The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Rating: 3½ stars out of 5
Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Running time: 161 minutes
Parental guidance: Violence, frightening scenes
Let’s begin at the end, with the dragon.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug — the second part of an eight-hour trilogy based on a book that probably took about that long to write — features a wonderful dragon named Smaug. Endowed with scales of steel, teeth like arrows, claws like spears and one of those smoothly silky voices most frequently associated with cartoon villains, Smaug is an astounding creation.
He’s a blend of digital effects, metaphorical evil and Benedict Cumberbatch, who pronounces his threats with a precise accent that makes you think this might have been the first film dragon who could passably have played Richard III.
Smaug is the force at the centre of Hobbit 2, but he is by no means its only peril. Following last year’s introductory episode, notable mostly for a half-hour dinner scene in which the narrative problems were laid out in chaotic and dish-breaking detail, director Peter Jackson has taken the show on the road, as it were.
The second episode is a cavalcade of chases, monsters, snarling orcs, ethereal elves and wild rides through the digital wonders of Middle Earth. It barely pauses for breath, and when it does, you notice that everyone’s skin still has that plasticized sheen that’s a combination of CGI tweaking and Jackson’s beloved 48-frames-a-second technology.
The tale takes unprepossessing hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman, who looks like he should be running a greengrocers in Yorkshire) on a quest to vanquish the dragon, or steal back some treasure, or something: frankly, I wasn’t listening that closely during the dinner scene. Nor does the title of this one help. It sounds like it’s going to be a documentary about air quality in Beijing.
It doesn’t matter though. Hobbit 2 defies too much analysis as Bilbo and a band of dwarfs land in one fight after the next: They’ve hardly escaped from a herd of giant spiders before they’re all thrown into an elf jail from which they escape only to be hunted down by orcs, of which the Hobbit films — much like the Lord of the Rings trilogy that preceded it — is generously festooned.
The orcs are kind of interchangeable — they look like burn victims who have joined the professional wrestling circuit as bad guys — and even the dwarfs blend into one another after a while. They all have those Middle Earthy names that sound like a combination of Norse mythology and a fan boy convention (at one stage Thorin Oakenshield, their leader, is called Thorin son of Thrain son of Thror) but most of them could just be called Grumpy.
Thorin (Richard Armitage) stands out as one of the film’s heroes, except he is slowly becoming poisoned by his desire for stolen dragon gold, just as Bilbo is in danger of being seduced by the magical ring that he found in the first part, a ring that makes him invisible. It’s a power that comes in handy when you’re snooping around the cave where a dragon is sleeping under his horde of gold coins.
Meanwhile — a word that was invented for these special-effects epics — the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) is spending most of his time on a hunt for the Necromancer, an evil force comprised of black smoke. The Necromancer also has a voice trained for the Shakespearean stage (it’s Cumberbatch again), and like much in Middle Earth, it works best as a metaphor.
There’s also a love story, although it is also armed to the teeth. A handsome dwarf named Kili (Aidan Turner) meets up with beautiful elf woman Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly). Like most elves — Legolas (Orlando Bloom), for instance, who pops up to slaughter orcs and look angelic — she is tall and noble and her facility with a bow and arrow may remind you of another huntress who is making the rounds in movie theatres these days.
Elves and dwarfs are natural enemies, but Kili and Tauriel seem to be the Romeo and Juliet of the genre. “He’s quite tall for a dwarf,” Tauriel notes. Hey, get a room. Or a cave.
Tauriel wasn’t in The Hobbit book: Jackson and co-screenwriters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Guillermo del Toro step off the page in this one and just go for entertainment.
It’s relentlessly episodic and perhaps a little too breathless for its own good, but it’s also non-stop fun, even if you’re not always 100 per cent sure of where we’re heading.
The ending is pretty clear though: disaster is in the air. It’s going to be hard to wait another year to learn how it turns out.
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