{"id":1037,"date":"2014-01-07T19:35:19","date_gmt":"2014-01-08T00:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=1037"},"modified":"2014-01-07T19:35:19","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T00:35:19","slug":"movie-review-the-desolation-of-smaug-hobbit-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=1037","title":{"rendered":"Movie review: The Desolation of Smaug (Hobbit II)"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I\u2019m a huge J.R.R. Tolkien fan, \u201cThe Hobbit\u201d has always been my least favorite of his Lord of the Ring series of books.\u00a0 And I simply could not fathom how anyone could make three movies out of such a short book.\u00a0 I liked but didn’t love the first Hobbit movie (you can read that review here<\/a>), but I thought the second movie was surprisingly excellent.<\/p>\n

A caveat:\u00a0 if you\u2019re a Tolkien purist, I don\u2019t think you will enjoy this movie as much as the first one.\u00a0 This movie is less true to the story line than the first and is much less Tolkien-ish, for the lack of a better word (much as \u201cThe Two Towers\u201d \u2013 often regarded as the best movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy \u2013 is the movie least true to the books).\u00a0 There is virtually no narrative arc to the story.\u00a0 Or, perhaps more accurately, what there is in narrative arc is completely trumped by the heart-pounding, non-stop action sequences.<\/p>\n

And those sequences are marvelously done.\u00a0 We saw the IMAX 3D fast frame rate version of the movie, and it\u2019s amazing how the orcs and arrows leap from the screen.\u00a0 The escape from the wood elves\u2019 dungeons, with the barrel scene over the water, is about as amazing an action sequence as I\u2019ve ever seen.\u00a0 (And I\u2019ve seen a lot.)\u00a0 The choreography and cinematography of that specific sequence and of all the action sequences in the movie are simply mind-boggling.<\/p>\n

For those who are seeing the movie because of Benedict Cumberbatch (o daughter mine, for example), all you really get is an enhanced and barely recognizable version of his voice.\u00a0 (Smaug, however, does bear a curious resemblance to the actor who voices it, at least, for a dragon.)<\/p>\n

Martin Freeman does his now-typical excellent acting job as Bilbo Baggins.\u00a0 There is the surprise return of Orlando Bloom as Legolas and the always wonderful Ian McKellen as Gandalf.\u00a0 All of the main actors are well cast and convincing in their roles.<\/p>\n

For the diehard Tolkien and Middle-earth fan, I don\u2019t believe this movie will be as satisfying as the first.\u00a0 But for the rest of us, this is an excellent action\/adventure\/fantasy film.\u00a0 The pacing is fast (unlike the first movie), and the acting is solid.\u00a0 Oh, and just to reassure everyone, no harm is done to the audience\u2019s ears by dwarves singing in this movie.\u00a0 J<\/p>\n

The family gives this movie a thumbs up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I\u2019m a huge J.R.R. Tolkien fan, \u201cThe Hobbit\u201d has always been my least favorite of his Lord of the Ring series of books.\u00a0 And I simply could not fathom how anyone could make three movies out of such a short book.\u00a0 I liked but didn’t love the first Hobbit movie (you can read that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[82,41],"tags":[112,327,133,134,337],"class_list":["post-1037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun","category-movies","tag-benedict-cumberbatch","tag-family","tag-hobbit","tag-lord-of-the-rings","tag-movies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23QXm-gJ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1037"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1039,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037\/revisions\/1039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}