Dark and exciting

The sequel to An Unexpected Journey breathes some much-needed dragon fire into the Hobbit trilogy to right the wrongs of the first movie.

The Journey was an unexpected disappointment. The opening film in the trilogy expanded from a 300-odd page book was unevenly-paced, inexplicably lacking in danger or realism and presented a deflated heroic journey with no tension. So, naturally there was a lot of pressure on Desolation of Smaug to deliver.

Now, if you’re a Tolkien purist expecting to see a faithful word-for-word adaption of Tolkien’s whimsical children’s book then expect to be disappointed. The Hobbit novel is mostly description, so wouldn’t translate well into film. It is important to note that this is a film so Peter Jackson has made some changes, added a few things, some good, some questionable, but overall he has presented an incredibly solid film that is less of a faithful retelling of the Hobbit and more a dramatic presentation of Middle Earth in general, incorporating the story of the Hobbit.

The film opens abruptly with a nice little prologue involving Sir Ian McKellen’s Gandalf and Richard Armitage’s Thorin Oakensheild and then it wastes no time getting back into the sprawling adventure that we abruptly left. There is some criticism that without having watched the first film you wouldn’t know what was going on, but I’d suggest people that watch this film before An Unexpected Journey are silly. You wouldn’t start a book on page 150 would you?

We are then launched into a series of set pieces at break-neck speed, as the heroic group of dwarves, hobbit and wizard are seemingly propelled by an outside force on their adventure. First we meet Beorn the skin-changer, then we head to Mirkwood to visit the elves and then there’s one stop at Laketown before they reach Erebor, their final destination.

Jackson and his effects team have made a film so vast in visual depth that it’s hard not to sit there in complete awe as Martin Freeman’s Bilbo Baggins and company pass through some of the finest looking sets ever put to film. Mirkwood and its expansive elven realm is simply beautiful. Laketown is guttural and gloomy but feels like a real place and the halls of Erebor are breath-taking.

The aforementioned set-pieces are also fantastically done and hugely entertaining, even when they do border on the slightly ridiculous, for example some of the scenes featuring a welcome Orlando Bloom’s Legolas and an even more welcome Evangeline Lily’s Tauriel as elves-cum-ninjas are probably more suited for an eastern martial arts flick, but they still work. The iconic barrel scene down the river was a stand-out and thrilling moment amongst many fantastic moments.

But it wasn’t the best. No, that accolade goes to this film’s equivalent of the ‘Riddles in the Dark’ scene from An Unexpected Journey, except this time instead of Gollum, Bilbo Baggins finds himself verbally sparring with a dragon. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Smaug was everything I’d hoped it would be, his deep reptilian voice was a triumph and the scene itself was so effective that not a single person in the cinema dared to move.

If Jackson’s team don’t win a special effects Oscar for Smaug alone then something isn’t right in the world, because this might just be the finest-looking dragon ever translated onto film, regardless of how good the rest of the film looks. Not to take anything away from the actors who all duly delivered as well, especially Freeman’s Bilbo and Armitage’s Thorin Oakenshield who both do a great job of displaying their characters’ gradual descent into darkness through the One Ring, and greed.

Ultimately Desolation of Smaug is a darker, better looking, and more exciting, tenser film than its predecessor. If you’re a fan of Jackson’s Middle Earth films, or enjoy films in general then you should watch this movie for the dragon alone. However, don’t be surprised if you enjoy the rest of the film as well.