Orcs-which played no role at all in Tolkien’s novel-play an even larger role in this installment than in the previous one, the better to supply the many impalements and beheadings Jackson feels compelled to display. Not so, alas, in the hands of Jackson, who is so titillated by his various subplots and foreshadowings that he even loses track of his protagonist, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), for considerable stretches. But despite the fact the Tolkien went back to amend The Hobbit more than once, he never chose to cram in all this supplemental material, because the book was not intended as a sweeping, multifaceted epic, but rather as a more personal, hobbit’s-eye-view adventure story. But the sense of déjà vu, however deliberate, is suffocating.Īnd yes, before we go further, I’m well aware that this meeting is cited in The Hobbit, and that many of Jackson’s other additions and digressions are part of the larger Middle Earth canon. ( Get it?) This time out, the traveller is Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) and the mystery man is Gandalf (Ian McKellen). The film opens in the town of Bree, where a small-statured traveller stopping at the inn of the Prancing Pony finds himself under watchful, unfriendly gazes until a mysterious figure comes to his aid. This time out, Jackson goes further still, producing a film that plays less like LoTR prequel than LoTR remake. Characters from the latter work (Galadriel, Saruman, Radagast) were imported for cameos, and the entire production was juiced up-over-written, over-orchestrated, over-CGI’d, over-everything’ed-to be more epic and grownup. Last year’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first installment of Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy-the very phrase hits me like a wave of depression-took Tolkien’s slender children’s novel and reimagined it as a prequel to The Lord of the Rings. But Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is proof that when you go the other way-really, really far the other way-the result can be genuinely egregious. As a general rule, I think the former temptation, over-fidelity, is the greater hazard.
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