The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was released on December 13. The second movie in the Hobbit trilogy, it is 2 hours and 40 minutes long.
The Desolation of Smaug was much better than the first film in the trilogy, An Unexpected Journey. It had much more action, and their was less idle joking around.
In the second film, a company of dwarves, a wizard, and a hobbit continue their journey to Erebor, a dwarven city taken over by the dragon Smaug years ago. On their quest, they face many perils, including spiders, elves, and orcs, who are hunting them down. Gandalf, the wizard who accompanies them in The Unexpected Journey, now leaves to battle the Necromancer, a dark force who is increasing in power.
My favorite scene in the movie is when the group is attacked by the Mirkwood spiders. The movie depicts the spiders like the are described in the book. They are huge, nasty, and frightening. The Mirkwood forest is how I envisioned the forest to look like. It is dark, cold, and damp.
However, I still did not think this edition is a great movie. The film did not stay true to the original story. It is more accurate than the first movie, but the plot is not true to the original book.
For example, the book shows that when Gandalf, Bilbo, and the dwarves go to Beorn’s home, they stay there for a long period of time. In the movie, Beorn makes them leave after only one day. This makes Beorn look like a mean person, when in the book he is depicted as a much more sympathetic character.
Some of the changes to the story simply add more detail to the original tale.
When Bilbo and the dwarves escape from the elves, the barrel chase down the river lasts for nearly 20 minutes in the movie. In the book, the barrel chase is a few pages.
The biggest problem that I have with the movie is that they turned 1 book into 3 movies. It should be 2 movies at the most.
It drags the story out too long.
I give the directors credit, because they fixed my biggest issue in the first movie by adding more action scenes.
The movie ended in a cliffhanger. Not showing the final battle disappointed me immensely.
