Hobbit - The Battle of Five Armies

So, I saw the new Hobbit movie on Friday and now I finally got over the shock of how awful it was enough to write something about it.

!WARNING - minor spoilers ahead!

First of all, let me say that after the first two films I went into this one with super low expectations and yet it still managed to disappoint me bitterly - I just couldn't believe how boring it was.

As expected, three quarters of the film are comprised of megalomanic battle shots of immense armies of generic CGI figures and since the previous films didn't manage to build any kind of real affection or even sympathy in me for any of the sides fighting in the battle, I didn't care at all about who'd win and who'd lose.

The only character I was at least a little bit emotionally invested in was Bilbo, who however gets so little screen-time that the title of the film isn't even justified. There is no clear protagonist in this movie - you may think it's Thorin but he didn't manage to win my sympathies in the previous films and while he does have a last minute change of heart towards the end of this one, he spends most of it acting like a first class a-hole and actually in a way, the closest thing to a protagonist this movie has is the character of Bard, who at least has a righteous claim in this battle and tries to resolve things peacefully but is denied by Thorin, which sort of makes Thorin one of the many villains of this movie rather than the hero.

Perhaps the best that can be said about the movie is that it has quite a few moments that made me chuckle, some of them even intentionally. The moments which were supposed to be the most emotional and sad were conveyed with such pathos that they were actually rather humorous and the fights between the "heroes" and the main villains once again looked like a video-game and totally ignored the laws of physics and because I either didn't really care about the people in those fights or I knew they would survive, the stakes were almost as low as in the battles of the faceless CGI fighters.


The cherry on the top of the sh*t-pile was when I noticed that the dwarf Dain (Thorin's cousin) inexplicably seemed to be CGI and looked like the characters from the CGI animated Beowulf movie - that was the moment I seriously considered walking out of the theater.

All-in-all it was the weakest of the three Hobbit films and that is saying something. I have been watching the extensive extras from the extended edition of Desolation of Smaug over the last week and it makes me kind of sad to see how much work and love and care was poured into these films - especially into designing the world - only to end up with something which is beautifully designed and crafted but painfully mediocre in all its other aspects. In my book Peter Jackson can go ishkh khakfe andu null.

Harmy said:

The cherry on the top of the sh*t-pile was when I noticed that the dwarf Dain (Thorin's cousin) inexplicably seemed to be CGI and looked like the characters from the CGI animated Beowulf movie - that was the moment I seriously considered walking out of the theater.

 So the rumors are true.

wtf

Right? I absolutely don't understand why they would do this. Even the orks shouldn't have been CGI but it's still kind of understandable but this was just too much.

Well I liked it. Best of the 3. My feelings towards it's strengths/weaknesses are almost exactly the opposit of your's Harmy. Not a patch on the LOTR films but still easily worth the price of admission.

Harmy said:

Right? I absolutely don't understand why they would do this. Even the orks shouldn't have been CGI but it's still kind of understandable but this was just too much.

There's speculation that the actor couldn't do reshoots... so we get this?

In glorious two dimensions.

Same here.

like most people, i thought the overall mistake was deciding to make 3 movies in the middle of the production!! 

i dont care if you have the combined talent of john ford, kurosawa, bergman, spielberg, miyasaki, coppola - no one can do that. I have said elsewhere that PJ is the craziest filmmaker of all time (watch his early movies) so although shocking, it wasnt out of character. 

For me - AUJ was great, if somewhat sluggish, but DOS flirted with mediocrity with a couple of critical storytelling mistakes and was saved by Smaug, Barrel Sequence (and really, is orlando bloom really that popular!? and WTF is wrong with his eyes!?!?!?).

except for azog and the wargs, i think most of the cgi has been excellent. 

but on that topic - one thing i heard is that the reason why PJ used more CGI instead of 'bigatures' is that in HFR 3d, you can't really use them as well?  did anyone else hear that? I dont recall if the EE documentaries mention it.

if so, its  a shame because HFR does not work.  I have said it elsewhere: other than making 3d easier on the eyes, HFR is a step backwards and requires too many downstream compromises. 

arrgh, why couldnt IMAX (real IMAX) catch on instead of 3d and HFR!?

Tobar said:

walking_carpet said:

DOS flirted with mediocrity...and was saved by...Barrel Sequence

 

 ok ok..it was saved by the barrel sequence...until legolas starting stepping on the dwarve's heads :P

Hey- I saw it!  (2D 24FPS, btw.  Would have seen 3D HFR, but didn't have the option)

Probably the best overall of the three... but lots of stupid stuff all of the same.

