Hobbit: Part 2

We went to see Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in Lund this evening with a friend. We had seen each of the Lord of the Rings films together as they came out over Christmas/New Year's, but had not seen the first Hobbit film together for some reason. Watching it in 3D we had decided that the 3D wasn't worth it and that we weren't going to go see part 2, it was far too boring.

But the critics said it was better, so we decided to give it a try. We managed to get 3 of the last 4 seats for the non-3d version left among scores of sugar-high kids excited to go see all the kiddie films and headed inside. The advertising was great - some interesting films, and then the University of Uppsala advertising for students with a really great short film.

The film was, indeed, better than part 1, although it could have easily been 20 minutes shorter. There was some beautiful landscape stuff, a great female character Tauriel (who was not in the book, and of course got involved in a love story, but was still an interesting character), and some weird stuff such as Beorn who turned out to be the Swedish actor Mikael Persbrandt! I swore that one of the actors looked like Johnny Depp and another like John Cleese, but I was mistaken.

If you are an arachnophobe, I would suggest giving this film a miss. There are lot of fighting scenes, and the usual continuity errors with weapons coming and going and the dwarfs suddenly having having their hair washed and braided and such. There were some scenes that were clearly only there for the 3D crowd: butterflies coming out of nowhere, large bees buzzing around, lots of spider and dragon in-your-face stuff. I suppose the forests and villages and castles looked good, but is that worth having to buy extra glasses? Of course, it stops in the middle, so we have to go see part 3, I guess.