

Warner Bros. Pictures

Going to see The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies was a weird experience for me.  I kept thinking back to seeing the Lord of the Rings movies in theaters when I was young.  I was probably one of the last people to read the books before the movies came out; I remember skimming through the appendices on the drive up to the theater.  I was so invested in those movies.  As The Return of the King approached, I was filled with a mix of emotions: anticipation for the coming movie experience, sadness that this would be the last cinematic journey to Middle Earth, excitement at the prospect of seeing the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, speculation about what things from the book would get included and what things wouldn't (I'm still sad that Prince Imrahil was cut out, but I'm not so disappointed with the exclusion of the Drúadan Forest as my 14-year-old self was).

I felt nothing when I went to see the final film in the Hobbit trilogy.  The previous two film had done nothing to make me excited for it, nothing to make me look forward to seeing all my favorite parts from the book on the big screen.  Heck, I barely remember the first movie, and I only remember the second because I wrote that barely positive review of it about a year ago.  I went into this movie with low expectations, because all the previous two movies had done was train me to lower them.  I did have hope, of a sort.  I hoped that because the second movie had been a bit better than the first, that this movie would be a bit better than the second.

[SPOILERS!  SPOILERS LURK BELOW!  Also, some swearing.]

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