"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" Review.

Hello, readers, and welcome to the “epic post” of The Ratty Challenge 2013. Following in our predecessors’ footsteps, I’m going to write a longer-than-usual blog post on a topic about which I feel strongly! And no, it’s not the Supreme Court (though shameless self promotion: I do that on a weekly basis over at the Brown Political Review). In May 2011, Mike Johnson wrote about his (ERRONEOUS) opinion that leggings arenot pants. In December 2012, Danny Gleave categorized all of the different kinds of Frenchfries or other fried foods that the Ratty prepares for us. And now, I give to you…

A review-slash-recap of Peter Jackson’s new movie, “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.” Or, “The Hobbit, Part II: This Was Originally Going to be Just a Two-Movie Series and then Peter Jackson Made It Three Movies—I Swear It’s Going to be Fine, Guys, I’m Peter Jackson, Trust Me.” Reader beware, this review-slash-recap is NOT SPOILER FREE. So if you want to watch the movie without having some vague idea of what’s going on… sorry!

I’ll put my review first, and then the plot below. The review: it was compelling and entertaining, especially for someone like me who’s a fan of the movie, but Peter Jackson just tried to do WAY TOO MUCH. There are four main plots to follow (Dwarves+Bilbo, Elf Time, Gandalf Fights Evil, Bard’s Situation—see below), and that’s without all the subplot stuff happening within each main plot. Because of doing way too much, there are scenes within each main plot that seem super awkward because the writing is just… not great. Also, the movie is TWO HOURS AND FORTY MINUTES. I love me the LotR extended editions, so I’m used to that kind of length, but I feel like if PJ had cut out even just a little bit, it would’ve been a tighter film from a storytelling perspective. That being said, I did enjoy it. I’d probably even see it in theaters again. (I love the soundtrack.) There are some really great suspenseful moments, and it does what it’s supposed to pretty well! I just… it’s still no Lord of the Rings, and I really wish it was. Now, on to the plot summary.

The movie opens with a dark and stormy night shot of Bree, a town near the Shire. Peter Jackson makes his usual one-a-J.R.R. Tolkien-film cameo, and we see Thorin Oakenshield, leader of the Dwarves Plus Bilbo Baggins, walk into the Prancing Pony, the bar where Frodo, Sam, Pip, and Merry meet Aragorn/Strider in The Fellowship of the Ring. Thorin is alone, though, which is weird, and he sits down at a table and these two sketchy guys start judging him. Just when things are looking a bit sketchy, GANDALF SHOWS UP! And makes Thorin an offer he can’t refuse—get a band of merry elves together, plus a hobbit burglar, and reclaim the dwarven kingdom of Mt. Erebor from the evil dragon Smaug (played by Benedict Cumberbatch, hereafter referred to as “Rinkydink Curdlesnoot”).

This sounds like it should be the opening to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and… you’d be right! Because as soon as this scene ends, it cuts to “twelve months later,” when the Dwarves Plus Bilbo are on the run from some jerk-lookin’ orcs. With Gandalf’s aid, they manage to escape the orcs and stay at the house of this guy named Beorn, who’s human half the time and a bear-werewolf thing the other time. Beorn tells the dwarves that the orcs are just going to keep chasing them, so they have to get to Mt. Erebor via some alternate route. (Side note: the amount of ground that any group of people is purported to cover in either the Lord of the Rings or Hobbit films is astounding. They’re always running across VAST EXPANSES OF LAND and somehow getting from place to place super quickly.) The D+B are in a bit of a bind; they need to get to Mt. Erebor precisely on the last day of autumn, so that they are able to find the secret door into the mountain that wasn’t destroyed in Smaug/Curdlesnoot’s overthrow of the mountain.

So D+B and Gandalf make for the forest, but when Gandalf walks into the forest, he and Galadriel have some telepathic moment and he realizes that, instead of running around with D+B, he has to go fight the burgeoning evil that’s slowly taking power again in Middle Earth. The D+B go into the forest alone, but it’s an EVIL, HALLUCINOGENIC forest, so they all get lost and then captured by spiders. Bilbo manages to fight the spiders using THE ONE RING TO RULE THEM ALL, aka his new best friend, and his trusty sword Sting—so named because one of the spiders is like, “OW, THAT STINGS” when Bilbo kills it.

Bilbo frees the Dwarves and they all start trying to fight the spiders again, and things are looking dire when LEGOLAS FRICKIN GREENLEAF SHOWS UP, and also his new lady elf friend Tauriel (played by Evangeline Lily). I SUPER FREAKED OUT when Legolas appeared, because I have so much love for the original LotR series and I was so excited to see my favorite, always-states-the-obvious wood elf. So the Elves, who hate the Dwarves, capture the Dwarves and take them into the Hall of Thranduil, Elf King of Mirkwood. Thranduil is played by Lee Pace, who does a really good Jason Isaacs-Lucius Malfoy impression, and Thranduil really hates thinking about the world of Middle Earth outside of the halls of his elf palace thing. He also hates dwarves, thus the Dwarves are imprisoned. But thankfully, Bilbo escapes capture and sneaks into Thrandy’s hall with the help of his BFF the One Ring to Rule Them All. Thrandy and Thorin Oakenshield get in a fight about the fact that Thrandy refused to help the Dwarves when Smaug/Curdlesnoot (new name: Dragonbatch) attacked Mt. Erebor. Thrandy says “I hate dwarves!!” like 100 times and Thorin is super proud, so he gets thrown in prison.

