Thoughts Before The Battle - The Hobbit and looking back at Desolation of Smaug

During my rather long hiatus from doing anything with this blog I neglected to get a word in about the second Hobbit film The Desolation of Smaug. You can't really ignore these films, The Lord of the Rings was such a triumph that anyone who enjoyed the films, like me, is naturally excited by The Hobbit or anything made by Peter Jackson in general. A year on from the release of DOS and the third and final installment The Battle of the Five Armies is about to hit our screens. I've watched the second film in different guises and will likely be watching films one and two in their extended format back to back before seeing the third, yet still I can't fight the feeling that . . . The Desolation of Smaug just wasn't that great.

Critics were divided on the first but nearly all of them agreed that the second outing was better, well I can't help but disagree. Don't get me wrong the ingredients are all there for a fantastic film. Pacing and story wise this thunders along and proves to be very entertaining, with much more happening in terms of action than the first outing. The visuals and the acting for the most part are great, it's so wonderful to see the dwarves getting more screen time and becoming recognisable and providing a lot of humour and emotion. Scenes will Bilbo in Mirkwood with the ring and the moment the dwarves enter the mountain feel big and add to how difficult the journey is. The moments fans of the book have been waiting for are there, albeit with a different twist in a number of cases. Legolas works, the introduction of the completely made up character Tauriel. . . kind of works and Chris Evans shines brightly as the roguish Aragorn-alike Baird. Lake town is also an immersive and realistic environment, the effort put in to make this seem real is notable.

A stand out moment in the film is where the company get caught up in the web of the spiders in Mirkwood, this scene was well put together and looked fantastic. Similarly the hugely bombastic barrel ride the comes later takes the film up a notch. The ambition here is great which means there are shots that you just think yeah that's pretty much all computer generated. However without it the scene would not have been exciting, nor as memorable so you can forgive this . . . but . . . and I'm about to nit pick here . . . the second I saw one of the point of view shots from a barrel I was instantly pulled out of the film. "That looked bloody awful" my brain said, and then it happened again, "what the hell was that?" I wondered. Only the third time did I think "Have they actually used Go Pro footage in this?". Sure enough when I watched the documentary from the extended version it was confirmed "Yep, there's Go Pro footage in the Desolation of Smaug"! I know it's small, I know it's barely noticeable, but it's there and it did completely pull me out of the film, all the way through the subsequent scene I was thinking why, why, why did they do that? The reason is poor and it could have been avoided.      

More of these "what is going on here?" moments happened and what became apparent in certain parts of the film was that the decision had been made to make this in to three films and that this film was going to take the brunt of that decision. Scenes that might otherwise have made it in to a simpler two part series were cut in favour of grander ideas to extend out later scenes and embellish other characters. My biggest gripe was the reformatting of the scenes with Smaug, it was blindingly obvious that Peter Jackson had originally intended to stay near enough true to the book on this one, however shoehorned in was this huge action sequence involving the very suspect melting of gold in to a very handy huge dwarf mould. Many parts of this scene looked unfinished with some of the CGI being laughably bad. It comes as no surprise to discover that indeed the decision had been made to put this scene in a few months before screen date, cue mad panic of animators struggling to get this done in time. I felt the scene was completely unnecessary and it really isn't fooling anyone that this was thrown in to bulk out the film. Nearly all of this scene was filmed entirely on green screen and it shows unfortunately. The only positive result being the amazing shot of Smaug blasting out of Erebor covered in gold only for it fall from him like rain as he takes to the skies.

Sure enough our introduction to Smaug is the stand out moment of the film and he is realised so well, especially with the huge sounding voice thanks to Benedict Cumberbatch and a bit of audio trickery. Reminiscent of the scene between Gollum and Bilbo here our little Hobbit has met his match, however out of the two of them I still enjoy the meeting with Gollum the most. Smaug however feels devious and monstrous and the way they've gone about creating the environment he dwells in is utterly stunning.

I mentioned Tauriel kind of worked, she's a good character as it's nice to see an empowered female elf character here who is rough tough and not someone to be messed with. However there's another function here and it serves a purpose in the third film, and I shall not pass judgement until I see it, nor shall I spoil this for anyone who hasn't read the book, but I'm not a fan of the way they're going about this. I'd rather see Kili and Fili bonding like Merry and Pippin did in Lord of the Rings to give events in the third film more heft, not a rather ridiculous love affair.

