Tolkien Tuesday: Reconsidering "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"
The second entry in Peter Jackson's trilogy is a bloated mess that constantly collapses under the weight of its own narrative and spectacular absurdity.
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Welcome to Tolkien Tuesdays, where I talk about various things that I love about the lore and writings of Tolkien, whether in a chapter reading or a character study or an essay. I hope you enjoy reading these ruminations as much as I enjoy writing them and, if you have a moment, I’d love it if you’d subscribe to this newsletter. It’s free, but there are paid options, as well, if you’re of a mind to support a struggling writer. Either way, thank you for joining me!
When The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug came out about a decade ago I was one of those who was one of its most steadfast defenders. Yes, it was at times ridiculous and a bit bloated, I argued, but there was still an adventuresome spirit to the film that made it an acceptable adaptation of Tolkien’s beloved novel. Having just rewatched it…I regret to say that I was wrong. Deeply, tragically wrong. This film is a brutal slog from beginning to end, so stuffed with needless action spectacle that it ultimately collapses beneath its own weight.
Picking up where the first film left off, Desolation follows Bilbo, Thorin, and the rest of the Dwarves as they continue on their journey toward Erebor. Along the way they encounter malevolent spiders, the Elves of Mirkwood, and the people of Lake-town, including the dour Bard. Finally, they come to the Mountain, and Bilbo has a bit of an exchange with Smaug, after which the Dwarves attempt to finally defeat the mighty dragon, climaxing in a moment when they immerse him in molten gold. In the end, though, their efforts to drown the mighty dragon not only fail; they only enrage him further. Rather than taking his fury out on the Dwarves he instead turns his ire on Lake-town (why he would do this rather than simply incinerating the newly-vulnerable Thorin and company is a bit of an inexplicable choice, but we’ll get to that in a moment). The film ends with Smaug announcing that he is fire and death and preparing to rain ruin on Lake-town.
To be sure, there are some things about The Desolation of Smaug that work, and the cast is universally excellent. Martin Freeman continues his fantastic interpretation of Bilbo. He’s wry but vulnerable, and he’s clearly started to come into his own as a result of this adventure. It’s also a pleasure to watch him bond with Ken Stott’s Balin, a relationship that is true to the book. Richard Armitage continues to be strong as Thorin, and it goes without saying that Ian McKellen has the right bit of rakishness for this earlier iteration of Gandalf. The real highlight cast-wise is Lee Pace, who is truly a bitch-king if ever there was one. He exudes exactly the right kind of contempt and hauteur that is a hallmark of the some of the more arrogant Elves still left in Middle-earth, and every scene he’s in is a delight. Less successful, I think, are Luke Evans as Bard and Stephen Fry as the Master of Lake-town; the former is just too dour to be interesting, and the latter is a sloppy caricature. And the less said about Ryan Gage’s Alfrid, the better.
The major problem with this film is the fact that every single episode feels like it has tremendous stakes and, as a result, the entire thing starts to feel like a never ending assault on the senses. Take, for example, the entire barrel sequence. In the original novel the whole thing is Bilbo’s idea, and our experience of it is filtered through his perspective (the Dwarves at this point are basically just cargo). However, Jackson seems unable to restrain himself, and what could have been a nice little jaunt down the river becomes instead yet another interminable battle sequence involving Bolg and his minions. The Dwarves, far from being passengers, engage in all sorts of acrobatics–the image of Bombur becoming some sort of whirling dervish in his own barrel is something that will always haunt me–and they are exceeded in this regard only by Legolas and his archers.
This same pattern holds true for almost every other incident that the film adapts from the book, whether it’s in the beginning when Gandalf, Bilbo, and the Dwarves have to race against Beorn in his bear shape, when they have to try to get free of the terrible spiders, or when they have to once again fend off Orcs while tending to Kili in Lake-town. Even characters we meet for the first time in this film, most notably Bard, have their stories blown up and given bloated stakes in order for them to feel important. No one and no incident in this film is allowed to just be; it all has to be epic.
I’m willing to forgive some of this, but there comes a point where even I had to throw my hands up and wish that Jackson could have just given us a slimmer, more focused film. Perhaps no scene annoyed me quite as much as the confrontation between Bilbo and Smaug. In the book, the conversation between the two is a daring clash of wits, made all the more vexing for the dragon because the latter is wearing the One Ring and is therefore invisible. This obviously wasn’t going to fly in the movie, since we’ve already been led to see how much power the Ring has, and Jackson takes it one step further by having Smaug seem to possess some sort of connection to it. What follows is a bloated sequence in which the mighty dragon essentially chases Bilbo around his vast hoard while the hobbit seeks the Arkenstone (which, like so much else in the movie, is given far more significance than it does in the book).
Look, I get it. If you’re going to put that much energy and money into creating a giant CGI dragon, the least you can do is make sure that he has plenty to do. If it had just been a confrontation between Bilbo and Smaug, I probably wouldn’t have been so annoyed, but to then have the dragon chase the Dwarves around the Lonely Mountain before being immersed under several tones of molten gold…I mean come on. There are some things that strain the bounds of credulity even in a film that is so clearly fantastical. It’s very clear by this point that Jackson and his co-writers were really looking for any opportunity they could to pad that running time and justify the trilogy, even if doing so meant sacrificing any sort of story discipline on the altar of spectacle. Spectacle is fine, of course, and it has its place, but trying to drown a dragon in molten gold (after tricking him into lighting the furnaces, no less), is many steps too far.
Somewhere along the line, narrative coherence utterly breaks down in this film, and not all of the digital wizardry in the world is enough to save it from its own stumbling story. As I alluded to at the top, it makes absolutely no sense for Smaug to suddenly break off his efforts to destroy Thorin and company and launch an attack on Lake-town. Even the dialogue doesn’t make sense here, as he suddenly references Bilbo’s description of himself as a barrel-rider before going on some strange tangent about this attack being something cooked up between Thorin and the people of Esgaroth. It’s all very strange, and it’s clear that even Jackson doesn’t quite know what to do.
Even all of this could be forgiven, however, if we also didn’t have to deal with the worst flaw in The Hobbit films. Yes, I’m talking about the misbegotten and utterly pointless love triangle between Kili, Legolas, and Tauriel. Now, to be clear, I have no problem with the introduction of a character not from the books, and Tauriel is quite an enjoyable stage presence (Evangeline Lilly is quite a screen presence, even if she is an anti-vaxxer). It just seems all so forced and silly and cynical and, far from adding any more stakes to a film already overladen with them–did I mention that Gandalf also makes a journey to Dol Guldur, where he encounters Thrain (in the Extended Edition) and finally realizes that the Necromancer is none other than Sauron–it just comes to seem a distraction. I can forgive many of Jackson’s changes to Tolkien’s material, but this one is truly beyond the pale.
The Desolation of Smaug, like the trilogy as a whole, is something of an odd beast, an amalgam of pieces that don’t ever quite fit together. It’s clear that Jackson is trying to make it into an epic like Rings, but The Hobbit was and is not an epic. It is, instead, an old-fashioned adventure story, and while there are glimmers of that in the final product, it ultimately becomes a Hollywood monster that buckles under the burden of its own narrative and spectacular weight. There were times while I was watching it where I wondered how things might have been different had the film been directed by Guillermo del Toro as had originally been intended, or even if it had been two films rather than three. As it is, however, it’s a bit of a tragedy and a reminder that sometimes success is its own worst enemy.