Tron 3 is confirmed for Autumn shoot, first look at Maze Runner 2 and Guy Ritchie reveals King Arthur

The follow up to the 1982 sci-fi cult classic Tron had mixed success commercially and critically but Joseph Kosinski has been determined to make a sequel to his Legacy – a film more renowned for the Daft Punk soundtrack. In a surprising announcement, the Oblivion director has confirmed his project is set to shoot this autumn. From what we’ve heard, it sounds as if various cast members, including Jeff Bridges (True Grit), Garrett Hedlund (Unbroken), Olivia Wilde (Rush) and Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins). Perhaps Michael Sheen (The Queen) can return as his eccentric club owner Castor.

Next today is Sherlock Holmes director Guy Ritchie’s first look on the set of his fantasy epic Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur. The franchise starter will star Charlie Hunnam (Pacific Rim, Sons of Anarchy), Jude Law (Artificial Intelligence, The Aviator), Astrid Berges Frisbey (I Origins), Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond, Guardians of the Galaxy), Mikael Persbrandt (In a Better World, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug) and Eric Bana (Hanna, Munich, Stark Trek).

Sci-fi action The Maze Runner took us all by surprise when it significantly outgrossed fellow young adult flicks Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars, despite those film’s great success in the US. The sequel to it, The Scorch Trials, was quickly confirmed and the first stills have been revealed. The plot this time sees the Gladers enduring WCKD’s brutal second challenge. It’ll star Dylan O’Brien (Teen Wolf), Kaya Scodelario (Moon), Thomas Brodie Sangster (Wolf Hall), Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones), Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad), Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan) and Patricia Clarkson (Shutter Island) with director Wes Ball.

The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials – September 28th

Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur – July 22nd 2016

Tron 3 – 2017

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies review

Director: Peter Jackson

Starring: Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Evangeline Lilly, Aidan Turner, Orlando Bloom, Ian McKellen, Luke Evans, Lee Pace, Manu Bennett, Cate Blanchett, Dean O’Gorman, Graham McTavish, Ken Stott, Billy Connolly, Ryan Gage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, James Nesbitt, Stephen Hunter, Adam Brown, Sylvester McCoy, Mikael Persbrandt

It’s no secret that Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy hasn’t received quite the adulation as his Lord of the Rings films which this succeeds. An Unexpected Journey in particular has a mass of critics who may well have just been baying for blood. The stage was set for a grand action packed finale to redeem the perhaps slow-building preludes of the previous films. Is this the glory of Return of the King once more?

With Smaug’s (Cumberbatch’s) awakening destroying Lake-Town, Bilbo (Freeman) is caught in the crossfire of men, led by Bard (Evans), and Elves, led by Thranduil (Pace), seeking to claim some of the dwarves’ regained wealth. However, the new king beneath the mountain, Thorin (Armitage), is less willing to dispense of his riches while Gandalf (McKellen) learns of a legion of Orcs similarly converging on Erebor.

This unexpected third instalment was only confirmed mid-2012 and it’s sadly evident that this entire trilogy has been scrapped to a finish. The “trilogy-effect” takes its toll the most here; the scattershot narrative is elongated and overstuffed with some utterly pointless plot threads. Resident cheat Alfrid gets a ridiculous amount of screentime without ever contributing anything of significance. Bard remains one of the few grounded and plausible heroes of the bunch but the human characters are by far the least interesting around.

Thankfully the most human of all the characters keep up their brilliant dynamic. Freeman’s Bilbo and McKellen’s Gandalf only have rare moments together but their own performances are pitch perfect. The surprise hit this time round is Richard Armitage’s Thorin. The king beneath the mountain’s reign becomes plagued by dragon sickness in a borderline terrifying transformation for our once hero.

Although lacking the comic spark of his duo with John Rhys Davis, Orlando Bloom is still fairly entertaining as action-Elf Legolas but there ought to have been more of a set up for the character that we meet sixty years later. Even Bilbo hasn’t become the madcap adventurer that we come to know him as. Five Armies sets up for the world of LOTR but not the people.

Even with the shortest runtime yet, this has by far the most filler space of all the series but at least some of Jackson’s invention in the narrative works successfully. In DoS the Kili-Tauriel-Legolas love triangle felt forced but here it fuels a personal level to the later action scenes. The White Council’s misadventures in Dol Goldur greatly help to develop the LOTR links and the overall shared universe feel.

