The Hobbit- The Desolation of Smaug

Last month I saw the Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, aka: Hobbit part 2 and thought I'd share a few insights. Overall, I liked it but there were just a couple details that I had a hard time getting over.

1) When the Dwarves are escaping from the Elves and floating down the river in their OPEN barrels there is a point when one of the barrels comes out of the river and then proceeds to bounce around and take out at least 12 of the Orcs that are hunting them. It looked like footage from a pin ball machine game. That scene was a little bit too much. I know the entire movie is fantasy and fake but that is pushing it!

2) The other scene was when the Dwarves are in Smaug's lair and he is chasing them around and they conveniently start up the bellows and prior gold smithing production and they have tons liquid gold flowing within minutes and Thorin hops into a metal pan and maneuvers it like a canoe on the molten gold without it burning him up. When gold turns to liquid it is hot right? Metal conducts heat right? Oh well.

It's been over 35 years since I read The Hobbit, so I'm not sure if either of these two specifics were in the book but they both left a bad taste in my mouth. If you are going to spend millions of dollars to produce a movie, why mess it up with dumb details that impair the movie's credibility?

I was reminded of this problem the other night when I watched Benedict Cumberbatch pretending to play the violin in the BBC series Sherlock. It's so good on so many levels, then they throw in a horrible air-violin performance. Even with his back turned to the camera it was obviously fake. This is one of my movie pet peeves that swill never go away.

Anyway, the Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was still better than most movies and I give it 8.0 stars despite my nitpicking.