After cruelly and brilliantly leaving me hanging with the dragon opening its’ eye amongst more gold than I could have ever imagined at the end of An Unexpected Journey, I couldn’t wait for the next Hobbit film, titled The Desolation of Smaug. However, two questions remained to be seen, ‘Could Peter Jackson continue with the standard he set in An Unexpected Journey?’ and ‘Would the dragon live up to expectations’? In a word…’yes’.

DoS picks up with our group of dwarves led by King Thorain, accompanied by their hobbit/thief Bilbo and their wizard Gandalf continuing on their journey to reclaim the dwarves’ homeland of Erebor from the dragon, named Smaug, who took it from them years ago. And as before, they continue to jump from obstacle to another to get there.

In my review of An Unexpected Journey, I talked about the cheesy tone of it and how it worked well. My concern here was that as the journey became harder and the situations more dire that the film would begin to take on an entirely different feel, or a feel much more similar to the Lord of the Rings. To Peter Jackson’s everlasting credit this was not the case. The best example is during a sequence when the dwarves attempt to escape from the elves who are holding them prisoner. This sequence takes place with the dwarves rolling down a river in barrels with elves and orcs running after them down the banks. From one of the head elves balancing on two dwarves heads shooting orcs with his bow and arrows to one of the dwarves popping out of the water and rolling through a dozen orcs in his barrel before landing safely once again in the water, this scene is entertaining, fun, and believable because the tone had already been set in An Unexpected Journey.

I also talked in my review of An Unexpected Journey about how the tone works so well because of short bits, good timing, and larger than life characters, and that applies here as well, but there are moments where I started to see signs of what could become a much bigger problem. I’m not sure what is in the book, but there are a lot of extra characters introduced in this film, both on the good (Tauriel) and evil (Bolg) side, and it starts to feel a bit crowded, which in turn disrupts the timing. As a result, the same short bits that worked so well in the AUJ seem arrive a little later this time as opposed to being spot on previously because the breaks in between are drug out by too much focus on too many characters. As for the larger than life characters that worked so well in AUJ, they almost seem to get lost in the shuffle competing for screen time with the rest of them.

However, there is one larger than life character that is introduced here, officially anyways, that gets plenty of screen time, doesn’t get lost in the shuffle and certainly doesn’t disappoint, and that is Smaug. I haven’t gasped at special effects this awesome since Jurassic Park and Benedict Cumberpatchs’ voice is the perfect match for this menacing marvel. The last 45 minutes are easily the films best, giving plenty of time for me to revel in the sight and sound of Smaug, and then upping the ante in a magnificent sequence where the dwarves battle Smaug through the inner workings of the mine, once again culminating in a cliffhanger that made me want to yell at the screen. So far so, so, so good for The Hobbit.