That latter sequence ends disappointingly early with Sauron’s bizarre acid rock light display replacing potential scenes depicting Saruman’s corruption. That may well have been set aside to focus on the main battle’s development. Each faction’s motives, characters and power are quickly established but swept aside at the arrival of the orcs.

What The Hobbit lost in successful narrative structure it more than gained in visual brilliance. Peter Jackson is at his most David-Lean like in this instalment and all the performances are exactly on point. It may be more of a fizzle out than the big bang we wanted to end the series but is still a worthy entry to both fantasy perfection and cinematic history.

8/10

“I am glad to have shared in your perils. Each and every one of them. It is far more than any Baggins deserves!”

Simon Kinberg talks X-Men, Richard Armitage on The Five Armies and Snyder set for Justice League

The sequel to 2013’s Man of Steel has began to look increasingly like a straightforward Justice League film, despite the working title being Batman vs Superman. Ben Affleck is Batman, Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman, Henry Cavill is Superman and Ray Fisher was recently confirmed to play Cyborg while Grant Gustin may be to man to portray The Flash, should the upcoming TV series tie in with the film franchise. All we need for a full set would be Aquaman (who Matt Damon has been rumoured for) and Green Lantern, or maybe Hawkman or Martin Manhunter, but we’ve discovered something that my change that.

Zack Snyder (Man of Steel, Dawn of the Dead, 300, Watchmen) has been announced to direct Justice League, which we can assume is a different project to Batman vs Superman. Despite introducing many of the team members early on, we may have to till 2018 to catch of DC’s super-team fully in action. B vs S will also star Jesse Eisenberg, Amy Adams, Callan Mulvey, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Tao Okamoto and Laurence Fishbourne.

Meanwhile, X-Men’s writer/producer Simon Kinberg has spoken out about the future of both X-Men and Fox’s Marvel properties. “Fox does understand that they are sitting on this massive universe with the X-Men, also with Fantastic Four obviously,” says Kinberg. “But they definitely have a sense of it and there’s a real interest and appetite for how to explore and expand that world.”

“It makes sense to tell some of these stories in TV,” he continues, “partly because there’s just not enough screens to do all these characters, and also because the serialized format of comic books is better suited for TV. Because that’s it, every week you come back to the same characters, different story, and in comic books every week it’s the same characters, different story.”

Back to the feature film side of things, Fox are trying to get into cinemas Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse (starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence), Jeff Wadlow’s X-Force, Lauren Shuler Donner’s Gambit (starring Channing Tatum) and Tim Miller’s Deadpool (starring Ryan Reynolds).  “It makes sense to me,” says Kinberg of a movie adaptation. “Genuinely it’s early phases, early days, but if you’re gonna do a Deadpool movie, I think you’ve gotta do a hard-R, darker movie and he is the perfect character to do it with.”

There’s been a recent announcement that The Hobbit’s final chapter will be called The Battle of the Five Armies. Richard Armitage, the portrayer of Dwarven prince Thorin Oakenshield, has elaborated about the epic finale of Peter Jackson’s sextet of Middle Earth adventures. “There’s a couple of big surprises.” He goes on to enthuse, “I think it will probably be quite a cinematic event.”

“It’s going to be quite a nostalgic event I think,” continues Armitage. “It’s going to be 15 years of seeing Middle Earth on the big screen, the culmination of Peter Jackson’s life’s work.” The Five Armies will star Martin Freeman, Luke Evans, Ian McKellen, Evangeline Lilly, Manu Bennett, Orlando Bloom, Aidan Turner, Mikael Persbrandt, Lee Pace, Cate Blanchett, Dean O’Gorman, Ken Stott, James Nesbitt, Ian Holm, Sylvester McCoy, Lawrence Makoare, Billy Connolly, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving and Benedict Cumberbatch.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – December 12th

Batman vs. Superman – May 6th 2016

Justice League – 2018

Tuorhoth returns with the latest on Hobbit 3, Justice League, Avengers 2, Star Trek 3, Spider-Man, Jungle Book and more!

We’re sad to say that we’ve been away on a week of huge movie news, which we’re now dubbing MEGA-NEWS. We’ve got the scoop on pretty much every major movie coming our way in the next couple of years, and beyond, besides an official casting for Star Wars: Episode VII but we’re not completely in the dark with Star Trek Into Darkness’ JJ Abrams’ sequel to the world’s biggest movie franchise.

