The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

The Hobbit:  The Desolation of Smaug (PG13)

"Pork Barrel Rider"

Peter Jackson's prevalence to excess completely decapitates this second tale in the forced Hobbit Trilogy, as Bilbo Baggins and his Dwarven employers must brave talking spiders, scheming humans, CGI Dragons and interfranchisal reference synergy as this wholly unnecessary and overlong bloat-fest comes spilling from the pens of the filmmakers..

Woe to the fan who thought the first film was "close enough" to the original story to give it a passing grade.  Your investment has paid off in even longer stretches of the iffy material from the first film instead of continued dedication to the source material.  Long protracted action sequences that bounce from CG set to CG set and rubbery cartoon physics.  Wholly invented dialogue, ruined characters and added scenarios that the heirs of the JRR Tolkien estate must be choking on like dogs with a particularly festering bone.  Flat, ugly and obvious CGI that makes one tear up at the thought of the solid, feral worlds that were generated in the LOTR trilogy.  It smacks of an egoist's cash grab powered by a greedy studio system looking for the bigger ROI (like ROTK).  The changes to the story domino, one upon the other, creating even more changes and more differences, severing the tale completely from its beloved novel.

Some will say detractors are making mountains out of molehills, that the increase in action and romantic subplots beyond the source material is directly relative to the higher critical scores and audience reactions.  To that we say the lonely mountain is the entire point, and this movie proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that The Hobbit could have been just 2 movies, directly lifted from the novel of the same name and with all source material beautifully referenced (just like the LOTR trilogy before it).  Instead this movie is all filler and fluff with a reluctant grasp on Tolkien at best.  A fanfiction writer's dream, and a fever nightmare for believers in what could have been.

4 Female Dwarves with Beards out of 10 (BAD)