First, let's discuss the first Hobbit movie a bit. I liked it, but it had problems. It had problems with tone, it could shift from being a very serious movie to a very childish one and vice versa, which made you unsure of what kind of movie you were watching. This movie has less problems, some childish things do exist, but they are brief and don't change the tone of the whole movie. In a way the second part is in many ways more coherent.
I liked this movie. And thus I will start to list things I thought good:
1) Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel. She is great in her role as a female warrior elf. She carries the role well, and make her character seem less "inserted in the story (not from the source materials) and gives the movie a necessary female touch in a affair that otherwise would be a sausage fest (as the book is).
2) The special effects. Marvellous. And the first time I saw any practical use of 3-D with that darn bee, it only lasted a second though and then 3-D was as useless as ever.
3) Freeman and the Dwarves becoming more comfortable in their roles. Many things seemed more natural than in the First Hobbit Movie. They were never bad in the first one, but they felt like they now really had found their inner dwarves. This made it more easier to relate to the characters.
4) Smaug: the dragon was friggin awesome! It looked great and menacing. The design, how it breathed fire and the whole scenes with it fighting. And of course it's voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch!! And it's great.
Okay, now for the stuff that wasn't that good. This movie is not perfect. There are certainly things to critisize.
1) Gandalf's quest. It wasn't interesting. Gandalf vs. Sauron sounds awesome, but really, all the time we shifted to Gandalf's side adventure I just wanted it to end and go back to the main quest with Freeman and the Dwarves. It wasn't good.
2) Legolas. Orlando Bloom was not showing his a game. Unlike Tauriel his role felt force, probably because Bloom wasn't giving his all to make it work. Legolas felt boring and lifeless.
3) Smaug not dead yet: it really felt that this movie was not complete. Smaug was still alive and the battle still in the middle when the movie ended. I really felt this was bad. They built up this climatic battle, and while we got parts of it, we didn't get the finish. You can't end it in the middle like this!! Damnit, I won't remember everything they built up during the battle next year when we see the conclusion. A bad move.
I still liked the movie alot. Especially the Dragon Cumberbatch! More movies need Dragon Cumberbatch! But all in all, I feel now more and more that the Lords of the Rings movie were way better. Last year I still couldn't make up my mind and decided I needed to see more Hobbit to decide which series is better. Now I'm sure, LotR is much better than the Hobbit. Probably because in LotR we have three movies based on three long books. In the Hobbit we have three movies based on one relatively short book. It's still a fun watch though. I look forward to the third Hobbit movie.
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