However, the combined stupid doesn't compete with the Tom, Bert and Bill or the Jolly Ol' Goblin King in AUJ.  And the overall story is better than DoS, so there you go.  It's the least childish- it's problems stem more from adolescence rather than childhood.

**HEREAFTER THAR BE SPOILERS**

Three complaints I've heard probably the most-

c1. Smaug dies in the pre-credit sequence.  Should have just been the ending of DoS.

c2. Battle is 5 pages in the book and ~1.5 hours in the movie?

c3. Three movies instead of two (instead of one)

My soft rebuttals:

r1. Because Cliff Hangers!  And since this movie could have been called "The Hobbit: The Sucking Sound you Hear is the Rush of the Armies of Five Races of Middle Earthen men and beasts Trying to Take Power in the Vacuum of a Dead Smaug" or "Hobbit: TSSYHITROTAOFROMEMABTTTPITVOADS" or "Hobbit: The Suck" for short.  I think the cliffhanger ending of DoS was fine, and this movie really does tell the story of what happens when you take out a monger like Smaug.  It makes sense to have it be at the start of this movie.

r2. In the book, Bilbo gets knocked out during the battle, and everything is quickly summarized for him once he wakes up.  It's not that the battle itself is short, but Tolkien decided to not show it.  Showing the battle in full is probably the best argument for making three movies.  I think it's wonderful that the movie is long enough to allow the battle to be so fully presented.  Are there moments that need to go?  Yes, but not so much to bring the runtime down as to bring the level of stupid down.  

r3. In recent years, I have become more fascinated by the role of Three Act Structure in storytelling- not so much its role as its inevitability.  I have been curious as Harry Potter and Hunger Games (and others) have expanded final books into dual movies.  With natural breaks between the acts, the place to end the films would be much closer to thirds than halves.  I was curious whether new story elements would be introduced so the first movies could be ended with something other than a card telling you to leave the theatre.  Which is not a new concept for Rings movies.  It's pretty much how I felt at the end of FotR.

Okay, onto my list of stupid, in no particular order.  Wait, that's not true, here's number one have to go:

UNIBROW MAN

now the rest come in no particular order:

Troll Babies?  (or is that with a z?) 
Two kinds of too silly-
  Cute silly like trolls bashing their heads and falling down.  Cue the sliding trombone.  Or trolls falling over and smashing a squad of orcs.  Wah waaaahhhh....
  "Awesome" silly- stuff that's just too over the top, or failed attempts at awesomeness.  Most of these will probably get their own itemization later, so I won't go on.
The "You haven't told me your name" and "It's, wait for it... MoneyRobin!" moment.  I saw this coming from a mile away.  How do big movie-prequels keep falling for this terrible trope?  Does anyone enjoy that moment?  There was a toothless red neck close to me that yelled our "OREGANO!" at that moment.  I guess he felt smart.  It's very similar to the scene in AUJ, "Frodo, where are you off to?"  "I'm going to go read this book under a tree and wait for....  GANDALF THE WIZARD!"
You hurt because your love was real.
How quickly did Legolas and Tauriel make it from Dale to... that northern place, so quickly?  Is it only an hour or so away?
CGI Billy Connoly
Half of what Legolas does.
I liked the ice fight and the bridge fight, but they went on too long and were... too much.  Edited down I think they would be fantastic.
The Sauron scene- I was really looking forward to this.  It was just...  hrm... don't know.  It was Weathertoppish... but it was so NOT Weathertop.  And Christopher Lee went all Tasmanian Yoda in this scene.  Boo.
12 or 13 lightly armored dwarves turn the tide of 100 dwarves against 200 orcs?  I don't care if he is the king, and if he has Howard Shore on his side.
More eagles save the day.  I don't know what it costs to keep the eagles happy, but it's apparently worth it.

I guess I'll stop there.  I could probably go on.

I can't wait until the extended version comes out and a decent version of the trilogy pops up on FE.org.  The Arkenstone version of AUJ fixed a lot of my problems with it.

Mondess122 said:

I stopped noticing it was in 3D after a short while. Which is a bad thing. 

I disagree.  I think 3D is most effective when it's mostly operating at a subconscious level- like the musical score.  It might draw attention to itself sometimes more than others, but for the most part it should be operating on your emotions, and not be the subject of your focus.

I have to see this film, but I really don't want to. I was young at the time of the prequels, but now I feel the pain.