Who's in it?
Martin Freeman, Orlando Bloom, Benedict Cumberbatch , Evangeline Lilly and Ian McKellen
What's it about?
The Desolation of Smaug is the story of how the party of dwarves and Bilbo escaped the orcs at the end of the first movie and went on a truly EPIC journey to finally confront Smaug the dragon (He's actually a wyvern, just saying..), and also of Gandalf finally meeting and confronting the Necromancer.
This film was EPIC, in every sense of the word. After the first Hobbit, I was afraid Peter Jackson had lost the magic of the original trilogy by sucking all the action out of the franchise, having forgettable and some outright annoying dwarves take too much screen time, and the huge sin of MAKING THE DAMN ORCS CGI!
Just..disappointing really
But fear not, this film fixed all of my above annoyances! I HATED Ori in the first film, (he was the childish dwarf with the slingshot) so I was delighted to see much better characters like Kili and (my favourite) Balin get the screen time. Legolas is back, but totally eclipsed by the completely badass Tauriel, when she isn't killing orcs just when needed she's shooting arrows out of the sky while the 'manly' Legolas looks out over a river brooding. Benedict Cumberbatch does a fairly good job voicing the INCREDIBLE Smaug, even if he didn't have the Brian Blessed in him to do the size of the monster justice. Best of all, and now get ready for this... THEY FIXED THE ORCS! There's a couple now that finally are people again, and one even talks!
Zoidberg says it best!
The acting was great in itself, notably Gandalf letting out Gandalf-y screams as he casts spells bringing me back to playing the Return of the King game, Kili the dwarf being confidant and suave for a 'tall dwarf', and Richard Armitage (Thorin Oakenshield) has thankfully worked on cutting down his use of Christian Bale's Batman voice.
Finally Peter Jackson has returned to the original LotR trilogy form, bringing a movie that could easily rival the Fellowship of the Ring. Great foreshadowing for later to the film and fantastic new characters make this worthy of a watch from an original trilogy fan or a new one, but arachnophobes should be wary; things do get a little Eight Legged Freaks. I'm now unbelievably excited for the final instalment, so much so that I plan on seeing this again in (overpriced) IMAX with a friend this coming week. If you see it tell me what you think in the new, fancy comment section, it really is new and fancy,
Rating: 
The (sigh..) Eldest Gorgebag
I can't wait to see the movie, so thank you for a great review! However, where are all the pictures of Aidan Turner? They are vital to any review ;)
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ReplyDeleteTweeted, dying to see this!
ReplyDeleteGood review Cherry. It's a fun movie, and just a tad bit better than the first. However, I still feel like there's plenty of room for improvement on Jackson's part. Let's just hope he gets his act back together in time for the last flick.
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