*Warning! Spoilers abound, not just for this movie but for parts of the next. Also, cursing.*

Okay. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

I need to try and figure this thing out. Let me first start off by saying that I am not a humongous, butt-hurt, book-purist; it’s been a while since I’ve read ‘The Hobbit’ and honestly, it’s never had the intensely emotional and soulful hold over me that ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy does. I mean, I swear to god, when Sam has given up hope and tossed his ‘chief treasure’, his cooking gear, down a chasm in The Return of the King, my quivery little-girl heart had been torn to shreds. I never got such a feeling from any part of The Hobbit. So perhaps right off the bat, this is one reason that I’m not as into The Hobbit movies. But I think it goes much further than that.

You see, that part about Sam and his cooking gear doesn’t even happen in the ROTK movie, but the movie had so many beautiful and wrenching moments beyond that. The sight of those eagles appearing out the fiery haze, like angels from on high, and that swelling, soul-piercing vocal…hell, I’ll let the minor stuff that bothered me about the movie slide. Sure, a few things were changed, and changed pretty radically, but it was made up for.

The Hobbit movie does no such thing. I remember liking the Beorn scene in the book. I thought it was great that they had to enter a few at a time to keep from overwhelming the man-bear with too many unsavory dwarfs. I liked how they were fed and waited on by his animals. I thought it was fun and gentle. The movie hurries us right past Beorn, and I suspect they only bothered to include him so that they could set up a scene for the next movie, where, in the Battle of Five Armies, Beorn goes bearish and wastes two hundred orcs single-pawedly in a ten-minute-long, computer-animated orgy.

The dwarves rush into Beorn’s house, (with Beorn chasing after them in bear-form, because bear!!! Action!!!), and the next morning Beorn, who apparently was cool with finding a bunch of dwarves trespassing without his consent, tells them a bit about his grudge with Azog (who also shouldn’t be in the movie, but I’ll get to that later), gives them ponies and they’re off. No fun animal waiters and dinner.

I thought the Mirkwood scene was pretty fun. In fact, I was a-ok with the movie thus far. I liked the dwarves losing their shit and hallucinating, I liked the added bits about the Ring’s growing hold on Bilbo. Martin Freeman is brilliant as our title character; his facial expressions at one particular moment showcase his sudden understanding that the ring is not good for him, and that he’s powerless to keep from desiring it. Of course, this brilliant bit had to happen after he hacked up a big computer animated centipede. Couldn’t this dawning realization have happened in a more subtle, eerie way? But no, I guess throw a big computer animated monster on the screen.

The reason I liked the majority of the Mirkwood segment so much was because it focused solely on the dwarves and Bilbo. You know…what this movie should’ve been about. When Bilbo put on the ring and heard the spiders speaking amongst themselves in horrible chitters and creaks, I felt that spark of oh, this is great! Sure they pulled all the legs off that one, but…that could happen, right? I mean, if I was hopped up on adrenaline, I’d rip off whatever body part I needed to and get the hell out of there. Okay, so Mirkwood, thus far, was pretty fun.

Then the elves show up, and guess what? They are fantastic! Extremely fantastic! Look at them fight! Oh, dang, that’s a little bit much. Wow but…uh…okay, I get it, they’re super elves. Okay, yes they’re made of magic and can waste anything in front of them without sweating a drop. Right. Right, okay, I get it. Yes I get it. Yes, I understand that Legolas climbed up a fucking mûmakil, but that was one time.

Oooh, so this is the elf chick everyone is freaking out about. Alright, Tauriel seems like all the other elves, so whatever. She fits in. I’m okay with her, and I can understand Kili being grateful and perhaps a little starstruck. She did save his life, after all.

