Peter Jackson is an interesting film maker. A background in indie films, specifically indie horror films, he was raised to the top of the A-List when he successfully pulled off adapting J.R.R. Tolkien’s _The Lord of the Rings_ trilogy to the big screen. Those movies are not perfect by any stretch but the books were so rich and full of detail that the theatrical releases actually felt like they were lacking despite being a combined length of over 9 hours.

Now we’re on the second part of his adaptation of _The Hobbit_, the book that preceded the epic trilogy that was _The Lord of the Rings_. That book however is actually pretty short and while it has enough detail to serve the story’s purpose it has nowhere near the depth or scope that the later trilogy does.

Herein lies one of the problems with _The Desolation of Smaug_: You can’t turn a 300 page book into 9 hours of movie without padding the story, and Jackson has padded the story so much, and messed up the pacing so much, that while I don’t think it’s a bad film I also don’t think it’s a great one.

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