The film as a whole is hugely entertaining, but I still enjoy the tones of the first film more. I love the Fellowship of the Ring and so I naturally warm to An Unexpected Journey due to this, it has similar themes and motifs and by the end Bilbo has changed just like Frodo and Sam at the end of Fellowship.  

I've also seen the extended versions of both films which both improve and build upon certain story lines. Although the less said about the inclusion of the Goblin King's song the better. The second one indulges in Beorn a bit which is great because I felt this part was way too fleeting and it's good to see his character a bit more fleshed out. It also puts back in the story line of Thorin's father Thrain which makes more sense in the context of previous conversations in the first film and in the very first scene of the second film.

I hope that all this hard work to extend the story lines to fill three films means the final installment gives the extra parts in DOS more meaning and that they serve a purpose. It's hard because The Two Towers managed to just about stand on it's own as a film but it was adapted from three books so that makes more sense. Here the film just doesn't work as well on it's own like the first outing did and it's occasional inadequacies in graphic quality and writing just pulled me out of the film on a number of occasions. I'm really looking forward to the final film which will be out in less than two weeks. No doubt I will be reviewing it so stay tuned.

If you have yet to see The Desolation of Smaug I recommend giving the extended version a go as although it's longer, the scenes that feel truncated in the theatrical version have a bit more room to breath in this.

Theatrical Cut
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Extended Version
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

How To Train Your Dragon 2 - Review

Over a year ago I posted about coming back to blogging about films. Annoyingly it's something that when I come to to I tend to over think and then I end up doing nothing, hence the serious lack of film reviews throughout the past year. Some of it comes down to confidence issues and a bit down to not having the time in the day to do anything. Anyway I am feeling more committed to doing this, however daft and unread this blog may be, onward with bravado to share my thoughts and views on films.

In the same post I published in August last year I shared a trailer for a How To Train Your Dragon 2. I didn't manage to see it in the cinema, so having just come out on DVD and Blu-Ray I thought it was a good opportunity to see it and very briefly share my thoughts.

The first outing was hands down one of my favourite films of 2010, it adjusted my disdain for Dreamworks Animation as out came this well rounded, exciting, funny and all around crowd pleaser that had genuine heart. So four years on the sequel is here and I'm pleased to say that spark and excitement is still there. This feels necessary, another step for Hiccup (and his dragon Toothless) as he grows into becoming a leader and an adult. In typical sequel style this is bigger, ballsier with heaps more dragons and characters. Most of these introduced characters stand up well in the story, although Hiccups mother voiced by Cate Blanchett is a little odd, you're never fully sure just exactly what that accent is. However her inclusion here is written in well and moments between herself and Stoic (Hiccups father) are great.

There's typical high jinx from the supporting characters that deliver entertaining back and forth's especially when Snotlout and Fishlegs are vying for Ruffnuts attention only to be out done by the roguish Eret voiced by Game of Thrones Kit Harington (John Snow). This time the enemy isn't the dragons as such, but a fairly paint by numbers bad guy in the form of Drago Bloodfist voiced ominously by Djimon Hounsou (famously in Gladiator as a slave) who controls dragons with fear (and a rather large alpha dragon) rather than compassion.

So you've got two leaders who have a gift with dragons, one is evil one is good, all the hallmarks of an easy to get on with kids movie. It really is decent though and what's delivered is something that is fun for kids whilst not being overly paint by numbers in the metaphor realm. There's a real gut punch at the end that's on par with the bitter sweetness of the end of the first outing.

You also have to appreciate the animation here, there is distinct improvement in quality and textures in comparison to the first film, like the skin on Toothless' scales and the fire and atmosphere effects. The human characters are better defined and the lip syncing which was a little off on the last one is improved. The soundtrack which stood out so proudly in the first film is back and just as inspiring and grand this time around, I hum the tune regularly.

In conclusion this a strong follow on from the first outing, it stands on it's own as good well rounded film and like all good films that warrant sequels it doesn't fish for that validation at the end. I'm aware there have a been a few books written in this series so obviously there will be more to come. This is as good as the first outing and if you enjoyed the last one then this is a no brainer.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