The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug Film Review

 

Ladies and gentlemen when I reviewed Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring back in August I made a vow to never ever review any of the middle earth films again just because all I have are the extended versions of the films and there quite long. Well today i've broken that promise just because I wanted to watch one of the The Hobbit films and I can't remember where I placed the first film and I don't own the third and so join me as I review what should have been the film in The Hobbit series "The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug" enjoy.

The plot of this film is Bilbo Baggins continue there quest to reclaim the lonerly mountain and on the way have to deal with all sorts of foes who want them all dead. I tried my best not to spoil to much of the of the review in the first sentence of the actual review because trust me when I say I have alot more to say on the story but I will admit that this film does a good job of telling the story it's just a shame that they stories not that good in my opinion.

Starring in the film is Sir Ian McKellen as Gandalf , Martin Freeman as Bilbo and Richard Armitage as Thorin. Also starring in the film is Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug And The Necromancer , Ken Stott as Balin , Graham McTavish as Dwalin , William Kircher as Bifur , James Nesbitt as Bofur , Stephen Hunter as Bombur , Dean O'Gorman as Fili , Aidan Turner as Kili , John Callen as Oin , Peter Hambleton as Gloin , Jed Brophy as Nori , Mark Hadlow as Dori , Adam Brown as Ori , Orlando Bloom as Legolas , Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel , Lee Pace as Thranduil , Cate Blanchett as Galadriel , Mikael Persbrandt as Beorn , Sylvester McCoy as Radagast , Antony Sher as Thrain II , Luke Evans as Bard and Girion and Stephen Fry as The Master Of Lake-Town.

The acting in the film I thought to be rather top notch which given that all of these Lord Of The Rings / The Hobbit films always have good acting is not really a surprise. Nor is it a surprise when you take a look at how's in the film since all of the actors in the film are really good actors and actresses and if i'm being honest apart from the CGI the acting in the film is one of the film's stronger element or at least I think so anyways.

Doing the CGI effects for the film is Weta Digital and Weta Workshop who have both worked on every film set in middle earth. I will always say this whenever I get the chance but Weta Digital are one of the best effects companies going right now because they always turn out great looking CGI effects and the same is true for this film because a lot of the CGI for this film looks so freaking good but with that said when you do see a bad effect it really does stand out.

For some reason the film makers chose to do alot of things that they could and in my opinion should have done practically which they instead chose to do in CGI. I counted how many things you could have done practically against the amount of things they did in a computer and there are only three things that they had to do in a computer with the first being the character of Smaug , the second being the character of The Necromancer and the third being alot of the fantasy animals and the bear form of the character Beorn.

Honestly I don't know why they went the CGI route when it comes to the Orc's since in the original Lord of the Rings trilogy the team proved that the Orc's looked best when done with makeup. Yet here every single Orc is done in CGI and it doesn't look as good it seems to be that the thinking behind this film was "let's do as much as we can in a computer" which should never be the case you should only use CGI when it's absolute last resort just because you can use CGI doesn't mean that you have to use CGI.

Let's take a second to talk about the character of Tauriel who as mentioned is played by the always stunning and always funny and always cool Evangeline Lilly. I know that alot of die hard and casual fans and of the Lord Of Rings books and films don't like the character of Tauriel but I personally thought that the character was OK given that the character was created just for the films it meant the film makers behind this film were alot more free to do whatever they wanted to do with the character and what they did in my opinion helped make the film more entertaining and to those saying that she wasn't in any of the books let me point out Legolas isn't in The Hobbit book either nor was Galadriel or The Necromancer for that matter so that reason for hating Tauriel doesn't really work when you take into account that this film and the two other Hobbit films add characters who weren't in the books are now added into the main story.

My biggest issue with the film isn't just limited to this film because it involves the entire The Hobbit film trilogy. Since The Hobbit is only around three hundred and ten pages long as such there's only enough story for at least two films which even then is stretching it and so why the film makers didn't just make it a two part film is beyond me since the story is all wrapped up by the end of this film but hey I guess making nearly a billion dollars at the box office means more then making something that actually makes sense.

I want you all to know that i'm basing this review of the extended edition of the film which means that the film is three hours long. I honestly feel that the three hour running time went on a bit to long in my opinion but that's just because there are alot of scenes in this extended edition that aren't needed and are they just for the sake of padding and nothing more it also doesn't help that at times this film feels like it's a chore to sit through.

This kind of is an action film and so that does mean that I have to talk about the action that's in the film itself. Which in my opinion is pretty good I say pretty good because alot of the action from what I can tell was done in a computer which took me out of it because you'd start of with real people and then the film would cut to an obvious CGI double doing something that no human would be able to do but at the same time the action is really entertaining and fun to watch.

Overall this film is honestly pretty good in my opinion but it does have a lot of things going against it tho. The things that it has going against it are things that i've covered in this review on top of the fact that it's a prequel featuring some of the same characters and actors from the Lord Of The Rings films and so we know how it's going to turn out for those characters but the film does have some good things in it as well which again i've covered in this review as such this film gets a 7.5 out of 10 from this Lord of the Rings film fan.

All of the images that I used in this review were gathered from the official Lord Of The Rings fandom wiki page and nowhere else. Since I only went to the official Lord Of The Rings fandom wiki page and nowhere else for the images that i ended up using in this review I have no choice but to recommend that you guys use the official Lord Of The Rings fandom wiki page for images from either this film or any film in the Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit film series since the images that I found barring two images were really high quality and are really high definition as well.