The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
My boys are HUGE Tolkien fans. They love The Lord of The Rings, and The Hobbit remains one of their favorite books ever. To watch The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, we decided to go to Gold Class. Gold Class is the height of luxury for cinema goers here in Australia. On arrival at the theatre, you are taken into a small lounge area exclusively for Gold Class patrons. Here you can order food and beverages to be brought to you during the movie, a real advantage during an epic tale that lasts 161 minutes. As a lover of watching movies from the comfort of my own lounge, Gold Class with its huge reclining seats, it the next best thing. Sharing the cinema with a small audience also feels a lot more homely, and I enjoy the lack of noise that often comes with a larger audience.
I first introduced The Hobbit as an audio book, and each child has since read it multiple times. We also loved the first movie, and have watched it many times, mostly in French so I can count it as school work. So we were all really excited to see the next installment. I asked my boys to give you a few words on what they thought of the movie.
IrishKing, aged 9: The Hobbit was good, lots of action, but I think they changed a bit too much. I like Kili in the books, but now that Tauriel is here I don’t like him anymore. Not that it makes it a bad movie or anything. It had a good cliff hanger, but since the next one isn’t coming out for another year it is also bad. I don’t like waiting. When the whole trilogy comes out, it will be great!
IrishDoom, aged 10: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was great, but there were bad bits too. Like for instance: Tauriel. I mean Kili was a perfectly good guy, until Tauriel came along and ruined his life. I liked The Hobbit without any girls. And I noticed a lot of decapitating. Smaug was older than I expected. But lets not get too negative about it. I liked bits too. For example Legolas and Sauron were in it. They’ve always been my favorite characters, and all that gooolllld…….Wonderful goooollllld. At this point I got dreamy and had to stop writing.
IrishCyborg, aged 12: This movie, the second movie in the trilogy, was a lot different from the book for the same section. However, I thought the changes were mostly okay. For example, I liked it the way they stuck in Legolas from LOTR. There were a few new characters, like Tauriel the elf, and Bolg, who is an orc. The producers also showed Gandalf’s battle with the Necromancer, which J.R.R.Tolkien didn’t describe in great detail in the book as Gandalf told Bilbo what happened. The end of the movie is a big cliffhanger, with Smaug the dragon coming along to destroy Lake-Town, and I really want to see the third movie which, by the way, is called The Hobbit: There and Back Again. I think that if you really like the movies like me, you should get the Lego sets. Then you can play with all the characters and reenact the battles.
IrishWrath, aged 14: Unlike the first movie in the trilogy, this movie gets right into the action. The book was great, but if it was replicated word for word into a movie, it would get very boring very quickly. In the book Bilbo uses the ring much more, which would result in far fewer fight scenes if brought into the movie. The movie up plays the Necromancer’s rise, which I’m sure Tolkien would have done if he had the Lord of the Rings planned out completely. But at the time he was writing The Hobbit, he had no plans to return to Middle-earth, and the Necromancer was just a means to get Gandalf away from Bilbo so Bilbo could ‘grow’ into a better character. My favorite character in both the book and movie was Smaug. Who wouldn’t like a huge dragon? The dwarves in the movie were much braver, meaning more fight scenes and rendering it more enjoyable. Tauriel was a strange addition to the movie. She wasn’t in any of J.R.R.Tolkein’s books, not even the Silmarillion. I’m not sure why they added her, all she seems to do is cause more clutter in an already stuffed film. And they had to add a love story. This is the one thing I don’t like about the movie, and my brothers all agree with me. There is no sign of Legolas, Tauriel, or a love story in the book. I don’t mind them adding Azog, or remodeling Bolg, because they make the movie much more entertaining. I found the movie just as good as the book.
All in all, we loved the movie. We talked at length about the difference between the book and the movie, and we all agreed that most of the changes were fine. However, we are in total agreement on the fact that Tauriel is a character we could have done without. I showed my boys this song after the movie. They laughed and laughed, and totally agree. (lyrics may cause offense)
Have you or your children seen The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug? What did you think?