The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

If This is to End in Fire, Then We Will All Burn Together!

Fans of my reviews may remember that last year I was extremely upset by The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  I went into the movie unaware of the fact that Peter Jackson had split one book into three movies, leaving me angered over the fact that nothing had been resolved by the ending of the movie.  Going into today’s movie, I was aware but was perhaps still a bit sore about the perceived deception.  We’ll see how that worked out for this movie as I review The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, based on a novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, adapted for screen by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Guillermo del Toro, directed and co-written by Peter Jackson, and starring Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Evangeline Lilly, Orlando Bloom, Luke Evans, Lee Pace, Stephen Fry, Graham McTavish, Ken Stott, Aiden Turner, Dean O’Gorman, Mark Hadlow, Jed Brophy, Adam Brown, John Callen, Peter Hambleton, William Kircher, James Nesbitt, Stephen Hunter, Manu Bennett, Cate Blanchett, Mikael Persbrandt, and Sylvester McCoy.

We still Hobbitin’, y’all!  Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) accompanies a group of Dwarves lead by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) to try to recapture the Arkenstone from the Lonely Mountain where it’s kept by the dragon Smaug.  The Arkenstone will somehow help Thorin become a king again or some shit.  On the way, their time is wasted by a skin-changer named Beorn (Mikael Persbrandt), some elves named Tranduil (Lee Pace), Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), and some Orcs.  Also, they meet Bard (Luke Evans) when they go to the cleverly named Lake-town, led by Stephen Fry.

If Thorin decided that he wanted to share his kingdom and he wanted to divide the Arkenstone amongst the other Dwarves, do you know how he would cut the Arkenstone?  With an Arken-saw!  I thought of that joke during the movie and, though I have told many of the people that I know read these reviews, I just want it to be available to cause pain throughout the entire internet.  As far as this movie goes, I again found myself angered by my expectations for it, but that anger was tempered with the experiences I gained from the first movie.  When I saw the first Hobbit, I didn’t realize that Jackson had split one book into three movies, leaving me angry.  I expected this movie to have me see Smaug desolated.  Turns out they mean the desolation CAUSED BY Smaug.  Youse is a tricky bitch, Jackson!  But going into the movie knowing the history of anger I had with the series allowed my expectations to compensate for it and I would say that I ultimately enjoyed the movie.  I still felt like there was a lot of wasted time with walking over mountains, stumbling through the woods, and conversations between Dwarves and Elves about the moon, and still don’t feel like there’s anything beyond a financial reason for this to be three movies, but it was still pretty entertaining.  Though he was a small part in the movie, I also appreciated the “skin-changer.”  Well, I guess it’s more accurate to say that I appreciated that they called him a skin-changer.  “Were-bear” would have sounded odd.

The look was good as you’d probably expect it to be, but there were some parts that didn’t feel like they held up as well.  Mainly parts of the white water rafting scene, and mainly just the parts of those scenes that appeared to have been filmed with a GoPro for some reason.  But I liked the scenes with Smaug.  Dragons are awesome.  And those scenes were visually spectacular.  Not just was the dragon awesome, but the constantly spilling gold coins added a level of difficulty to the rendering that I respect.  And Smaug looked scary as hell through most of his scenes, but I have to imagine that there was no way he looked anything but adorable when he was burrowing down into the gold where he was sleeping.  I imagine it looked like a little puppy burrowing into a pile of blankets with his nose.

The action was also pretty good in this movie.  I particularly liked the fat dwarf barrel fight because it was pretty funny and all of the fights involving Legolas and Tauriel because elven fighting is pretty awesome.  It’s like martial arts mixed with Hawkeye from Avengers bow and arrow action.

The cast also did find jobs in this movie.  I thought it was dangerous of this movie to add Luke Evans to the cast, though.  Not because I don’t expect him to be good, but because he is so easily confusable with Orlando Bloom, who was already in this movie.  Thankfully, Evans looks more like Will Turner from Pirates of the Caribbean and Bloom looks more like Legolas in this movie, so it was easy to keep them separated.  But his character didn’t give me any problems.  Other people in relation to his character did.  What the hell kind of logic is it to not pay attention to his ideas because his great great grandfather had a shitty aim?  Thank God no one that I know ever went to the gun range with my ancestors or I’d have even fewer people reading my reviews.

If the Necromancer in this movie had a puppy that needed to go to the bathroom, would it have to use the doggy door of Dol Guldur?  Sorry, that was another terrible joke I thought of that I wanted to punish you with.  The Desolation of Smaug was another good Hobbit movie whose greatest problem is the fact that I don’t feel that they need to be 3 (or possibly even 2) movies.  There is enough wasted time and side stuff that could’ve been cut out, but it still looks great, has some exciting action, and a great cast.  So I’m still going to recommend you watch this movie, but I personally won’t be purchasing a Hobbit movie until they come in one package.  I would’ve given this movie series enough money by then.  The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug gets “I merely wanted to gaze upon your magnificence, to see if you were as great as the old tales say” out of “I did not believe them.”

WATCH REVIEWS HERE!  YouTube  OTHER JOKES HERE!  Twitter  BE A FAN HERE!  Facebook  If you like these reviews so much, spread the word.  Keep me motivated!  Also, if you like them so much, why don’t you marry them?!

Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Season 1 (2010)

After the last two movies I watched, I required a palate cleansing and, quite frankly, I think you all need one as well.  So I will do a few macho manly reviews to help.  Also, I will do my very first TV review at the very same time.  So grab/scratch your balls, break wind, and join me for my review of season 1 of the Starz TV show Spartacus: Blood and Sand, starring Andy Whitfield, Lucy Lawless, John Hannah, Peter Mensah, Man Bennett, Nick Tarabay, Viva Bianca, and Jai Courtney.  There’s a lot more, but I’ll probably name them as they come up.