Moving on, there’s a weird conversation between Tauriel and Lee Pace/Thrandy about Tauriel and Legolas’ not-relationship, and then Tauriel proceeds to flirt with “Hot Dwarf,” aka Kili, aka the only actor of the dwarven crew who didn’t have to wear a ton of beards and prosthetics.  She and Hot Dwarf/Kili immediately have a soul connection, which Legolas unfortunately witnesses, and then she peaces out and Bilbo springs the Dwarves from their cells. How do the Dwarves escape from Thrandyville? IN BARRELS. Literally. They float out of like… a basement loading dock and are on their way. BUT WAIT—the Orcs tracked them through the forest and now attack them while they’re riding in barrels! Things get dire, and Hot Dwarf gets wounded, but Tauriel and Legolas save the day. The D+B are merrily on their way once more, and Legolas takes one orc back to Thrandy to figure out what the hell’s up with this Orc Business.

Meanwhile, Gandalf is poking around some creepy mountain tomb thing with his friend Radegast the Brown, and they realize that all Nine Ringwraiths (evil dudes) who were buried there are GONEZO. Time to investigate the evil happenings by heading to Dol Gudur, a super evil place where Radegast had an encounter with “The Necromancer,” aka the OTHER CHARACTER IN THIS MOVIE PLAYED BY RINKYDINK CURDLESNOOT. We’ll call him EvilSnoot. Back to D+B—they float down to the river but realize that the only way to get through Mt. Erebor is through Lake Town. How inconveninent!! Who could possibly be going to Lake Town?? OH WAIT, A HUMAN DUDE NAMED BARD. I called him New Aragorn, because, as I explained to a friend, since Viggo Mortenson was no longer able to look tortured and handsome and burdened by actions of the past, they needed someone else to do that. Enter Bard. He’s a sad, bedraggled man from the sad, bedraggled place of Lake Town. Lake Town once used to be a booming society, in the days when the dwarves lived under Mt. Erebor, but now is totally ramshackle and poor and run by a corrupt government officer played by Stephen Frye.

He takes the D+B into Lake Town, and through a series of exploits we learn that Bard/New Aragorn is a sort of counter-government dude in Lake Town, sort of like Robin Hood in that he cares about the people and Stephen Frye doesn’t. Then we jump back to Mirkwood, where Thrandy, Legolas, and Tauriel (seriously she’s so badass, a really good fighter and everything) are interrogating the orc. They learn that it’s too late to do anything to stop the darkness descending upon Middle Earth, and also that Hot Dwarf/Kili is going to die because he was wounded with a POISON ARROW in the barrel escape from Thrandyville. Tauriel freaks out and leaves, and Thrandy orders that the doors to his palace be shut before the evil gets in to his palace. HE SUPER HATES HELPING OTHERS. THIS COULD NOT HAVE BEEN MADE MORE CLEAR. Legolas is like “all right let’s shut these doors” but then realizes that Tauriel is missing. She’s gone to help that damn Hot Dwarf! So he leaves Daddy’s House and goes to find her.

Then cut to Gandalf, who’s ditched Radagast to explore Dol Gudur. But shit IT’S A TRAP! He gets pounded by orcs and is pretty sad and then EvilSnoot/Shadowbatch/these portmanteaus are too easy to come up with appears to him. In example 1 of Bad Scripts Given to Rinkydink Curdlesnoot, Shadowbatch shouts, “LIGHT WILL NEVER DEFEAT DARK” and then Gandalf and EvilSnoot have a Harry Potter-Voldemort-esque battle, at the end of which Gandalf is defeated (sad!) and then Shadowbatch reveals to Gandalf through a… really crazy, acid-trip-esque sequence that OH SHIT HE’S SAURON, THE DARK LORD. Damn, nobody saw that coming at all.

Back to the D+B—they convince Bard that they need to go to Erebor, but he refuses to get weapons, so the sneak out and try to steal weapons from the town (…rude! The town is ramshackle!) but then get captured by Stephen Frye’s people. They explain, though, that they’re Thorin Oakenshield and his Band of Dwarves, and suddenly Stephen Frye is interested because dwarves under the mountain equals profit for the town. Bard/Not Aragorn gets mad because he remembers the destruction that Smaug rained upon Dale, the City of Men besides Lake Town that once laid in the shadow of Erebor. Turns out Bard and Aragorn are a lot more alike than we thought—Bard’s grandfather was the famous Master of Dale, who managed to somewhat wound Smaug by chipping away the scales under his left wing with a specially crafted Dwarven Black Arrow. T (Aragorn was also secretly a royal dude.) So he doesn’t want the D+B to fight Dragonbatch. The Dwarves (but not Bilbo) all laugh at him and say that that was a kid’s story. SO TOO BAD—the Dwarves+Bilbo head off for Erebor, minus Fili (Hot Dwarf’s twin) and Kili (Hot Dwarf, more mortally wounded than ever) and Bofur (another elf) Oin or Dori (I can’t remember which of the grey-haired dwarves it was, and he barely had screentime anyway, sorry guys). Hot Dwarf can’t go on, says Mean Thorin, and so his twin and Oin/Dori stay to help him. Bofur drinks too much and oversleeps. So those four dwarves go back to Bard.

