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I think that it’s officially time to declare that Peter Jackson has gone full-on George Lucas mode. The Lord of the Rings was a trilogy of films that edited down the expansive material into something more manageable and workable to a general audience while maintaining the tone and flavor of the novels. They stand as a glorious testament to what a great literary adaptation could be; each frame filled with love and a tremendous amount of detail. However, that was also back when Jackson knew when to edit and where to do it.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is largely a very fun film, but bogged down with an obscene amount of filler and material created specifically for this trilogy of films. The Hobbit is a slim novel, episodic in structure, that could easily, and preferably, be adapted into one three hour long film and lose nothing. This is why I believe that the Lucas comparison is apt. Jackson has taken a beloved franchise and added onto it a bloated series of prequels that strive too hard to hammer home how this action here leads to the events of Rings.
Let’s get back to discussing Smaug and stop focusing in on the creator for a moment. For the most part, I rather enjoyed Smaug. The special effects work is top-notch, many of the supporting roles wisely cast, the costumes and sets are fully realized and spectacular to behold, and when the film moves through its numerous action sequences it can still inspire a sense of wonderment and awe. The only true drawback is the problematic script.
I do not believe for one minute that adding back in Legolas was a choice of any value or necessity. Legolas was an anemic character in the books, and Orlando Bloom is a charismatic black hole for me. I never got his appeal much beyond his blandly handsome looks. Piggybacking on this thought, the inclusion of a love interest for him, which soon becomes a love triangle when she express a romantic inclination to one of the numerous dwarves, was totally unnecessary. Evangeline Lilly plays the part well, but no one could make an awkward romantic gesture late in the film remotely plausible or emotionally valid given the purple prose nature of the whole thing. (Is it just me, or does she bear a striking resemblance to Link from Zelda?) Her inclusion feels like pandering to try and include another female role in the otherwise male-dominated cast. This wouldn’t be such a problem if she was allowed to only function as the Mirkwood guard’s captain. That love story really weighs things down and turns a kickass female character into another defined by her relationships to the males in the plot.
Coming out much better is the inclusion and additions of Gandalf’s journey that happens concurrently in The Hobbit but isn’t mentioned anywhere in the text. Prone to disappearing for long stretches of time while having his own adventures, Smaug visualizes them, and any excuse to spend more time with Sir Ian McKellen as Gandalf is always a great idea in my mind. His story is taken from the appendix, so unlike the stuff involving Legolas, this hasn’t been invented wholesale. I didn’t mind these additions since they explained a few of the questions one has about the events leading up to Rings involving this particular character.
Yet these aren’t the only moments that the film excels at doing. The spiders and hallucations as Bilbo and the dwarves succumb to the strangeness of Mirkwood is a executed flawless. I really liked the idea of Bilbo being able to understand the spiders while wearing the ring. And while the action sequence may have gone on a bit long (more on that in a minute), it still brought a bright smile to my face.
Even better is Lee Pace’s scenery-chewing, drag queen over-the-top reading of Thranduil, one of my favorite secondary characters in The Hobbit. If we must spend more time with the elves, I’d have dropped Legolas entirely, the love triangle, and given Pace more to do. His essaying of this character is deliciously grandiose, a case in which overacting is perfect for the character in question.
Clearly though, if Smaug had not worked then this entire chapter in trilogy would have proven fruitless. Benedict Cumberbatch gave a motion-capture performance as the giant dragon and gives him a voice. He finds a mixture of menace, droll intelligence and vicious wit that matches the character as well as Smaug, another of my favorite secondary characters. The entire last third of the film takes place in the Lonely Mountain, and Smaug’s slow reveal beneath hundreds of pounds of gold coins is a perfect synthesis of material and creative team. And while roughly three-fourths of Smaug’s material is perfectly executed, an extended sequence in which he lays waste to a rekindled forge goes on for far too long and begins to move away from fairly realistic sequence of carnage and destruction and into video game boss battle. As the arena moves locations and our heroes must vanquish the boss in ever escalating and crazy means. This isn’t even the worst of these never-ending sequences.
I can’t think of a better encapsulation of Smaug’s problems with imaginative movie-making quickly turning into over-done strum und drag than the barrel escape from Mirkwood. It moves away from dwarves, elves, a hobbit and a never-ending army of orcs doing battle into Donkey Kong-level territory. That this sequence is not found in the book should be a tip off. Does this spectacle start off making you want to laugh and cheer? Oh yes, but it ends with you rolling your eyes and wondering how many barrels there were to begin with and which one is which and who is where. So while Smaug does much right, it still hasn’t presented a credible reason for existing as a trilogy.