Spartacus should be a fairly familiar story but, as I watched this show at the behest of my roommate who had not seen the Kubrick film and did not even know the name of the main star, the plot will still warrant explanation.  But, be warned, as I watched this all at the same time as it’s now on DVD, I will go through the entire plot of season 1 and there will be spoilers.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand starts with an unnamed Thracian (Andy Whitfield) joining the Roman auxiliary against the Getae to protect his land, but he’s soon betrayed when he realizes the Getae move towards his village (and wife) and the commander Claudius Glaber (Craig Parker) won’t assist them.  The Thracian and a few others beat up the commander and head towards the village, but they’re too late for the bulk of the village.  The Thracian does, however, meet up with his wife who was outside the village when the attack happened.  But Glaber has followed and takes the Thracian and his wife Sura (Erin Cummings) into custody and slavery.  For his mutiny, he’s sentenced to be executed in the gladiator arena in a fight against four gladiators in Capua, Italy.  Somehow, the Thracian defeats the 4 gladiators and is given to Lentulus Batiatus (John Hannah) to be trained as a gladiator.  Batiatus names the Thracian Spartacus after a Thracian king and ferocious warrior.

Now at the ludus for Batiatus, Spartacus is put under the tutelage of the Doctore (Peter Mensah) but refuses to train.  This gains him the disdain of other gladiators, most notably Crixus (Man Bennett) the undefeated and Barca the beast of Carthage.  He befriends Varro (Jai Courtney) who is only competing as a gladiator to pay off his debts and support his wife and child.  Batiatus gains Spartacus’ performance by promising to locate and purchase Sura if Spartacus can earn the money and fame to gain their freedom.  He tries to rush his fame by challenging Crixus but is nearly killed by him.  Then Spartacus must earn his way back to fame by fighting in underground arenas and it nearly drives him mad.  But he regains popularity and becomes the “Champion of Capua” by teaming with Crixus against Theokoles, the shadow of death.  The only man that has survived an encounter with Theokoles is the Doctore.  Crixus is nearly killed but helps Spartacus defeat him.  Batiatus delivers Sura to him, but she has been mortally wounded while being transported, allegedly by bandits, as told by the driver.  Casting off his old life as a Thracian, Spartacus owns his fate.

Spartacus becomes the best of the ludus and handily defeats anyone in his way.  At what is supposed to be an exhibition, the magistrate’s son, Numerius – driven by Glaber’s wife Ilithyia (Viva Bianca) – calls for Spartacus to kill Varro, who has practically become Spartacus’ brother.  Spartacus is grief-stricken and it’s made worse when he sees that the driver of his wife’s carriage has no scar on him, and forces him to confess that Batiatus ordered her murder to untether Spartacus, then Spartacus kills him.  Spartacus enlists the help of the gladiators, including Crixus and Doctore (now revealed to be Oenomaus), and together they kill everyone in the ludus except for Ilithyia, who escapes.  And that leaves us to the events of season 2.

First, let me tell you what I expected of the show.  I expected this to be vaguely interesting with a bunch of tits and buff jock dudes fighting.  What I actually received was an enthralling story … with a bunch of tits and buff jock dudes fighting.  This is a really good show, which hopefully won’t fall now that Andy Whitfield has died.  I can’t remember the movie very well, but I had looked up Spartacus on Wikipedia and I suppose the story sticks pretty well to the story of Spartacus.  Moreover, who cares, it’s an awesome story.  And there are a great many titties in this show as well, and a couple of unwelcome dicks too.  Why wouldn’t you watch a show with an awesome story, lots of blood and action, AND Xena’s titties appearing frequently.  Problematically on this end, they cut a dude’s wang off in one episode as punishment for trying to kill Spartacus, but the dude actually didn’t give away that it was Ilithyia that told him to do it.  Which I don’t understand.  I will give up ANYBODY for ANYTHING if the threat is the removal of my wang.

The look of this show amazed me most of all.  I don’t watch TV very often so I must’ve missed the steps in between TV as I knew it and being able to almost recreate the look of 300 on a television show.  It looks almost identical to the movie, and has tons of realistic blood and gore to go with it.  It astounds me that there was a time that one or two episodes of this show would’ve been the most expensive movie ever, if the technology was even possible.  But now we’re at a time when they can do this on TV.  Though hard to explain, the transitions they often use of blood spraying and battle happening is very well done.

I’m down with all the performances in this show as well.  Everyone performs, at the very least, adequately.  The wording they use and accents they attempt would draw on the nerves if not for the often clever dialogue that is delivered by it.  But I feel that I was pleasantly surprised by the ability of the cast.  Generally I wouldn’t expect that much out of super attractive women and overly buff jockish dudes, but all of them are great.  I think I was most surprised by Manu Bennett, who has the look of someone that could barely string words together, but he has a very difficult performances of falling in love with a slave girl but having to hide it because Xena wants him and that would mean the death of them both.  He has a lot of good performances in this show.

I definitely recommend you all check out this show.  If you’re a lady like my roommate Richard, you may become unnerved by some of the gore and may perhaps not appreciate the very sexual nature, but don’t let it scare you off from enjoying a good show.  I give this movie “I AM SPARTACUS!” out of 1165.

And, as always, please rate, comment, and/or like this post and others.  It may help me get better.