TheRetroCritic

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Another year, another Peter Jackson epic about little people walking towards pointy mountains. What is this? 2002? After the decent yet slightly underwhelming The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , it was time to kick things up a notch. At least entertainment-wise because one involving action scene in a three-hour-long movie isn't going to cut it. Not again, anyway. Luckily, with The Desolation Of Smaug , we need not waste time in The Shire (always the least compelling place in those movies) for there's a Lonely Mountain to finally reach with a big friggin' dragon inside of it. The film, happily, doesn't disappoint. This time around, Bilbo and his dwarf buddies not only face a marijuana-injected forest peopled with big-ass spiders but also an unfriendly bunch of elves, orcs aplenty, some Manimal -style bear dude, Stephen Fry and, of course, good old Benedict Smaug-berbatch. Similarly to how The Fellowship Of The Ring ended, key players in the main story are now

To celebrate the release of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug today, here is a little parody/homage to the whole thing in the form of a chapter from little known writer J.R. Dallas' opus The Small Man Chronicles: There Be Dragons . (click the picture below to read) And, if you get lost, here's a map:

Here's the first trailer for Peter Jackson's new The Hobbit movie. Loads of barrels in this one.

Just when you thought the Lord Of The Rings movies couldn't possibly get any more epic, Return Of The King comes along and blows its predecessors completely out of the water. Which is not to say that the other two films weren't great but in terms of sheer cinematic grandeur, this really raised the bar for the swords and sorcery genre big time. All those plot threads and countless subplots which didn't always feel like they were going anywhere come together and we finally get the epic resolution we deserve. Between those crazy battles involving giant elephants, a Witchking, dragon-type things and about a gazillion people and the more quietly distressing ring-bearer quest, which looks pretty doomed to failure throughout, there's hardly a moment to breathe! It's even a bit hard to list everything that even goes on in this movie. Let's just say that the highlights include John Noble being awesome as crazy old Denethor, Legolas taking down an elephant all by hi