After a bumbling start with last year’s disappointing The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, this year’s installment brings the trilogy back on track with high-octane action and incredible visuals not seen since Peter Jackson’s initial foray into Middle Earth with the Lord of the Rings.

The Desolation of Smaug continues the group’s journey towards the Lonely Mountain. This time, however, their quest is littered with attacks from the ever-expanding army of Orcs as well as also the introduction of new characters, notably the Milkwood Elves and the return of a LOTR favourite, Legolas.

The appearance of one new character in the film, however, has not been anticipated enthusiastically by fans of the book and Tolkien purists.  Jackson created the character of Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), who is head of the Elven guard and acts as a potential love interest for Legolas, as well as for one of the younger dwarves, Kili.  Love triangles are the paragon of filmic clichés, but the dynamic is rendered subtly in the film with poignant looks and brief moments of warmth from the otherwise steely characters. Some may say that this romantic edge is unprecedented and perhaps a Hollywood influence, but it fleshes out the characters and adds a dash of human vulnerability. If the Arwen/Aragorn plotline from the LOTR film is used as a marker, Jackson has clearly mastered the art of Middle Earth tragi-romance. 

The character of Tauriel herself adds a welcome feminine presence in the male-dominated cast but she does not jar with the film, slipping seamlessly into the plot and appears a genuine part of the Tolkien universe.  

This film also begins to link The Hobbit with the LOTR films and books through the development of a feeling of ill and evil pervading Middle Earth. We see more of the necromancer’s lair and his growing power, in addition to the effect of the ring on Bilbo. We see the beginning of the well-known obsessively possessive behaviour associated with the ring’s power.  The main force of evil in the film is of course Smaug.  The dragon is a stunningly beautiful creation in all of its slithering glory, voiced with hair-raising charm and magnetism by Benedict Cumberbatch. 

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug differs to its predecessor in one essential way - the latter was a drawn-out affair and did not support Jackson’s decision to divide the rather slim book into three films. The Desolation of Smaug, however, is a consistently intense effort that strands viewers at the end of the film in the midst of a frustratingly tense moment – the promise of a 2014 release for the final installment seems achingly far away.