I think Desolation of Smaug at least cleared the bar of being ever so slightly better than An Unexpected Journey, but only by a hair. A lot of the same complaints apply here, every scene seems too long, most do not feel impactful, and there are plot lines shoehorned in just to pad the movie or check off some checkboxes for Hollywood blockbusters (Kíli and Tauriel I am looking at you). I do not think this move did anything better than Unexpected Journey, it just did a few things less bad, and had more Smaug.

The action scenes here I feel are the more guilty of Hollywood blockbuster-fication. The river scene especially feels straight out of a pure action or comic book flick. There is nothing serious or impactful about them, they are too over the top to take seriously. They also just go on and on in a way that feels impossible to really track. It is fun watching Legolas snipe one or two baddies, but they really beat that dead horse in the name of fan service.

The only real highlight of the film is the Smaug. The animation of Smaug still holds up and is great. The banter between Smaug and Bilbo is also clever and tense. However, the action scene that follows falls into the same trap as the river barrel scene. What especially makes the scene worse, is as a viewer we are pretty certain all of the dwarves are going to make it out safely, so there is a real lack of tension in the sequence. It is just another scene, like so many in the movie, that halfway through you question why does this feel like it is just going on forever?