So now our merry (angry) company is tossed into prison. And I should use this moment to say that the reveal of the kingdom of the wood elves was pretty unimpressive, from a musical perspective. Remember that reveal of Rivendell? That wave-like, swelling of violins, and the ethereal voices accompanying that beautiful vista—you really felt that you’d entered someplace magical. Hell, every new place you traveled to in the LOTR’s movies had a powerful theme to it: Rohan perfectly captured the remote and weary, but proud and unbroken spirit of the horsemen; the essence of Gondor was heard in the majesty and grandeur of those great forceful horns; the horror and otherness of Mordor; the cold, mechanistic feel of Isenguard; the lovely pastoral simplicity of the Shire. I could go on and on about the scores to those three films. Parts brought tears to my eyes or raised goosebumps on my skin. In comparison, not a single thing stands out in my mind after two viewings of The Desolation of Smaug. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t awful. It was just kinda…there.

Now, back to Mirkwood. The dwarves are trying to break out of their cells, and I quite liked that bit. Thorin is brought before Thranduil, a lovely, vain snob of an elf. I thought he was very well done; quite high-and-mighty, but also a little unnerving. You know this guy has seen some serious shit in all his many millennia, and just doesn’t give a damn about the tiny mortals scampering about anymore. He might do anything, if he wanted. Thorin basically tells him to ‘fuck off’ and that’s that. Cool. Alright.

Meanwhile, Kili, a dwarf we’ve really not had time to care about previously, is having a conversation with Tauriel about a promise he made to his mom to come back safely and they start talking about starlight and moons and stuff, and Legolas is shown looking on with jealousy and disbelief. I’m still giving this development the benefit of the doubt at this point. I mean, she did save the guys life, so sure, he can chat with her. And maybe she’s just humoring him, because after several hundred years of the same damn thing going on, this random, cheeky dwarf must be pretty interesting. It’s not romance, it’s a blossoming friendship.

The elves get drunk. Bilbo reappears and breaks them out. In the book, I remember that they were stuck in prison for quite a while. In the movie it’s like, one day. I understand that they couldn’t really portray that in the film, but if we can have a cumulative sixty minutes (estimate) of mindless computer-animated action scenes, maybe we could’ve spent a bit more time with the dwarves? Shown them chatting to one another, plotting, reminiscing, seething—anything? We could’ve gotten to know them a bit better. Couldn’t we have seen a bit more of Bilbo trying to evade the guards and trying to figure a way out of this?

Whatever. They end up in the barrels. Open barrels. But you know what? It’s so over the top that I managed to turn off my brain and forget that they would’ve drowned a million times over in that amusement park ride of a river. Especially Bilbo, who was only holding on to a rope round one of the barrels. The poor little guy would’ve been swept away lickity-split. Whatever. It’s silly. It’s fun. I can do this.

Orcs! The orcs are attacking, oh noooo! Because, you know what? They’ve proved really fucking capable at killing dwarves and hobbits up till now. Especially when there are murder-machine wood elves on the prowl. So now we have a scene that goes on forever, in which five hundred orcs die and Tauriel saves Kili again. I feel bad for the orcs, man. You know in an MMORPG, when you max out a character, travel to some low level area, and just waste the HELL out of all those poor baddies? That’s basically how outmatched these guys are. They’re just elf fodder. There is not a chance in hell that this multitude of orcs is going to manage to hurt one elf. Not even a scratch. Even dwarves, while trying desperately to stay afloat and not crash into boulders, can manage to destroy these guys.

Now let me take a moment to air my dirty laundry here. I love orcs. I freaking love orcs. In an unhealthy, lustful way. So really, the more orcs there are in any given scene, the happier I am. But these guys were more incompetent than blindfolded stormtroopers. And the elves were so impossibly badass that it became laughable. I found myself thinking, why can’t they hit them? Why can’t they fucking hit them?! Why can’t one hundred orcs hit five or six out of 20 elves? Why hasn’t Tauriel or Legolas got a single fucking scratch? Have they even gotten dirty? Why can’t the orcs HIT THOSE OPEN BARRELS? Just stand back and SHOOT THE FUCK OUT OF THEM. Where are the wargs?! They’ve got them later in Laketown, so why not now? Did I want the orcs to win? No. But come on. This is just ridiculous. There’s no stakes at all if you know your bad guys are about as dangerous as Bombur. Oh wait. Bombur took out like twenty orcs in 15 seconds. You can’t hear it, but I’m heaving a REALLY big sigh.

