Friday, March 3, 2017

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

I ended up seeing this in 3D, non-HFR, and it took about 20 minutes from being conscious of the 3D until my eyes adapted, and I was able to take in the film from a more immersive standpoint. I saw the first installment in HFR 3D, and that was enough to swear off of it. heh.

The film itself is just too undercooked, characterization-wise, and bloated with the various segments of peril our merry crew of dwarves find themselves into. What's bad about this being a prequel is that it undercuts a lot of the dramatic tension in the action scenes, so it just a lot of close calls and amazing looking CGI-laden action scenes, especially in the final act.

I didn't mind Tauriel's presence in the film. I think they went overboard with all the Legolas as a bad-ass scenes, but I guess he's got his fans, so they'll be cool with it.

Smaug was pretty well-done, didn't disappoint from an effects or voice-acting standpoint.

It is a shame they decided to stretch out The Hobbit into 3 films, instead of delivering a more compact 2-film adaptation, a lot of people groaned at the end of this one (like they did in "Catching Fire"), it's a frikkin' cinematic epidemic with these "to be continued" middle installments. Haha.

I give it 3 stars, or a grade of B.

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