The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug barrels past many of the pacing issues surrounding its predecessor, An Unexpected Journey, and takes audiences on a rollicking adventure right to the Misty Mountain itself and a confrontation with the eponymous scaly incumbent.
The opening chapter was something of a mixed bag with fans glad to be back in Middle-earth, but the script baggy and indulgent – its natural flow constantly disrupted by appended material not from the source novel. On this occasion, the plot has again been fleshed out but in a far more organic way.
The second part of Peter Jackson’s expanded adaptation finds the gathered crew battle and bundle their way through encounters with an usual and enormous black bear, hungry giant spiders, the strange elves of Mirkwood, and the inhabitants of Lake-town before landing in the heaped gold of the greedy wyrm, Smaug.
Invention is the name of the game where the action is concerned and it is thoroughly entertaining throughout. An early skirmish in cobwebbed woodlands, the assault on Erebor and a roller coaster (or perhaps more accurately log flume) escape from an elven citadel are all excellently shot and composed. The returning Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and the principled and steely Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) both get to show off their substantial battle prowess whilst all of the carnage is delivered with a warm sense of humour that keeps the film’s tone comparatively jovial.
Martin Freeman is afforded another chance to shine as Bilbo, imbuing him with a wonderful charm and naturalism. Having discovered his courage in the last outing, this one sees him comprehending the dangers of the trinket in his pocket. At times playing second fiddle to the dwarf-king, he fortunately gets another cracking sequence opposite a motion-captured villain when he must call on verbal dexterity to placate the enraged Smaug. Cumberbatch’s vocal performance is equally perfect, as is the dragon’s computer-generated movements – his greed and vanity exceptionally rendered.
There are undoubtedly minor quibbles to be had, but they are precisely that. On the whole, The Desolation of Smaug manages to balance the comic and the weighty far more successfully than previously, it is tighter all around and moves at a riotous gallop. Far more Saturday matinee than sombre epic, it really is an awful lot of fun. Roll on December 2014.
Ben has awarded The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug four Torches of Truth