So they get away, Thranduil gets mad and orders the borders closed, Tauriel goes out anyway, and Legolas follows her. Bilbo is somehow still hanging onto that barrel, and magically none of them have drowned or been shot with arrows. Good thing the orcs stopped hunting them as soon as they were out of elf land. Wait, what? Why did they suddenly stop hunting them? Now’s the perfect time! The dwarves are unarmed and have just stated that the current is against them, AND that the orcs aren’t far behind.

Whatever. Maybe they’re tired. Anyway, the dwarves and Bilbo (Oh yeah! Hi, Bilbo!) run into Bard, who’s picking up the barrels from the Wood Elves. So…those barrels make that insane journey every time they need refilling? Damn, those things have held up pretty well through all of those rapids and falls! Magical!

Now, I really liked the expansion of Bards character. I thought he was very well done and fit in nicely. From what I can recall of the book, Bard is hardly described at all. He’s not really a ‘character’. He shows up and kills Smaug; so to have him fleshed out a bit made a great deal of sense when he has such an important role to play later on. I liked the look and feel of Laketown, I liked the smuggling of the dwarves: Thorin son of Thrain, King under the mountain, covered in dead fish and hiding in a latrine. How the mighty have fallen! To see him swallowing his pride actually shocked me. Whoa. Character development. That spoke a great deal about how low he would sink, and how desperate he was to make it to the mountain.

However, the movie starts to become irreparably damaged to me once Kili, Fili and two of the others (I can’t remember, sue me) stay behind because Kili is hurt.

The orcs come back, yay! I was a-okay with them showing up once more, but I had one condition in my brain: They had to at least fucking kill someone. Make it worth my while. I mean, this is supposed to be a bad ass group of orcs. Bolg, son of Azog, and his evil warg-riding minions. Someone’s going to die, right? The stakes are going to be raised, right? I might actually get scared for those kids, right? I mean, that’s prettying unnerving, to see orcs busting into what had just been a comfortable little home.

Nope. They can’t even manage to kill one fucking child. Sure there were a few dwarves in the room, but one of them was deathly ill, and the others were caught off guard in a cramped space–so the orcs should’ve been able to wreak some major havoc. Arrggggggg! Why can’t they even manage to kill that little girl hiding under the table? So what if that boy tossed a chair at you? Just CHARGE him! Can’t you even manage to graze someone?! But. Maybe…maybe they’ll pull it off—oh wait, no, here come Legolas and Tauriel. They’re fucked.

And they totally are. All manner of unrealistic orc-slayings commence. Le sigh. I should say, I didn’t want one of the kids or hell, even Tauriel, to die because I totally don’t hate kids or Tauriel. What I wanted was for something to happen that would make me sit up and go oh shit! This is real, the stakes are real. Evil has actually got some power. They might not make it! But it’s so unrealistic that I didn’t even need to watch. You already know what’s going to happen.

And so that happened. It took its sweet time too.

And then my ability to write off the whole Tauriel/Kili thing as mutual respect and curiosity is shattered when she heals him, and he sees her as she truly is, all radiant with light, and he says something really cheesy like…”do you think she could’ve loved me?” Wait, what? Hold up. Elves and dwarves had been uncomfortable to outright hostile towards one another for a long time at this point. Friendship I can accept, but this??

Gimli loved Galadriel, but it was the lofty love one bears for God or a higher power. She was so far beyond him that he worshiped her while expecting absolutely nothing in return. It was enough just to know that someone so radiant and ethereal existed. But “do you think she could’ve loved me?” No! No, she’s an elf and you are a baby dwarf! Quit this! Tauriel don’t smile like that at him! Don’t encourage this kind of weirdness! Quit touching hands! It ain’t natural!

I know a lot of people are saying ‘well, the movie needs a bit of femininity—there’s so many dudes after all’ or, ‘she was put in the movie to appeal to women’ which I find deeply offensive as it implies women can’t identify with anything that doesn’t have boobs. It’s pretty insulting to suggest that if a movie doesn’t have a strong female presence, than it can’t be enjoyed by women. Entirely not true. I found the subplot with Tauriel, Legolas, and Kili to be a distraction and an uncomfortable one at that.