There’s a huge amount of spin offs to Star Wars in various medias. TV shows like Clone Wars and (now) Rebels, video games such as Battlefront, Knights of the Old Republic and the hugely successful Force Unleashed saga and numerous comic books and graphic novels have revived the series through some difficult times. However, some the most renowned SW side stories are from the novels such as Timothy Zahn’s work (above) and Darth Plagueis. Some of these books are light fan-fiction but most of it is genuine, George Lucas-approved canon to the main films. Despite this, we now know that the storytelling works of Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan (Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi) and Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3) are not to take off from the novels.

Producer and writer Simon Kinberg informs us that “For the movies, the canon is the canon, and the canon is the six films that exist. It’s all about honouring the movies and telling a new story.” We still don’t know of a single cast member or title but that’s set to change as, all going well, filming finally begins this May. Star Wars: Episode VII – December 18th 2015

The life of technological visionary Steve Jobs has once, unsuccessfully, been told on screen with Ashton Kutcher in the lead role. Sony’s alternative to this has been in their minds for a long time and it seemed quite promising when it appeared that David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Seven, The Social Network) was to direct with Christian Bale (The Dark Knight, American Hustle, The Prestige) starring.

It’s now apparent that Sony are negotiating with Danny Boyle for the directing job. Boyle, the British writer and director behind Trainspotting, 127 Hours, 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Trance, Shallow Grave and Slumdog Millionaire as well as the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony, is the second highly esteemed director Sony have approached after Fincher but the most exciting reveal of all of this is that Boyle may be reuniting with his star of The Beach, and five time Oscar nominee, Leonardo Di Caprio (The Wolf of Wall Street, Titanic, Inception, Django Unchained, The Departed) for the film.

Ray Fisher has only one on-screen acting role so far, 2008 short film The Good The Bad and The Confused, and yet he’s swiftly becoming one of the most talked about young stars in Hollywood. He came into competition for the male lead in Star Wars, which he may be unlikely to get, but has just landed the biggest role in his career: he’s been cast as DC comics hero Cyborg in Zack Snyder’s (300, Watchmen, Dawn of the Dead) Man of Steel sequel Batman vs Superman. Despite that unconfirmed title, it seems as if this’ll much more of a Justice League themed adventure than we’d thought at the 2013 Comic-Con announcement. Fisher joins Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg, Diane Lane, Jeremy Irons, Holly Hunter, Callan Mulvey, Gal Gadot, Tao Okamoto and Laurence Fishburne in the cast. Batman vs Superman – May 6th 2016

Disney and Warner Bros are in a highly heated race to get a new remake of The Jungle Book to are screens. The latter found a great choice of director in Ron Howard (Rush, Apollo 13) before his replacement set up Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings/King Kong star and The Hobbit’s second unit director) for the job. Meanwhile Disney is far ahead; Elf and Iron Man’s Jon Favreau is nailed in to direct and we know that Idris Elba (Pacific Rim, The Wire, Luther, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom) will voice Shere-Kahn but another two stars are part of a new rumour. 12 Years a Slave’s Oscar winning supporting star Lupita Nyong’o is up for the role of Rackcha, Mowgli’s adoptive wolf-mother, while Scarlett Johansson (four time Golden Globe nominee of The Avengers and Lost in Translation fame) could be putting an interesting spin on Kaa, the hypnotising and villainous snake whose charms put the heroes in peril. The Jungle Book – October 9th 2015

Celebrating their 300th issue and their 25th anniversary, Empire Magazine are giving some incredible coverage of upcoming films including Marvel’s sci-fi sequel The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Joss Whedon, writer of The Avengers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Serenity and Toy Story, had this to say about the various villains in the film. “I fiercely dislike the idea of just throwing in more people for the sake of doing that. But last time I had all of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes versus one British character actor, and I needed more conflict.”

The chief villain is obviously the robotic Ultron and he may be Whedon’s highlight “I’m having a blast with Ultron,” Whedon said. “He’s not a creature of logic – he’s a robot who’s genuinely disturbed. We’re finding out what makes him menacing and at the same time endearing and funny and strange and unexpected, and everything a robot never is.” Star Robert Downey Jr (Iron Man) recently shared the very first on-set pic from the film (above) that also stars Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, Samuel L Jackson, Cobie Smulders, James Spader, Thomas Kretschmann, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Jeremy Renner, Hayley Atwell, Don Cheadle and Paul Bettany. The Avengers: Age of Ultron – May 1st 2015

Taking off from indie sci-fi hit Safety Not Guaranteed, writer/director Colin Trevorrow, who’s hinted at further instalments, takes on a huge role with the lead gig on dinosaur action reboot Jurassic World which has finally revealed some pics from their island photography. These sneak peeks offer a more futuristic style than we’d initially expected. The Jurassic Park sequel stars Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, Nick Robinson, Omar Sy, Katie McGrath, BD Wong Ty Simpkins, Jake Johnson, Judy Greer and Vincent D’Onofrio. Jurassic World – June 12th 2015.

