One Big Scene is a weekly column dedicated to spectacular visual sequences we’re recommending you see in the theater. If you have ones you’d like us to write about, let us know in the comments section.

 
By now, I can completely understand you feeling like Peter Jackson has shown fans everything he could possibly show them in Middle-earth. I mean, we’ve had three extended edition Lord of the Rings movies, followed by the first of three planned Hobbit films. Everything new has been done before… right?    
 
Then Jackson coaxed his Hobbit cast into barrels, and unleashed them on a rubbery, slippery and hysterically funny journey down a battle-surrounded river in this week’s One Big Scene! 
 
The Scene
 
The Desolation of Smaug continues Bilbo Baggins’ journey to the Lonely Mountain, where he has been tasked with retrieving an item of extreme value from the dragon Smaug. And there are SEVERAL scenes involving Jackson’s majestic dragon that could have (and likely should have) contended for this week’s One Big Scene. 
 
But no sequence made me smile, laugh and clap like the barrel battle. 
 
Bilbo (Martin Freeman) needs to break his dwarf colleague out of detention. Using his newfound ring, he obtains the prison keys and sneaks the dwarves into wooden barrels, dropping them into a roaring river. The captors notice that the dwarves are escaping. So, too, do the marauding killer orcs. And so it’s up to Bilbo, Legolas and Tauriel the archer to fend off the orcs and escape to safety. 
 
The “barrel battle” (as I’m choosing to call it) is big-screen action choreography at its best. Jackson bounces and bends his characters in impossible directions as he bobs, weaves, soars and dips around the action. Orcs and archers run over dwarves as they fight for their lives in the barrels. Arrows pierce skulls – in 3D, for that matter – and the audience bounces in their seats with glee at the director’s stunning accomplishment. 
 
It is the first (and possibly only) time that Desolation feels like a ton of fun. It is this week’s One Big Scene.  
 

 
What Critics Are Saying about The Desolation of Smaug:
 
“The latest lap of their journey is far more focused and much more exciting than the last one.”
- Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
 
“A relentless adventure tale, teaming with rowdy action, slavering enemies and Elven gymnastics.”
- Manohla Dargis, New York Times
 
“If you liked An Unexpected Journey last year, you'll like The Desolation of Smaug because, really, it's more of the same.”
- Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News
 
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is in theaters everywhere. 
 

and