I caught myself thinking, ‘Get back to Bilbo, already! This is about Bilbo. Why on earth is Kili (a dwarf that has no character besides being the young pretty one) suddenly getting a hefty amount of screen time? So the romance can appeal to my ovaries? Fuck that. Get back to THE HOBBIT. You know, what this movie is about?

Meanwhile, Thorin and co. have made it to the Lonely Mountain. Yay, dwarves and hobbit! Yay, they’re doing things together! Bilbo saves the day, they enter the Mountain and we really get to see how emotionally important it is to the dwarves, especially Thorin and Balin. They’re finally home.

And then the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Bilbo begins his search for the Arkenstone and wakes the dragon. And what a dragon. Don’t get me started on the “he’s only got four limbs though, dragons have six” thing. He’s a dragon. Some Eastern dragons don’t have legs, some don’t have wings, some have wings but no legs, some have legs but no wings–but they’re STILL DRAGONS. This dude is a dragon. End of story.

Smaug. He is the grandest of calamities. His teeth are swords, his claws are spears, his wings are a hurricane and his breath is death. Only it isn’t. Once again, not a force on this good Middle Earth can take out our heroes. Not even this incredible beast. I don’t care if you put two feet of stone between you and a blast of dragon-fire: you would get roasted. So, film-maker, don’t put your heroes in that situation, because it is utterly unbelievable. And please, don’t do it again and again and again. Oh…oh, you did.

You know what, orcs? Don’t feel too bad that you couldn’t kill the dwarves and hobbit. Smaug can’t do it either. “Oh, but he was just toying with them.” Yes, at times Smaug definitely was toying with them. But there were several times where Smaug clearly intended to melt them into a smoldering pile of dwarf-slag.

In fact, not only are the dwarfs physically able to withstand all sorts of things that should’ve killed them a thousand times over (the stone giants, the fall through goblin-town, the barrel ride, and numerous other scraps), but they’re also able to get the jump on and outwit Smaug. Now, I admit, I can’t remember much from the book beyond Bilbo waking Smaug up and their intense conversation. I know he flies off for Laketown. However, I’m willing to bet that NONE of the convoluted, furnace-stoking, billows-pumping, gold-melting, dragon-tangling, Statue-making, statue-melting, dragon-gilding happened.

Good lord that scene felt like it went on for half-an-hour. Did it? All I could think is why can’t this massive, cunningly intelligent, sly, ancient, devastating dragon GET them?! Why is this still happening? It’s like they have Mario super stars and nothing can fucking touch them! Gravity can’t even hurt them!

The scene between Bilbo and Smaug, played very close to the book, is wonderful. And it’s because it was played very close to the book. You really feel the fear and bravado of Bilbo, who knows he’s utterly, epically outmatched and liable to be killed at any moment. And you know that Smaug, that sly bastard, is just toying with him. He’s a cat playing with a little mouse; let him think he’s got a chance and reel him back in, give him a break and reel him back in. The dragon enjoyed it. He’s vain, calculating, preening, and utterly confident in his ability to do whatever the hell he wants, whenever he wants.

So when this beast can’t even harm any of the little ants scampering around his feet, and even worse, finds himself being led about and caught up in their little scheme, IT TOTALLY NEGATES EVERYTHING ABOUT HIS CHARACTER. Even Smaug the Stupendous is rendered incompetent by those meddling kids! How did he ever take Erebor? If nine dwarves and a hobbit can run this dragon in circles and evade his breath of death, just get like, twenty more dwarves.

While this hugely long scene is playing out, we keep flashing back to the orcs attacking Fili and the elves. Legolas has a fight with Bolg, and I liked that because Bolg managed to HIT HIM. FINALLY, someone got slightly banged up. I also liked how Bolg used his minions as meat shield/distractions, because that’s totally what an orc would do. I also like that he knew that taking Legolas down was not likely, so he ran the fuck off. Good job man, just get the hell away from that one–that elf is a freakin’ demi god. But you made him bleed. I was actually shocked to see blood. Oh yeah, things bleed in real life!

