The Desolation

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

One thing I'm not seeing a lot of people mention here (and elsewhere) is Bilbo. Is he as badly sidelined as all that? The lack of focus on him at points in the first film was troubling enough. It seems like most of what people are talking about as regards this film are "Tauriel", Legolas and to a lesser extent Bard.

Personally, I think Bilbo is of course good (Martin Freeman can't really do it badly), but was given a little too little time still, along with the rest of the Dwarves. And he was good, but the space and scenes in which he could truly shine were only a few. Like I mentioned above, the moment when he realizes he's alone with all his friends gone in the barrels was brilliant, possibly my favourite moment of the whole film; but that's like a five-second thing. Okay, maybe fifteen-second, actually And there are similar occassions like that all over the movie: minor highlights, but nothing "big", in my opinion. Which is a pity. Still, he is definitely one of the things that make this film enjoyable.

The reason why I e.g. put so much emphasis on how good the Wood-Elves or the Master of Lake-Town are was that I had expected especially Tauriel to be a total uncanonical infiltration of wannabe-female character who in reality is just Xena, Warrior Princess or somesuch with badly written lines and no personality. While the opposite is true; in this movie, it's Thorin who is Xenophobe, the Wheelbarrow-Rider, with badly written lines and no personality for most of the time.