[2ndSndWve]

So, I finally watched Desolation of Smaug. And I usually don't say this, and I hate it when other people say this, but the book was way better. I didn't even like The Hobbit that much, but it did have some memorable bits... and every single one of them was either watered down or removed entirely for the movie. In the book, there was a lot of time devoted to Mirkwood, setting it up as a truly eerie place. In the movie, there's just spiders. Not only that, but Bilbo rescuing the dwarves was massively dumbed down, replacing the first truly helpful thing that Bilbo did in the book with elf ninjas doing elf ninja stuff. What really puzzles me is that they were trying to stretch a short (compared to any of the LOTR books) novel into a trilogy of three hour movies, and yet they cut the book up so heavily. And yet they still have time to throw in a new elf, make Legolas a main-ish character, make Bard into a character, and Gandalf's side adventure. Really the only thing the movie changed that I liked was the forge battle at the end. Overall, 5/10.