by MouthForWar » Sat Dec 14, 2013 10:47 pm
Desolation was ok. Better than the first, but like the first, you can sense every bit of padding that this thing has on it, and like the first, most of the events happening could be pulled from the movie and you'd have the exact same story. Them shacking up with the shape shifter or getting arrested and put in Elf jail? Totally inconsequential and just there to fill run time. Oh, and the scene with the barrels just shows more of Peter Jackson being totally out of control with his action scenes. Its not King Kong Brontosaurus stampede bad, but it almost gets there. This also has the most awkward forced romance I've seen... maybe ever.
Anyway, Smaug was f*cking amazing and Cumberbatch was fantastic.
Decent enough, but its ridiculously obvious that these were padded out to accommodate a trilogy so they could just print more money. The movie ends pretty much where the last act of the book begins and I dread to see how they're going to pad that out.
Like the first movie, I'd give this a 3/5. Maybe a 3.5 because Smaug was so great. And that's what's frustrating. There are moments of brilliant film making here, but Jackson can't do anything without taking 50 hours, so too much of the movie just feels awkward. And the biggest sin is that I've now spent something like 6 hours with these characters and I still don't know anything about any of the dwarves save for Thorin.
I can't wait for the fan edit that condenses these into one three hour movie. It'll be the best, most fast paced and entertaining 3 hour movie ever.
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