Hobbit’s tale gets taller

Peter Feldman

It’s all wrapped into one big energetic bundle for the connoisseur.

Peter Jackson’s continuation of the saga is, nevertheless, striking in its visual impact, especially when given the added dimensions of 3D, and the images that materialise on screen are as engaging and impressive as ever. It is a bold and vigorous yarn with a dark underbelly that festers below the surface.

A scene from the second movie in The Hobbit trilogy.

There is trouble at every turn as Hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Freeman), with the famous ring tucked neatly into a pocket, teams up with the dwarves, led by dwarf leader Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage). Thorin has become power-hungry and fallen prey to the insanity of greed that destroyed his ancestors.

The franchise’s previous chapter, An Unexpected Journey, touched on friendship and fellowship, with Baggins having to earn the trust, respect and admiration of the dwarves. In Smaug there is nothing remotely meaningful.

A scene from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

The motley crew are on an uncertain journey to the Lonely Mountain to retrieve gemstones that mean something to the dwarves. During their action-filled safari they are chased by the Orcs, have to escape from a clan of deadly giant spiders, meet a shape shifting necromancer who hates dwarves and then end up captured by the elves. Thranduil (Lee Pace), the elves cantankerous and selfish king, simply won’t let our heroes go. Thranduil also has a bad-tempered son named Legolas (Bloom) who is quite the shot with a bow and arrow and aims to kill.

After escaping the elves, the travellers run into more trouble when they hide in a village on the lake that had been previously destroyed by the dragon Smaug’s wrath. Its people are angry, to say the least. Meanwhile, Gandalf The Grey (McKellen) is off on his own quest and doesn’t feature too prominently.

Sir Ian Mckellan plays Gandalf the Grey in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

The characters are uniformly nasty. An exception is the lovely elf warrior Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly). She’s empathetic and at odds with her people’s generally cynical outlook.

She actually cares about people in need of help (including dwarves, the sworn enemie of elves), and it’s her internal conflict that gives the film its only touch of humanity.

Smaug is a roller-coaster ride in all senses of the word, but none of it, unfortunately, is remotely involving or even interesting on a character, story or thematic level. Being devoid of substance and emotional connections, it drags on interminably.