I was shocked at how quickly a year had passed. When I saw the first installment of “The Hobbit” last December, I thought I would have to wait forever for the next part. But time has flown, and now I’m sitting here writing this review.

First off, “Desolation of Smaug” was definitely more exciting to watch than “An Unexpected Journey,” so if the long travel scenes from the first film turned you off, give this one a chance.  This was definitely an “action-packed” movie and a lot of this action came from the character they added to the story.

Originally, the book doesn’t have any female characters, so the writers created Tauriel, a warrior elf from Mirkwood played by Evangeline Lilly. I was worried at first that she would seem out of place, a last minute addition, but Tauriel fit into the film nicely and proved to be a badass lady. However, with Tauriel came an unwanted and just plain weird love triangle.

On the bright side, Thranduil, the elf king of Mirkwood played by Lee Pace, was simply amazing with his cold nature and the return of Legolas (another non-canonical addition) and his fighting skills was definitely appreciated.

Overall, it was a great movie. They set up the first movie to have more plotlines than the original book, so if you’re going to continue to whine about it, I don’t have time for you. Honestly, if you reread the book, you’ll see that the added story lines are needed to make the plot transferable to the big screen. Peter Jackson has added a lot, but he hasn’t taken anything away and I have the utmost respect for him because of that.

Canon or not, this movie is definitely worth the trip to the theater.