Sadly, Star Trek and Fringe writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are going their seperate ways in order to focus on the bigger directing projects that have attracted them both. Kurtzman is the current candidate to direct Spider-Man spin-off Venom but Orci has expressed his desire to become the director of Star Trek 3.

Several directors, including Rupert Wyatt and Joe Cornish, had previously been rumoured after JJ Abrams opted out in favour of Star Wars. Should he get the job, it’d be the Mexican’s directorial debut while Kurtzman does have a shot-calling credit on indie drama People Like Us. Star Trek 3 – 2016

The Bourne Identity’s Doug Liman is the man behind the new Tom Cruise (Mission Impossible, Minority Report, Top Gun) sci-fi action Edge of Tomorrow. It sees a soldier forced to constantly relive a battle again and again until its success and unveiled a new poster today. With the impressive supporting cast of Emily Blunt (The Adjustment Bureau, Looper), Bill Paxton (Aliens, Agents of SHIELD) and Lara Pulver (Da Vinci’s Demons, Sherlock), it could surprise us but it’s set to be another throwaway Cruise flick that treads too closely to other films (in Oblivion’s case Moon and in this case Source Code). Edge of Tomorrow – May 30th.

There have already been some intriguing castings for Joe Wright’s (Hanna, Atonement, Pride and Prejudice) reboot of Disney animation Peter Pan. Unknown star Levi Miller will play a younger version of the titular role while Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy, Inside Llewyn Davis, Death Sentence) plays Pan’s adversary Hook, who currently serves under the flag of Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman – X-Men, Les Miserables, The Prestige). Rooney Mara (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network, Side Effects) will play American-Indian chief’s daughter Tiger Lily. Now an additional Amanda Seyfried (Mamma Mia, Les Miserables), Kathy Burke (Nil By Mouth, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and Nonso Anozie (Ender’s Game, The Grey) have officially joined the ensemble. Pan – July 17th 2015.

We were as thrilled as any when it was revealed that the five remaining members of Monty Python, the legendary British comedy sextet behind Life of Brian, The Flying Circus, The Meaning of Life and The Holy Grail, would be bravely running away onto the O2 stage for their final reunion but were as equally disappointed when the tickets sold out in an incredible 43 seconds. However, there may be a new way for the millions of fans missing out to enjoy the return of Mesrs Cleese, Jones, Gilliam, Idle and Palin. It’s been announced that 1500 screens (including 450 in the UK) across the globe will be presenting the show’s closing night as part of a worldwide live cinema event. Monty Python Live – June 20th.

One of the Spider-Man franchises biggest icons is one who is neither a superhero nor supervillain but Peter Parker’s chain-smoking, media-dictating Daily Bugle boss John Jonah Jameson Junior, portrayed excellently by JK Simmons in Sam Raimi’s original trilogy. However, he’s yet to appear in Marc Webb’s recent reiteration The Amazing Spider-Man. Webb, flanked by Amazing Spider-Man 2’s stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx and Dane DeHaan, spoke out about the possibility of JJJ’s return for future films at a Google+ fan Q&A.

“I like the idea very much of him coming up in the next film. It was more easy to accept a new Spider-Man than someone who could outdo J.K. Simmons in that role. He is so iconic. That’s something we’ve really talked about. Obviously I love that character because he poses such an interesting dilemma for Spider-Man. The answer is I don’t know, but I think you can expect to see him in the future.” The Amazing Spider-Man 3 – June 10th 2016. The Amazing Spider-Man 4 – 2018.

The final part of Peter Jackson’s epic fantasy trilogy, and Lord of the Rings prequel, The Hobbit is approaching fast but a report from TheOneRing hinted at a potential title change from There and Back Again to Into the Fire. Neither sounded quite as previous subtitles such as An Unexpected Journey or The Desolation of Smaug. It then took us by surprise to hear that the title as officially change to The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. The Oscar winning writer/director Jackson himself stepped out to say this.