While the rest of the D+B goes to Erebor! And Thorin pitches a hissy fit because he can’t figure out how to open the secret door. So BILBO FIGURES IT OUT FOR HIM! And they head on inside to the mountain fortress. Then it transitions to something else—actually that transition might be where the Gandalf/Shadowbatch/EvilSnoot battle happens; a TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THIS MOVIE so it’s hard to keep chronology straight. So then we cut back to Bard’s House. Bard knows that Bad Shit is Going to Happen in Erebor and that Lake Town might get wrecked, so he and his son leave the house (with the sick Hot Dwarf) in order to take the LAST BLACK ARROW REMAINING up to the Black-Arrow-Firing-Device that’s in Lake Town. Bard’s plan is to save the town by taking one final shot at Smaug in the same place his grandfather did many years ago—under the left wing! But Stephen Frye’s people have had enough of Bard’s shit, so Bard entrusts the Black Arrow to his son, who hides it in a boat. Bard gets thrown in jail, and we cut to the moment we’ve all been waiting for: BILBO AND SMAUG.

Bilbo walks around on piles of gold for some time, and then tries to hide from Smaug using his BFF The One Ring to Rule Them All, but Smaug finds him out. They have a long dialogue, and mostly Rinkydink Curdlesnoot’s lines aren’t all that bad. Bilbo makes up a lot of formal names for both himself and Smaug—such as “Barrel Rider” for himself and “O Great Tyrant” for Dragonbatch—and learns that Bard was telling the truth! There is, in fact, a patch of scales missing beneath the dragon’s left wing. So THAT’S A PLOT POINT. Smaug figures out that Bilbo is working for Thorin, who wants the Arkenstone, a magic jewel that will help him unite All Dwarves Ever to Fight Some Battle Or Something. Smaug says that the jewel is evil, and Bilbo doesn’t believe him… UNTIL HE TRIES TO ESCAPE SMAUG AND THORIN GETS MAD THAT HE DIDN’T FIND THE JEWEL. To Thorin, the Arkenstone is more important than the lives of Bilbo or the other eight dwarves who came with them into the mountain… BECAUSE INSTEAD OF ESCAPING THEY RUN DEEPER INTO THE MOUNTAIN.

Cut back to Bard’s house, where Hot Dwarf is on the brink of death and Bofur is running back to the house with some magic herbs that will save his life. BUT OH NO, ORCS ATTACK THE HOUSE BECAUSE THEY HATE DWARVES. Thank god for LEGOLAS AND TAURIEL! They tracked the Orcs into Lake Town and now help to save Bard’s three children (he has two girls along with his Black Arrow-wielding son) and the four dwarves there. Legolas peaces out to chase down the other dwarves, but Tauriel realizes that Hot Dwarf is about to die, and she knows how to use the herbs that Bofur found!! So she heals him by holding the herbs up to his wound and… chanting… while Hot Dwarf starts to hallucinate that she’s glowing. The whole scene is weirdly sexual, and when Hot Dwarf wakes up he looks at hear and goes, “No way did she save me—but I dreamed it was her—do you think she could love me?” and right before she answers, cut back to D+B and Cumberdragon.

Thorin’s plan is to try and smother the dragon in liquid gold, which involves a very extreme and harried sequence in which nine dwarves and a hobbit manage to start long-defunct gold mines and then actually almost succeed in smothering him… Also intercut with this action is a sequence of Legolas fighting Head Mean Orc and then riding out of Lake Town to chase him down, meaning that he and Tauriel are now split up. So while Thorin almost kills all of his men, and Smaug does get drenched in molten gold, HE’S A FIRE DRAGON. At one point in the battle, he shouts Bad Curdlesnoot Dialogue 2: “I AM FIRE! I AM… … … DEATH!” so clearly, Thorin should’ve known that killing him with hot molten metal wouldn’t work. Smaug leaves Mount Erebor, Bard in his jail cell realizes they’re all doomed in Lake Town, Tauriel and the Four Dwarves (but mostly Hot Dwarf) also realize that Bad Things Are Going to Happen, and, oh yeah, somehow Gandalf is locked in a cage at Dol Gudur. Bilbo basically sums up the whole film when he overlooks Lake Town and whispers, “What have we done?” THEN FADE TO BLACK.

*Phew* that happened. That movie happened. Now do you see what I mean when I say THERE WAS JUST TOO MUCH GOING ON?? You should definitely go see it anyway, since I didn’t quite do it justice. But I hope you appreciate the summary that I’ve provided you. Thank you for joining us on this magical Ratty journey. Much love to you all.