Wick's Review

Summary - Really Great 4.5

The elves dominate Hobbit 2. Coolest, prettiest, deadliest – they look especially good in the nearby poster. Orlando Bloom returns as Legolas; Evangeline Lilly joins as Tauriel, Chief of the Guards; moviestars both.

But it’s not just martial elves that make this movie such a treat. Adventure beyond all reason reaches an apotheosis with The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, an old fashioned adventure movie produced at stupendously large scale, with a crew of thousands manipulating gazillions of simulations to pull it off.

Hobbit: DOS is the second superior sequel of the year, both sophomore efforts, Legolas following Katniss by half a month. While I rate both 4.5 out of 5.0, I lean towards JLaw and her Katniss crew as my fave, which is not to say H2 isn’t a terrific movie. It’s a considerable treat and a legitimate benchmark. To wit…

Several visual stunts are belly-laugh enjoyable, a sensation triggered by seeing something so wonderfully over-the-top, so cinematically silly. The movies haven’t delivered like this since early Indiana Jones.

The Hobbit: Part 1 was more vistas than visceral. Hobbit 2 is more visceral than a nearly three hour movie has any right to be, exhaustingly so. Unfortunately the certainty that no predicament is too preposterous, no escape too unlikely, no blood ever to be seen, leads to a certain weariness. Count that as its one fault.

No harm if you didn’t see the first one. Who remembers it anyway: too long and too long ago. This one’s kinda impossible to keep up with anyway, yet the ride is so terrific it doesn’t matter. The only sure thing is that Bilbo Baggins – The Hobbit – and his royal Company of Dwarves will come out the other side.

It ends with a cliffhanger that left my whole theater wanting more, even if it’ll take a year to recover from The Desolation of Smaug.
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Saw the last 3D showing Saturday night at the CineLux Plaza Theatre in Campbell.

Acting - Great 4.0

Most of the top characters are back, complete with the actors who played them in the first Episode. The several additions are stellar.

• Martin Freeman’s Bilbo Baggins remains an underwhelming hobbit.
• Ian McKellen’s great Gandalf the Grey, a titanic wizard played by a titanic actor, titanically.
• Richard Armitage’s Thorin Oakenshield ain’t the greatest Tolkien King, but he’ll do.
• Benedict Cumberbatch vocalized and squirmed for the simulator to help create Smaug, the great dragon of Middle-earth. There’s also a Necromancer involved, whatever that is. Can’t be good.
• Orlando Bloom lights it up as Legolas: The Elven Prince of Mirkwood and one bad mamba jamba, his aim never off, his quiver never empty. Absent for the first Hobbit movie, he returns here in preparation for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy which got made ten years ago. Got that?
• Evangeline Lilly joins as Tauriel. An elf from Mirkwood, she is Chief of the Guards for the Elvenking, Thranduil. Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh created her because they needed a sexy warrior who can provide romantic interest to the proceedings. She does it exceptionally well.
• Lee Pace as Thranduil, the Elvenking and father of Legolas. There’s issues.
• Aidan Turner as the appropriately euphoniously named Kíli, nephew of Thorin and brother of Fíli.
• Luke Evans as a heroic human. Evans jumps off screen and deserves wider notice.

Film - Really Great 4.5

Peter Jackson, we’re not worthy. Your gluttonous decision to turn Tolkien’s short novel into a trilogy nearly misfired out the gate, only to have this first sequel strike deep into blue-greatness territory. Wow. Episode 3 – The Battle of the Five Armies – comes out next year, with the potential to reach perfection.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel informs a British pagan fantasy, complete with Kings and thatched roofs and horses and armor and fire-breathing dragons.

Edge - Risqué 1.7

Reality - Supernatural 3.7

One great thing about Hobbit: DOS is its Reality curve. 2.8 > 3.2 > 5.0 = Surreal > Supernatural > Fantasy. It’s a pleasantly personal way to land at the rather high reality level of 3.7 times normal Reality, 70% of the way through Supernatural. By modestly taking CircoReality into the Surreal and PhysioReality into the Supernatural, avoiding Fantasy both, it looks relatable for we humans in the audience, Fantasy BioReality being the easiest non-reality factor of the three to accept.

Quivers are never empty, every outlandish, Rube Goldberg’esqe twist falls perfectly into place.

What was true about Edge is true about H2’s reality. It’s bloodless, maintaining its PG-13 by banning blood from the copious sword and bow battles. Easy.

1 Comment

• Wick Jan 5, 2014 1:57AM

  Regarding BrianSez’s Review
  “The not-quite-Kingly Richard Armitage.” Yes, absolutely.

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