“Our journey to make The Hobbit Trilogy has been in some ways like Bilbo’s own, with hidden paths revealing their secrets to us as we’ve gone along. “There and Back Again” felt like the right name for the second of a two film telling of the quest to reclaim Erebor, when Bilbo’s arrival there, and departure, were both contained within the second film. But with three movies, it suddenly felt misplaced—after all, Bilbo has already arrived “there” in the “Desolation of Smaug”.

“When we did the premiere trip late last year, I had a quiet conversation with the studio about the idea of revisiting the title. We decided to keep an open mind until a cut of the film was ready to look at. We reached that point last week, and after viewing the movie, we all agreed there is now one title that feels completely appropriate.”

Without trying to give too much away for the Tolkien-illiterate, The Battle of the Five Armies is a defining moment in Middle-Earth history and so I think it get’s a well deserved place on the titles. It’s been hinted that There and Back Again hasn’t been completely ditched and will appear on the various boxsets for the films so The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies will be the three films that make up our The Hobbit: There and Back Again trilogy.

Battle of the Five Armies will star Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Luke Evans, Evangeline Lilly, Ian McKellen, Benedict Cumberbatch, Orlando Bloom, Cate Blanchett, Lee Pace, Manu Bennett, Ian Holm, Sylvester McCoy, Aidan Turner, Ken Stott, James Nesbitt, Dean O’Gorman, Mikael Persbrandt, Billy Connolly, Graham McTavish, Hugo Weaving and Christopher Lee. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – December 12th

Zack Snyder talks Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman and Hobbit 3 rumours title change

We’ve known for a while that the third film of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings prequel trilogy, following An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug, The Hobbit is set to be subtitled There and Back Again but the usually reliable fan site The One Ring claims that change is afoot. It’s rumoured that a new title is being considered by Jackson and New Line – The Hobbit: Into the Fire. As well as a neat reference to Smaug, Tolkien fans and those with a good memory will recall the book’s chapter and the film’s line “Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” as its source. As cool as this sounds, I think There and Back Again better demonstrates the completion of Bilbo’s adventures and our time in Middle Earth.

Whatever it gets called, it’ll come out this Christmas and will star Martin Freeman, Luke Evans, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Manu Bennett, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace, Hugo Weaving, Ian Holm, Ryan Gage, Sylvester McCoy, Bret McKenzie, Billy Connolly, Mikael Persbrandt, Lawrence Makoare, Stephen Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch and Christopher Lee alongside the Dwarves, Aidan Turner, Dean O’Gorman, Graham McTavish, James Nesbitt, Adam Brown, Ken Stott, William Kirchir, Stephen Hunter, Peter Hambleton, Jed Brophy, John Callen, Mark Hadlow and Richard Armitage.

Man of Steel caused a strong reaction upon its 2013 summer release: some (including us) loved the hard hitting action and emotional involvement but others found it a head-bangingly loud fanfare, which it arguably is. It still brought in huge box office figures bringing in just shy of $700 million and becoming the 9th highest grossing film of the year. Its director, 300 and Watchmen’s Zack Snyder, is busy at work on the yet untitled sequel but he’s taken some time out to tell us about his plans for DC’s future.

“After Man Of Steel finished and we started talking about what would be in the next movie, I started subtly mentioning that it would be cool if he faced Batman. In the first meeting, it was like, ‘Maybe Batman?’ Maybe at the end of the second movie, some Kryptonite gets delivered to Bruce Wayne’s house or something. Like in a cryptic way, that’s the first time we see him.”

“But then, once you say it out loud, right? You’re in a story meeting talking about, like, who should Superman fight if he fought this giant alien threat Zod who was basically his equal physically, from his planet, fighting on our turf. You know, who to fight next? But I’m not going to say at all that when I took the job to do Man Of Steel that I did it in a subversive way to get to Batman. I really believe that only after contemplating who could face Superman did Batman come into the picture.”

“The thing also that’s really fascinating for me is that, even just in the tests we’ve been doing, the costumes, right? You basically have Batman and Superman — and this is without Ben (Affleck – above in Argo) and Henry (Cavill) in the costumes, but just like the stand-ins, just testing to see what the costumes look like. And you have them standing there and they’re standing in the same shot — and then we have Wonder Woman, you know, all three of them in the same shot. Even just for a test, you really have to go, ‘Wow, that’s crazy!’ Not only is it the first time that I’m seeing them, it’s the first time they’ve ever existed together on screen in a movie. Even just Batman and Superman standing next to each other. It’s kind of epic. It’s crazy. But it’s fun.”

