For the Beijing premiere the movie is being called ‘The Desolation of Smog’ to tie into a Government air safety warning campaign.
Part of me says, ‘I shouldn’t go to this film seeing as it was built on corporate welfare and re-writing our employment laws using a manufactured crisis created to blame the unions’, and then part of me says, “I’ve waited all my life for a decent film adaptation of the first book I read, damn you Peter Jackson, here’s my $24, give me a medium popcorn while you’re at it. Braindead and Meet the Feebles for life!’.
The first Hobbit movie dragged on like a dead rabbit bound to Radagast the Brown’s bunny sleigh, and there were far too many stone giants, but Jackson’s re-imagining of the trip through Mirkwood to the lake and inside Smaug’s gold drenched lonely mountain is Jackson’s usual brilliance and attention to detail.
The moment Bilbo bursts through the forest canopy after the depression of Mirkwood was a magical moment in the book and Jackson’s eye remakes it with precision and heart.
I’m not sure if it was the 3D effect, but the lighting of the film came across like a 1970s BBC production of the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe while the barrel white river rafting scene had all the charm of a Disneyland theme park fun ride.
Great film. Pity about having to roll over for Warner bloody Bros and lying about the Unions for political leverage.
4 stars
I wish spiders did not have to have canines to be depicted as scary (not that they scare me), but Smaug was anatomically perfect. –cumberbitch #1
There was at least slightly less crumbling masonry than the first one, which at times resembled 2013. But the number and cheesiness of plot departures showed a fundamental disrespect for a work that has, on its merits, become one of the world’s most popular children’s books.
Smaug at least is perfectly nasty, so that however incongruous Dwarves may seem cast as a troop of subterranean Tarzans the tension is not quite entirely destroyed.
My friends, having suffered my vigorous critique of D War are at a loss to understand why I let this film off so lightly.
Im kinda guessing Leonard Maltin has nothing to worry about.
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