The film opens in the town of Bree, where a small-statured traveller stopping at the inn of the Prancing Pony finds himself under watchful, unfriendly gazes until a mysterious figure comes to his aid. This time out, Jackson goes further still, producing a film that plays less like LoTR prequel than LoTR remake. Characters from the latter work (Galadriel, Saruman, Radagast) were imported for cameos, and the entire production was juiced up-over-written, over-orchestrated, over-CGI’d, over-everything’ed-to be more epic and grownup.
Last year’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first installment of Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy-the very phrase hits me like a wave of depression-took Tolkien’s slender children’s novel and reimagined it as a prequel to The Lord of the Rings. But Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is proof that when you go the other way-really, really far the other way-the result can be genuinely egregious. Lana Del Rey Is Still Searching for Happiness Spencer KornhaberĪs a general rule, I think the former temptation, over-fidelity, is the greater hazard.
