The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Review

Is The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug worth watching?

Yes — 72% Celluloid Score, the best of the three Hobbit films. Jackson’s 161-minute middle chapter finally moves: barrels, spiders, Laketown politics, and Benedict Cumberbatch’s Smaug as a voice you can feel in the floorboards.

Watch it after An Unexpected Journey in the Middle-earth watch order. It ends on a cliffhanger. Plan the night accordingly.

What makes the middle chapter the strongest?

Pulp. The barrel escape is the trilogy’s one action sequence that feels storyboarded by people who love movies, not appendices. Evangeline Lilly’s Tauriel is an invention; whether you wanted her is separate from whether the film is more alive when she is on screen (it is). Stephen Fry’s Master and Luke Evans’s Bard give Laketown a class texture the first film did not bother with.

Smaug is the event. Cumberbatch and the animation team make greed tactile. The gold-hall conversation is the reason to sit through the padding around it. The invented “there and back again” love triangle is the reason some viewers bounced — fair, and not fatal.

Who should skip Desolation of Smaug?

Skip it if you hated the first film’s length and expected a 90-minute children’s book. Skip it if you need a closed ending. Do not skip it if you are already two hours into Erebor; this is the chapter that justifies the trilogy’s existence.

Title page: movie page.

Verdict

The strongest Hobbit chapter — barrel chases, Laketown intrigue, and Smaug as pulp fantasy. Watch it as the reason the prequel exists.