THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG
Director: Peter Jackson
Cert: 12A. Running time: 161 minutes
In contrast to the first part of Tolkein’s story, the second instalment The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug concerns itself with the connection between greed, obsession, decay and darkness.
The film recognises evil in the human heart, and so the epic battles are not only between armies, but within the characters themselves. It also raises the question of whether the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and ultimately affirms the value of the individual. At one point, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) says of the shapeshifter Beorn: ‘The only enchantment he is under is his own’.
While the film is often heavy-handed in the way it makes its points, it does draw thematic parallels between its various characters (and their corresponding realms), many of whom represent various stages of moral and resulting outward decay.
Even our heroes struggle with such matters, with the dwarf king Thorin (Richard Armitage) being tempted by greed (and the lure of power), and the eponymous hobbit Bilbo (Martin Freeman, excellent in perhaps his most multi-faceted role) struggling with the pull of the ring.When Bilbo almost tells Gandalf about the ring at the beginning, but then decides not to, telling him that what he found was ‘my courage’, Gandalf replies, ‘Good. You’ll need it...’, implying both that he knows more than he’s letting on, and that true courage is to do with choosing good rather than evil, something which the ring will test.
Dangling question
Though the film is largely concerned with darkness, and is surprisingly scary, it nonetheless sets forth the need for good to oppose it. When Gandalf confronts the Necromancer (Benedict Cumberbatch), the latter tells the former: ‘There is no light that can overcome this darkness’. While this question is left hanging at the end of the film, it will be explored further in next year’s concluding part of the trilogy, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, and of course in the already-produced Lord of the Rings trilogy, which is about the ultimate triumph of good over evil.
The Hobbit films are very much not for Tolkien purists, but work in their own right, and as an extension of The Lord of the Rings films, to which there are many parallels.