The Man of Steel follow up will star Henry Cavill (Immortals, The Tudors), Ben Affleck (Argo, The Town), Amy Adams (American Hustle, The Master), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Now You See Me) Gal Gadot (Fast and Furious, Knight and Day), Jeremy Irons (The Lion King, Dead Ringers) Holly Hunter (The Piano, The Incredibles), Callan Mulvey (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 300: Rise of an Empire), Tao Okamoto (The Wolverine) and Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix, Apocalypse Now).

Batman vs Superman – May 6th 2016

The Hobbit: There and Back Again – December 12th

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug review

Director: Peter Jackson

Starring: Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Aidan Turner, Evangeline Lilly, Ian McKellen, Ken Stott Benedict Cumberbatch, Luke Evans, Orlando Bloom, Lee Pace, Graham McTavish, Stephen Fry, Manu Bennett, Lawrence Makoare, Ryan Gage, John Bell, James Nesbitt, Dean O’Gorman, Stephen Hunter, Sylvester McCoy, Mikael Persbrandt

Love or or hate it, An Unexpected Journey was not to the standard of The Lord of the Rings, the trilogy that The Hobbit was a prequel to. Now, The Desolation of Smaug has arrived and it’s not faultless but I’d happily class this as a return to Rings’ form for Peter Jackson.

The worst is not behind the company as former fish Hobbit-out-of-water Shire Bilbo Baggins (Freeman) once thought. The wizard Gandalf (McKellen) convinces himself to investigate the medlings of the dark Necromancer (Cumberbatch) in Dol Goldur and so leaves the group to face giant spiders and much worse, ie the merciless elf king Thranduil (Pace) and his son Legolas (Bloom), in the forests of Mirkwood. Meanwhile, new Orc on the block Bolg (Makoare) is on the track of the dwarves and Thorin’s (Armitage) desperation leads to a risky deal with a crooked mayor (Fry) and sending Bilbo into an uncertain meeting with the “dormant” dragon Smaug (Cumberbatch…again).

The Desolation of Smaug contains some of the grimmest moments that there’s been in Lord of the Rings/Hobbit franchise. Jackson really is honouring his horror roots with the terrifying spider sequence (it isn’t ripping off the one in Return of the King so don’t worry) but perhaps one to many decapitations. Some oppose it but the lighter moments, however ridiculous, are necessary to balance the terror for what’s essentially a kids movie.

The key advantage of Desolation is the fact that it can just get going into the action after a shady and brief entrance unlike the sluggish opening of An Unexpected Journey. We can get invested into the action almost immediately. The barrel chase is certainly the best set piece of the year but this time around the characters seem to be in no short supply of charm. This second instalment has built a palette of lovable characters; I can easily see Bard (Evans) and Kili (Aidan Turner) quickly becoming fan favourites!

There are quite a few setbacks. Both Lee Pace and Orlando Bloom failed to be engaging in any way, I think all of their lines are in the trailers. Despite still being billed as the lead star, Ian McKellen’s Gandalf has barely any screen time in this film and so his apparent chemistry with Freeman’s Bilbo is therefore non existent. Both Bard and Thorin are owed more lines and there’s a couple of scenes with fairly taccy CG.

All can be forgiven with the sheer terror of Smaug however. Cumberbatch voice work here surpasses his own “John Harrison” to become the villain of the year and possibly the highest quality CG there’s been in an on screen monster. In a way, his immense scale multiplies Bilbo’s courage as Martin Freeman once again delivers a spot on, and fresh, ordinary-guy-turned-hero character performance we’ve seen done wrong too many times.

The Desolation of Smaug has some of the most exciting action there’s been in a fantasy film for a few years. Generally, the performances of those who actually get decently sized roles are brilliant and it’s got some of the great oddball comedy moments of this year. There’s about ten minutes of footage I’d rather see in the extended editions but, as soon as you can except some of the ridiculous elements, you can enjoy the best adventure film there’s been in a while. This trilogy was never going to be quite as good as The Lord of the Rings but, as long as There and Back Again gets back into the action instantly, it will still be a huge fantasy spectacle.

9/10

“Truly the songs and tales fall utterly short of your enormity, oh Smaug the stupendous!”