I know that Bolg, and most certainly Azog (hi handsome), were shoehorned in, to give us a more obvious villain while our heroes trekked to the Lonely Mountain. I’m okay with that (of course I am). Their inclusion made much more sense to me than the inclusion of a romantic subplot between a made up elf and a dwarf with no character. Granted, the orc-chasing scenes could’ve been shorter but overall, they felt much less like padding. I still wish they could’ve managed to do some actual damage. I’m not quite sure why they didn’t just name Azog, Bolg. Bolg ends up going after the dwarves, just the same as his father. I guess, just as they needed to give us a kind of General on one side with the fleshing out of Bard, they had to do the same with the evil side, and so gave us Azog. Azog goes off to take charge of his orc forces, which will come in during the Battle of Five Armies, just as Bard will have to rally his people and take charge of the situation with Smaug.

Also, while all of the above has been going on, we take still another side-journey, this time with Gandalf as he searches for answers about an ancient enemy. We meet up with Radagast again, who did not bother me nearly so much this time. In fact, I rather liked him; with that hat on his head, I could forget about the CG birds nesting in his hair and the bird shit trailing down his face. Come on Peter Jackson…less can be more. Anyways, the two of them discover that the Nine have broken free from their ancient prison, summoned by our good friend Sauron, who has yet to take physical form once more.

As Gandalf searched the Ringwraiths prison, I felt genuinely unnerved; here is real evil—a smothering darkness. Gandalf just looks so frail and those gaping, black prison cells stare like the eyes of a corpse; even empty, there is a brooding presence. This is something beyond him, and hallelujah, the movie lets you feel that. It was vast and claustrophobic at the same time; just imagine the beings who had been entombed in that blackness for thousands of years, waiting, and the malice that must hang in the air.

Gandalf ventures on to Dul Guldur, another sequence I liked. Ian McKellen can pull off anything. As he searched the compound and finds it full of orcs and wargs, I really did worry for him. I was like ‘oh shit, Azog just clobbered him!’ It helps that Ian McKellen looks old, and I mean really elderly, so I just expected him to break like a dry twig. Watching a hero get slammed and then come up swinging with some powerful magic to keep the baddies back was great. And then to see him get totally mind-screwed by the Necromancer, aka Sauron, was just…wow. The morphing of the black form of Sauron into the pupil of the Eye of Sauron was a nice visual. You understand that you are dealing with something beyond the mortal world. Gandalf wakes up in a cage, watching the orcs march out. Oh no, bro!

Now all of this was not properly in The Hobbit. Most of it was in the appendices. And it’s great stuff. I am actually glad it was included. None of these scenes went on and on interminably—they got their point across quickly in a chilling, worrisome way, and I don’t consider them padding. In fact, I was more involved with Gandalf’s side-quest than with anything else, save Bilbo talking to Smaug.

Scenes like this made me so, so frustrated with the rest of the movie. If you can make such tense, tight little moments like these, why did you have to bloat out the rest in such awkward, cartoony, and over-the-top ways? I guess it all stems from trying to make three movies. However, this movie was over 2 and a half hours long. The previous one was also about this long. If you were dead set on making three movies, there was no reason for them to be so freaking long. If they had been trimmed to even two hours, the fight scenes truncated and made more realistic, and if we had spent less time on a useless Fili/Tauriel sublot and more time actually getting to know our main characters…what an improvement it would’ve been.

So, in short (or not so short as this is now 7 pages long), I will say that I am left feeling exhausted and frustrated. So many cool little moments, gorgeous scenery, wonderful acting, beautiful art and set design, costumes, effects and cinematography…The feel of Middle Earth is still there, but it’s been buried beneath a bloated plot, mind-numbing and unbelievable action sequences, and unnecessary embellishments. Arrgg…so frustrated. “He both loves and hates the Ring,” Gandalf said of Gollum. When applied to The Hobbit movies, I’m beginning to understand how he feels.