Movie Review: The Hobbit, The Desolation of Smaug

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If you didn’t know already, I’m a big LOTR fan. I spend weekends watching the extended editions of the LOTR trilogy, back to back marathon style. When The Hobbit came out last year I thought it was brilliant and naturally I couldn’t wait for the second Hobbit movie to come out. When it finally did, watching it on the second day of its release instead of the first was quite a stretch for my patience, but I finally settled down on my seat, butterflies buzzing in my stomach in anticipation. 

I loved the desolation of Smaug, and I thought it was worth the wait and now I cannot wait till the third and last movie in the LOTR and the Hobbit series, scheduled for a December 2014 release. As a movie it was quite good and absolutely thrilling, however, I thought the first one was much better because of many reasons.

First, this movie is much darker with barely any comical relief. There also was no songs that would steal your heart away and let you listen to them on daily basis for almost a year. Song of the lonely mountain was my morning alarm clock and I woke up to it for the past 52 working weeks. I could live without the comical side and the song, but, as far as movie adaptations go and Peter Jackson usually had the best most consistent book to movie adaptations, this movie was as far from the book events as it could be.

I was looking forward to the part Beorn but I didn’t think he would appear for only five minutes in the movies when in the book the dwarves stayed with him for weeks on end. The dwarves treck into Mirkwood could on its own take an entire movie, yet it was much less dangerous, no partying elves to lure them off the track, no wares chasing them to the top of the trees, leaving only the spiders as the source of danger. The absolute worst thing of them all was the new elf, Tauriel, played -beautifully if I may add- by Evangeline Lilly and serves as a love interest for both Legolas, which doesn’t appear in the Hobbit in the first place, and for one of the dwarves, Kili. Peter Jackson have introduced new characters in LOTR before but they didn’t change anything if much. Tauriel’s appearance changed the initial storyline and events, and it makes me wonder about the ending, would it be changed as well for the sake of Tauriel? Even the end of this movie was a bit, jumbled up if I may say, jumping from one dilemma to the other and felt a bit too loose.

I thought Evangeline Lily did a great job, and the little love triangle was quite sweet and replaced the missing comical side, but she was NOT in the hobbit! She can’t be in the movie if she wash never in the hobbit! Why was there a need of a love triangle in the first place? The story was awesome the way it is and every time she comes on the screen something inside me screams that she wasn’t real, that didn’t happen. What happened to the best book-to-movie consistency ever? I’m not entirely sure.

If you like the Hobbit you would’ve already watched it and if you didn’t nothing will make you go see it. It is still the Hobbit, part of the LOTR world, and I still cannot wait for both the last movie and the trilogy to come on DVD so I could have a movie marathon.

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