The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

By Lia Sanders

I feel rather sorry for anyone who was in the same screening as me, listening to me guffaw away at The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

But, really, it was impossible not to. It was a film that was decidedly silly. Silly, ironically enough, in the way that it took itself so seriously. Very often the film is in danger of acting like head dwarf Thorin: it is unable to see its own ridiculous side, meaning it is in danger of sliding over into pomposity. There were too many moments that were set up to be awe-inspiring and epic but sometimes they felt a little bit overdone: “It is only possible to kill the dragon with a BLACK ARROW.”

The Everything-Must-Be-Epic principle was most apparent in the physically impossible fight scenes. The introduction of so many of these suggests the whole movie has been made with an eye on how they can convert it into a video game. By contrast the book The Hobbit wasn’t about being the strongest, bravest or best; it celebrated cowardliness. It accepted that as a small person (hobbit or child) you were not going to be able to fight a fire breathing dragon or challenge an army of Orcs. Tolkien had a tendency to put his physically weaker characters in seemingly impossible situations which they were saved from by their own craftiness or sheer luck. Bilbo avoids becoming Gollum’s lunch due to his love of riddles and having the apparent good fortune to pick up the ring. For all of Tolkien’s love of fantasy he kept things real, making the ways in which his characters eventually triumphed believable. Jackson is troubled by no such commitment to verisimilitude.

I’m not arguing that they should have stuck more strictly to the book or trying to compare the two. Some of the things that the film has done are improvements, although I remain unconvinced that the introduction of Tauriel is one of them. In the interests of gender equality, this instalment has invented a female character, the captain of the Elvish guard in Mirkwood. Our token female knows her way around a bow but all possible feminist brownie points are lost when she opts to sacrifice her people, home and career for the sake of a man she’s met once.

All this is not to say that the film is completely flawed. The spiders of Mirkwood are properly creepy, the relationships continually engaging and the pace is suitably speedy. But it feels rather unfocused. One of the problems is that we see so comparatively little of Martin Freeman’s Biblo in this film. Although the length of all three films means that there is an opportunity to focus on other characters it can mean that our original hero gets a little neglected.

The film is an enjoyable and spectacular romp and very good entertainment. If only gasps of amazement weren’t so often replaced by snorts of incredulity.