"In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit ..."
Hello everyone!
Was I partly inspired to rewatch these because of how dismally I'm disappointed with Rings of Power?
Possibly.
In any event, I promised you all six of Peter Jackson's masterpieces, and so here we are with number two of the saga.
As you can probably tell, I'm really fond of doing things chronologically if I possibly can, so that's why we're starting with The Hobbit rather than with the trilogy that Jackson made first.
So without further ado, let's jump right back into it, and check out what our Dwarves have been up to, in The Desolation of Smaug.
Now, as you may remember, in An Unexpected Journey, Bilbo Baggins gets a visit from the wizard Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield, tagging along with them to reclaim an ancient homeland that's guarded by a sleeping dragon. Along the way, he also finds the One Ring, but that's not as important to this story as it is to the one that follows it, so we'll leave it at that for now.
Bilbo deduces - amid their flight from Azog, who's still hunting them incessantly - that there's something ELSE out there, and Gandalf's like, oh sure, that's our host, Beorn.
Who just so happens to change into a huge blear and can't be reasoned with, but ya know.
They take shelter with him and learn Azog used to hunt his people for sport, so that's primarily why he wants to help them, supplying them with food and ponies for their journey to Mirkwood, which is the fastest route to the Lonely Mountain.
There, Gandalf leaves them, because he has suspicions (finding some defiled statues just inside the forest beginnings) that there's something else afoot, and he gives the company one job: stay on the path, or they may be lost forever.
Of course nobody stays on the path, if they did, there wouldn't be a story, they lose it pretty quickly, then lose themselves as they're taken captive by huge ass spiders. Bilbo's the only one who gets left alone, because he puts on the Ring to disappear, and then he has the momentous task to free the lot before the spiders return. In the process, he names his sword Sting, gets overwhelmed by rage while killing a weird ass albino spider (rage courtesy of the Ring, natch), and the Dwarves get caught a second time.
By Elves.
More specifically, by Legolas, with fan-favourite Orlando Bloom reprising his role from the original trilogy, and making the best ever disgusted and unimpressed faces when he sees a portrait of young Gimli, his future BFF (or, in his current words, goblin mutant).
This scene also introduces Tauriel, the Mirkwood Captain of the Guard, who Kili is immediately smitten by, but there's very little time for romance while they're dragged off to the King, played by Lee Pace.
Thranduil offers Thorin his help in reaching the Mountain, in exchange for some white gems that are hidden within, but of course our arrogant Dwarf turns him down. Kili and Tauriel bond over shared stories of what the world looks like under moonlight and starlight, and Bilbo nicks the dungeon keys from their keeper to rescue his friends, again using the Ring.
Then he stuffs them all into barrels and sends them on their merry way into the river, in probably the most hilarious sequence of events in the movie as they're chased by both Elves AND Orcs, and Legolas uses the barrel-sitting Dwarves as stepping stones.
Kili gets injured during the flight, but they do reach the shores of the lake, where they're picked up by none other than Bard, who will eventually be known as the Bowman.
For now, he's just a merchant/smuggler trying to feed his family, and they bribe him to take them into Laketown. Of course you'd never be able to hide thirteen Dwarves forever, so while we also get a bit of Dwarf lore (about a contraption they made for shooting arrows at Smaug that Girion, then-lord of Dale used at the time of the attack), Bard learns just who they are, they get caught - AGAIN.
I swear, nobody ever taught these people anything about stealth.
The Master bids them welcome after a rousing speech from Throin that almost dethrones him, and then packs them all off to the Mountain ASAP. All, that is, except Kili and a few chosen ones that stay behind with him, because he's not looking too hot, honestly. The arrow that got him? Yeah, it was poisoned, oops.
The main group finally reaches what's left of Dale and the once-rich valley leading up to the Erebor gates, and finds the hidden door that they enter through (in a rather emotional scene, because Thorin and Balin are both crying). Then it's time for Bilbo to do the job they assigned him.
Which he attempts, admirably, although I wish the quote from the book in which he tells Thorin off about just HOW MUCH WEALTH the Dwarves have stockpiled in this kingdom had been left in, but anyway.
Does he find the Arkenstone? Yes.
He finds Smaug, too, and unfortunately, the big ass furnace wakes up, and is amused and annoyed both, showing off to Bilbo and threatening him, right before charging after our little burglar - then charging after all the Dwarves, too, because obviously he doesn't like them, he ate the lot of them to begin with.
Thus begins the segment of the movie I like to call 'Thorin and Smaug go into Home Reno' during which Smaug destroys a whole lot of Erebor, the Dwarves restart the forges with his own fire, and attempt to drown him in liquid gold because the dragon is too stupid to run away from a big, shiny golden statue.
All they really achieve, however, is to piss him off, sending him right out to Laketown for more death and destruction, although the logic of why Smaug would just ... leave his treasure unprotected to go vent his anger off remains a bit baffling.
And what about Kili, you ask? Don't worry, Tauriel took off after our motley crew, and Legolas took off after her, so they reach Laketown together, just as the Orcs do, and engage them in battle.
Well, Tauriel does, then Legolas drops through the roof of Bard's home (oh Bard's arrested, by the way), takes one look around the chaos, and sighs in 'Man, time to be awesome again'. Then, as Tauriel uses athelas to heal Kili (we're not going into what the plant can or can't do here), and the two share a tender moment that reveals to the Elf our handsome Dwarf prince really does love her after seeing her twice, the Elf prince takes off in pursuit of the Orcs, after getting a nosebleed from one of them and being rip-shit pissed about it.
The movie ends with Bilbo wondering what the heck they've done as he watched Smaug sail on into the night, and we're left to wait for the conclusion of the story.
The second movie is less faithful to the book than the first, and indeed there are some changes that don't make much sense story-wise, not to mention that I remember being outraged about what they did with Thranduil, back in the day. I think I called him the love child of Bon Jovi and David Bowie at the time, but looking at him NOW, I'm mostly just ... amused? And Pace plays him to perfection in a haughty, arrogant kind of way, which isn't a bad thing.
Time does, in fact, make everything better it seems like LOL.
Benedict Cumberbatch as the voice of Smaug is GENIUS, not to mention he adds his vocals to the Necromancer too, after Gandalf discovers that the Nine Ringwraiths escaped their prison and that Sauron's back in Dol Guldur, where he ends up captive (listen, this is still an annoying point, because nobody mortal could have done ANYTHING to the Witch-king of Angmar, but I digress).
There's plenty of action to be had, a lot of humour that pushes the plot forward, and while the romance might have been a bit contrived and shoehorned in, I ended up kind of liking it just the same.
Martin Freeman still nails it as a young Bilbo, and I hope you come back next week to see just what happens to the guys in the very last installment of this portion of the saga, The Battle of the Five Armies.
Until then!
xx
*images and video not mine
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