by Jennifer AlLee
How do you take a relatively short fantasy novel and transform it into three movies? If you're Peter Jackson, you add lots and lots of extra stuff!
There's a lot of action in this one, and so many decapitations that one of my friends joked it would make a good drinking game. (Whenever an Orc loses his head, take a drink!) In my opinion, these sequences started off well, then went on a bit too long. It got to the point where I was noticing the choreography of the fighting more than the story being played out.
Being that it's the second piece of a trilogy, you expect it to end with a cliff hanger. But the ending is so abrupt, you actually heard people saying "no way" in the theater.
All in all, The Desolation of Smaug is a fun, fast movie. I did enjoy it and think you will too... if you can ignore the fact that "that wasn't in the book."
What about you? Have you seen this movie? What did you think?
JENNIFER ALLEE was born in Hollywood, California, and spent her first ten years living above a mortuary one block away from the famous intersection of Hollywood & Vine. Now she lives in the grace-filled city of Las Vegas, which just goes to prove she’s been blessed with a unique life. When she’s not busy spinning tales, she enjoys playing games with friends, attending live theater and movies, and singing at the top of her lungs to whatever happens to be playing on the car radio. Although she’s thrilled to be living out her lifelong dream of being a novelist, she considers raising her son to be her greatest creative accomplishment. She's a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Romance Writers of America, Christian Authors Network, and the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance. Her novels include The Pastor’s Wife, The Mother Road and A Wild Goose Chase Christmas from Abingdon Press; Diamond in the Rough and Vanishing Act, the first two books in the Charm and Deceit series, from Whitaker House and co-written with Lisa Karon Richardson; and the novella Comfort and Joy in the Christmas anthology, Mistletoe Memories from Barbour.
So what did you think of Smaug?
ReplyDeleteI will sit and watch all of them one day. I actually own one of the LOTR and haven't watched the whole thing, so I am way behind! Just give me the You Tube versions with Richard Armitage singing and I'm okay. Well, was he even in this one? doh?
ReplyDeleteI just saw this and loved it. I even liked it better than the first Hobbit movie.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, RA was in this one! He's Thorin Oakenshield, dwarf leader. You have to get used to his prosthetic dwarf hands, lol.