The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

[Henry88]

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=hobbit2.htm
$756,084,000

[Reaper G]

It took me long enough to finally see it, and there were several things I liked that I hadn't seen brought up:

1. Backstory for Beorn and Thranduil. Peter Jackson can get carried away with his action scenes, but he knows how to embellish characters in the right way.

2. The kingsfoil bit. Jackson took it out of "Return of the King" but put it in here. Nice, but who knew Aragorn and Bofur shared that bit of knowledge?

3. You knew Gloin was going to have to mention his son Gimli at some point, right?

[Dr Kain]

[jellydonut25]

[MekaGojira3k]

[william newell]

[ebirahsmeg1]

HISHE: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

[jellydonut25]

These Hobbit movies are like crappier versions of Peter Jackson's King Kong. Rather than me being able to sit back and say, "Alright, trim this, trim that, take out this scene, and hey, you've got a solid 2-hr movie". I feel like there are a couple of small diamonds inside mountains of elephant diarrhea. Could I get something out of it if I block out the awful and just focus on the good stuff? Eventually maybe...but then a dwarf balances on Smeoauwowg's lips and the stench overpowers me and makes me quit even looking for the occasional bright spots.

Two films in and I'm honestly not sure I could cobble together one single enjoyable film from the couple of parts I liked. Bravo to Peter Jackson though...he managed to take something as awesome as Smaug in both concept and design, and mostly execution and suck all the menace out of it. In the book, Bilbo uses the ring and cunning to be able to make Smaug tire of looking for the needle in the haystack. In the film, it's friggin' Yakety Sax until Smeoauwowg gets covered in golden caramel and flies away. "I am DEATH!" No dude, you couldn't even injure a bunch of dwarves and a Hobbit when you chased them for thirty minutes...you're more like a cockroach; hard to kill, but who the hell cares? You aren't hurting anybody.

So bad. So, SO bad.

[Dr Kain]

I figured you would hate Desolation since you did not like the first one. I completely disagree with you on everything outside of there was no need to have the thing be three movies. Two would have been enough. In fact, I'm getting tired of this mentality now that they need to separate the final book into two movies. Hunger Games, Twilight, Harry Potter, and now that friggin Divergent is doing it.

Did you at least think Smaug looked awesome?

[jellydonut25]

[tbeasley]

I greatly enjoyed both Hobbit films, Desolation more so. I hope the final film can maintain that momentum.

[The Shadow]

I finally had a chance to watch Hobbit 2 recently (didn't have a chance back in December). Gold covered Smaug gave me laugh, I had an instant mental image of an unpleased King Ghidorah dangling a gold covered Smaug before him.

All in all, the movie is fine but I'm disappointed with the degree of the changes (not including the added scenes based on appendices and other Tolkien material). The beginning with Bjorn was severely shortened which was disappointing, parts of the Mirkwood traverse were left out and others expanded because "hey, needs more Legolas", Bilbo's naming of Sting was practically an afterthought, etc. The general flow of THE HOBBIT is still there, but the movies are essentially like an alternate universe version of the story now.

I'm also wondering if those that disliked the Rankin Bass animated movie for it's deviations from the original story have revised their opinions of it now.

[mr.negativity]