Rating of
4/4
Recaptures Everything Great about LOTR
JmsWlkns - wrote on 01/01/14
The news that three new movies were going to be made by the same crew that had made the modern masterpieces known as the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy certainly set a high bar for the quality of the pictures to be made. This to me seemed unrealistic, considering three movies were going to be made from a book about as big as your average DVD case. That said, I had expected better than "An Unexpected Journey". The movie lacked literally everything that had made the original Trilogy great: the use of special effects to make fantastic rooms, landscapes and creatures of extraordinary grandeur, great acts of heroism in the face of absolute hopelessness, and the success of the most unusual individuals against impossible odds. That being said, "The Desolation of Smaug" recaptured everything great about the original films, and (dare I say?) in my mind was better than "The Two Towers" (the worst of the first three).
The first film was really just a set up for this movie. "The Desolation of Smaug" takes all the points of interest from the previous film, elaborates on them to give us great action sequences and enough information about them, whilst balancing their obligation to their financiers to keep suspense for the final film. Whilst managing a dizzyingly complex group of characters, each is given time to be the hero, to have their moment to endear themselves to the audience. Most films that do this are ultimately self defeating because the films are too long for the audience to maintain interest in the story. However, "The Desolation of Smaug", whilst being just short of three hours, seems to be much shorter, as there are literally no dull points to the movie. The screenwriter did a fantastic job of allowing all the critical points of the movie to flow into each other without having to use boring filler scenes. My hat is off to him or her.
My main points of criticism: the film does start out rather slowly. This is common in the modern movie landscape, but I do wish someone would try to do something to change that fact. I also dislike it when movies end with cliffhangers, without at least a sense of resolve on the major conflicts of the movie. I don't want to spoil the next film, but I'm sure most people who have read the book would agree this film could have ended a mere few pages of material later whilst still containing more than enough interesting content for a third film.
Whilst the beginning and end could have been better, everything in between is fantastically written and executed, and will surely keep any fantasy lover on the edge of their seat for almost three hours. The movie is a rare treat and should be seen by all movie lovers.
9.5/10, (#2 on my "Best Films of 2013" list)
