Orc, barrel, project

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Crit

Well, that was a lot more fun than part I of the cycle, An Unexpected Journey. It would even have been an appropriate entertainment for Christmas Day, but I've pretty much decided to give that slot to the Coens.

Anyway, this one is much better paced than the first and harks effectively back (though chronologically forward, of course) to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, particularly in its effective intercutting of the different geographies and their concomitant narratives. There are also set pieces carried over: Galdalf on a collapsing bridge, a beautiful elf woman's forbidden love (and folk medicine practice), dwarf-tossing. Well, no, that's not accurate: no dwarves are tossed in this film, but given what humiliations and hardships they are put through, I expect they'd welcome a simple heave.

One trivial callback, too: the first face we see is the director's, in what appears to be a precise reshoot of his cameo in Fellowship as a drunkard in Bree. The only thing not new and kind of annoying is the titular dragon's movie-villain-cliché-#1 performance: way too much talk, way too tardy dispatch of his antagonists. But then, I guess if he just ate them all without boasting what he's done and what he's going to do, we'd never get to part III.

Trailers

• Gojira--Just kidding: they're calling it Godzilla. Inexplicably, the trailer was in 2D.
• The Amazing Spider-Man 2--Fx look great; who knows otherwise.
• 300: Rise of an Empire--Fx look great on this sequel, too: almost as great as the dialogue sounds dreadful. Gotta admit, though: I'd follow Eva Green into battle.
• Maleficent--You gotta think there have been days when the two dozen adopted kids were squalling and puking that Angie really felt this way, don't you? This has possibilities; from Disney.