Well, to
start off with I did only see this movie once so my opinion isn’t quite fully
formed yet. Also I went in prepared for the worst. And lastly, I saw it about two months ago.
But that said, here we go.
I guess I’m
falling into the habit of bad things first, so that’s where we’ll start.
First off,
as I’m sure the avid Tolkien fans already noticed from the trailer, The
Desolation of Smaug isn’t exactly sticking to the book. There are a lot of
glaring changes to the story that, while providing some nice screen time for
certain dwarves, really don’t fit with the story Tolkien told. And you know
open barrels that are repeatedly dunked underwater? Yeah, they usually fill with water and sink. Apparently
this rule is invalid when dwarves are riding in said barrels.
Smaug,while he is a pretty awesome dragon, makes some decidedly odd decisions for an angry dragon, I’ll spare you the spoilers, but those of you who are into motivations and such will have some trouble with this one. Another slightly more technical flaw is the fact that by the end of the film we are following 3 or 4 different story lines depending on how you count. Needless to say the constant jumping back and forth takes a lot of the wind out of the proverbial sails.
The biggest problem though, is once you’re starting to recover from the sheer awesomeness of the film you start to wonder what the point was. While a tonne of stuff happened and a lot of distance was covered there wasn’t a whole lot that actually had to do with the main plot (That whole ‘reclaim the homeland slay a dragon’ thing?). And while you could argue that this is the same as the Two Towers I must point out that in the Two Towers at least contains the saving of a country.
Smaug,while he is a pretty awesome dragon, makes some decidedly odd decisions for an angry dragon, I’ll spare you the spoilers, but those of you who are into motivations and such will have some trouble with this one. Another slightly more technical flaw is the fact that by the end of the film we are following 3 or 4 different story lines depending on how you count. Needless to say the constant jumping back and forth takes a lot of the wind out of the proverbial sails.
The biggest problem though, is once you’re starting to recover from the sheer awesomeness of the film you start to wonder what the point was. While a tonne of stuff happened and a lot of distance was covered there wasn’t a whole lot that actually had to do with the main plot (That whole ‘reclaim the homeland slay a dragon’ thing?). And while you could argue that this is the same as the Two Towers I must point out that in the Two Towers at least contains the saving of a country.
However,
the bad stuff dealt with, I loved this movie. The fun characters seen in the
first film are most definitely carried through with the better developed
dwarves all getting a chance to flaunt their style. And on the subject of characters, while I was highly
skeptical of Legolas having a love interest, Tauriel ended up being one of my
favourite characters. Another object of my skepticism was Beorn; I just couldn’t
picture how they would get that right. But may I just say; they got it right, even the transformation was cool.
The overall CGI in this film seemed better than the first, with a couple of elements being downright well done. Smaug looked fantastic and was overall a pretty well written dragon except for what I already mentioned. While the story is pretty segmented with a good deal of time spent where it doesn't need to be the pace of the action was much improved from the first movie; I hardly noticed three hours go by in the Desolation, unlike the Unexpected Journey, which had me tapping my foot twenty minutes into it even the first time around.
The overall CGI in this film seemed better than the first, with a couple of elements being downright well done. Smaug looked fantastic and was overall a pretty well written dragon except for what I already mentioned. While the story is pretty segmented with a good deal of time spent where it doesn't need to be the pace of the action was much improved from the first movie; I hardly noticed three hours go by in the Desolation, unlike the Unexpected Journey, which had me tapping my foot twenty minutes into it even the first time around.
Just a side
note; since I watched the Desolation in Turkish I have no idea what was said in
the subtitles. All those moments in elvish or black speech, yeah I can guess,
but I can’t quote it…
So, in
conclusion, this was a good movie and I would recommend it as definitely better
than the first one. And I'd like to see it again, what are those elvses and orcses saying anyway?
So I watched it again and I just want to say that Kili is tall for a dwarf but no less ugly.
And there is also a bad CGI Legolas. A 'really' bad CGI Legolas on horseback. It would be impressive on a video game, but this is a blockbuster film we're talking about here.
So I watched it again and I just want to say that Kili is tall for a dwarf but no less ugly.
And there is also a bad CGI Legolas. A 'really' bad CGI Legolas on horseback. It would be impressive on a video game, but this is a blockbuster film we're talking about here.
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