Spoiler Alert!
The year long wait is over! I have to queue for over an hour to get
into the cinema. There is an air of excitement building amongst the audience. I
even buy an extortion dog (they are like a hotdog but cost a fiver) and munch
to my heart’s content. This will be my fifth (fifth!) adventure into Middle
Earth so a pre movie toilet break was essential. The last time I took a pee
break during a Tolkien film, Gandalf lost his bloody staff. Everything was
ready. I invest in a bag of Galaxy Counters – nothing is left to chance. Show
time!
Try and keep up. Thorin’s company are legging it from Azog
the white orc. They seek refuge in the house of Beorn (Mikael Åke Persbrandt) a large white guy who lives in the wild away from
the reach of the Federal government or some shit. He can change into a massive
black bear! Which is totally handy but they will save it until the next movie
because our little minds can only handle so much CGI. From here the company
have to make their way through a drug drenched forest. Massive illegal immigrant
spiders have moved into the woods and capture our heroes, forcing Legolas
(Orlando Bloom) and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) to bust in with the Wood Elf SAS
and save the day. Thranduil (Lee Pace), King of the Wood Elves is a massive
doosh and will only let the Dwarves go in exchange for fabulous diamonds! The
only way to escape is to dive into barrels and ride the river out. That old
chestnut. Now it’s only a simple process of making it to Laketown to meet Bard
(Luke Evans) the next movies protagonist and go to Erebor to kill a Dragon.
Could not be easier. How could they mess things up? There is another movie next
year… Oh! And Gandalf (Ian McKellen) does stuff.
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“I’m here to bitch
slap Nazgul and chew bubble gum. And in all out of gum.”
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Very rarely do I sit
through a movie that is over two and a half hours long and come out wanting to
see it again. “The Desolation of Smaug” takes the Hobbit story to the next
level. It doesn’t waste time introducing characters we should already know. However
it does expand the multiple plots from the previous movie and introduces us to
characters for the final show down. In this “The Desolation of Smaug” slightly
lets itself down. This movie was written as a middle. It will one day sit as
the second DVD in a boxed set on sale at HMV for £20. Never does it try to
actually become its own film. It’s a sad day when a movie with a two hundred
million pound plus budget has no ambition. But hold your horses! “The
Desolation of Smaug” is a fantastic ride. With four distinct ‘fighting’
sequences, it has enough action to keep you occupied and finishes with the
spectacle that is Smaug himself. Truly he is the greatest of all calamites. Dragons
have never looked or felt so real. Hats off to you Mr Jackson.
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Cumberbatch slept
like this for eight months to prepare for the role of a schizophrenic lizard. It
would appear the only precious metal Smaug doesn’t sleep on is Lithium.
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Best Bit? Barrels.
That is all. When the company makes its escape from Mirkwood they do it by
riding in empty barrels. We are treated to the visual treat of half drowned
Dwarves being chased by Orc who intern are being chase by Wood Elves. I cannot
sing the praises of this scene any more highly! You just have to sit back and
be swept along with it. There are about fifty different stunts that I could
pick out and there are probably a ton more. You simply have to suspend your
disbelief. The whole sequence begins with Kili (Aiden Turner) being wounded by
a vicious poo covered Orc arrow. We get Bombur (Stephen Hunter) entering ‘barrel
attack mode!’ while in another section Legolas dances across the heads of our
moist beardlings while still shooting his bow. Action, comedy, excitement and
diet suspense. Fantastic cinema.
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If this is not a
ride at some theme park within the next year then I will be sorely disappointed.
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If the barrel escape was action my next highlight sequence was one of
tension and fear. While buggering off on an errand for Galadriel (Kate
Blanchett), Gandalf enters the Tomb of the Nine. I found the visuals and menace
of this whole scene just captivating. Hard angles, cold granite and twisted
metal. This is the prison for the bodies of nine seriously bad dudes. Let me
repeat. Someone went to the effort of building a prison in a mountain for the
BODIES of these guys. AND NOW THEY HAVE ESCAPED!!!
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Magneto and Dr Who
go LARPing. Deal with it.
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I would never take my life into my own hands (i.e. criticise Benedict Cumberbatch).
He does some voice work and it is good. Let’s move on. Martin Freeman develops
Bilbo magnificently from our last encounter. We see a Hobbit who has risen to
the challenge and is now an active member of the party. It would have been so
easy to keep playing the scared chap with the hairy feet. The bloody films are
named after him so seeing our little chum evolve into a hero is greatly
enjoyable. Ken Scott needs a nod for his performance of Balin. Ironically he is
the only human in our party of Dwarves and is the only one given enough screen
time to show more than one primary emotion (because a group of Dwarves all
based on different singular emotions has never worked in Hollywood before…).
Balin acts as our fatherly figure in a way that Thorin (rightly so) cannot. His
sincerity and insight get magnified by Scott into a wonderful performance.
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“Now Gloin. Promise me that if I die, that one day your son will use my
tomb as a fighting platform.” Nice guy Balin.
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“The Desolation of Smaug” is a proper sequel. Not only does it set up a
final film but it also develops and learns from the original. This movie was
designed to be safe, pull on some heart strings and get us ready for some
wobbly bottom lip moments next December. An emotional attachment is essential –
especially when you intent to take it away. In this regard “The Desolation of
Smaug” inadvertently apologies for the previous film. I wonder what feedback
from the original made its presence felt in that dark little post production
office in New Zealand. This movie kind of acknowledges that something was off
in “The Hobbit”. Why? Because all of our poignant imagery is drawn from the
original “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, not “An Unexpected Journey”. Balin
fondly reminisces about the quality of Hobbits, Gandalf talks of darkness and
shadow, Bilbo starts to get his junky face on and Tauriel does a Liv Tyler on
Kili’s mortal wound. The movie even opens in Bree at the inn of the Prancing
Pony! I’m not trying to score fan boy points by acknowledging these throw backs
to the original. What I am saying is that they give me hope. Someone in New
Line Cinema is listening to their audience. Roll on “There and Back Again!”
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This is a sneak peek of Bard from “There and Back Again”
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As it goes forward on a noble quest, I present “The Desolation of Smaug”
with four Brian faces out of five. May it use them wisely.
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