Anyone who reads my drivel on a regular basis will have gleaned by now that I am a Tolkien guy. I credit his work with awakening my interest in literature; I still love to read
The Hobbit and
The Lord of the Rings. I also like the Peter Jackson films -- I think he did as good a job as he could with most of them. Sure, I disagree with some of his choices, but I am open to the idea of interpretation: he sees it the way he sees it and he makes choices not only in the interest of the source material, but in the interest of making a good movie. That is the nature of the beast.
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| Tolkien's own illustration of Smaug |
I just saw
The Desolation of Smaug -- the second film in the trilogy based on
The Hobbit. The first film in the trilogy,
An Unexpected Journey was actually my favorite of all of Jackson's adaptations, so far.
While I enjoyed this second film, I think that (so far) it is the weakest of his adaptations. Smaug, the dragon himself, was awesome in the truest sense of the word. In the end, though, I don't think the movie captured the charm of the original book the way the first one did.
