Cannot tell if that was sarcasm.
Cannot tell if that was sarcasm.
Definitely not sarcasm. I really want to like these movies.
It frustrates me because on one hand I'm always excited to just bask in hundreds of millions of dollars worth of nerdy D&D aesthetics and see wizards battling evil shadow knights in decrepit ruins and the like (seriously, how do you f this up?), but then it's packaged with a nonstop assault of stomach-churning hackneyed cliches and unimaginable overindulgence to the point where I feel embarrassed even if I'm watching it by myself.
Here comes the computer-generated goblin overlord. He's hacking and slashing his way through hundreds of unimportant extras, and he's headed right for a character that we know! It's hopeless! He's slowly lifting his gigantic axe...he's smiling...what's that, he's licking his lips (so cruel!) Oh my God, he's going to do it any second now. He's making a war cry for maximum power! HERE IT COMES!!!! Oh, he was saved by another character that we know just in time! Phew!
Oh no! The bridge is crumbling, and our elven hero is doomed! No wait! He's Takahashi Meijin! He's jumping/gliding up the falling debris via bad special effects!
Personality status:
First Act: Selfish bigot
Second Act: Selfish bigot
Third Act: Great guy who sees the error in his ways! (Have a one-liner, ya rascal!)
The title of this movie has "Five Armies" in it, but can anyone say for sure who those five armies even are?
Like 7 characters that we know & love™ can somehow change the outcome of a war by charging in.
The V Armies
Ogres
Elves
Dwarves
Humans
Eagles
The eagles were an army? Weren't there two completely separate armies of orcs? I guess that counts as two parts of the same army? The hill dwarves and the other dwarves... Anyway, my point is...
I've not seen the movie so I don't know how it's presented there, but "Battle of Five Armies" makes it sound like five different groups of smurfers shows up and had a Royal Rumble, whilst that's not what happened. The armies were, as Colonel Angus said,
- The Orcs of Gundabad and assorted Wargs, Bats, and Goblins
- The Dwarves of Erebor (the Thirteen along with Bilbo) and 500 from the Iron Hills
- The Men of Long-Lake
- The Wood Elves
- The Great Eagles
The last four of these were allied together against the Orc host.
Given what Tolkein wrote about throughout his literary career, it's totally reasonable that a small number of individuals could change the outcome of a battle or the fate of the world - ultimately, that's his precise message. Bilbo is a humble Hobbit from a rural backwater, and he's very happy that way, but he along with the rest of the Fellowship change the fate of the entire world.
An alternative interpretation is:
Orcs (Goblins)
Wargs
Elves
Dwarves
Humans
By this interpretation, they don't consider any forces that weren't present for the original argument about who gets what. In this case, Eagles are left out because they end the battle. They don't actually wind up with any losses.
This is the interpretation I always took.Originally Posted by Tavrobel
The thing that became incredibly clear from the first movie to me (and increasingly so with each movie afterwards) was that these movies were not an adaptation of the Hobbit book. At least, that wasn't the true goal. The goal was to make a prequel to the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Sure, the overarching story (at least with the dwarves and Bilbo) is ripped from the books, but the tone was changed to fit the original trilogy more than the lighthearted adventure of the book. This is why the old animated Hobbit will always be my favorite adaptation of this story, I think. Like Pike said, the first movie seemed to have that more lighthearted nature than the other movies, which made it a lot more of what I was looking for. We got a lot of the songs that I really enjoyed, we got a lot of humor, and it was just really fun and not serious (outside of the Azog and Sauron stuff). It was a much better mixture of the tone of the books and the more serious tone to match the trilogy.
I do like these movies more than Shorty, but of course my only experience with the third movie was while marathoning the first two movies. I think it works a lot better in the context of the first two movies. Bard becomes less bland for me because we're getting the buildup to his heroics, and to me it didn't feel as much like Aragorn-lite just because I had just seen the stuff from Desolation of Smaug. By the way, the Laketown folks were my favorite aspects of Desolation of Smaug. I liked Bard and I liked the sort of political look we got into the leader of the town and whatnot. That all was enjoyable to me.
There were too many nods to the trilogy to me though. Every time Legolas or Galadriel or Sarumon showed up, it was like Jackson was saying "please remember the LotR trilogy. That was good right? Just think about that." The adventures of Gandalf weren't terrible to me, but I felt it took too much focus away from the dwarves and Bilbo. I wouldn't have minded those bits to have been made (and even maybe expanded a little) as an extra on the DVDs or as a short series of mini episodes. I liked the mystery in the book of Gandalf's coming and going. Legolas was ridiculous. It makes sense for him to be present somewhat since some of the events do revolve around his dad. There was too much of him just bouncing around, being a superhero. Now, him appearing briefly wouldn't bother me. Honestly, the only nod to the original trilogy (outside of the Gollum stuff) that I liked was the short exchange where Legolas saw the picture of kid Gimli and the comments there. That's how references and nods should have been, just these subtle things that viewers of LotR would be able to have just that extra insight to really enjoy while not taking away from the focus of the movie.
Speaking of Legolas' father, I really enjoyed him in the second movie. He had a very unsettling way of moving and interacting that just really got to me. This was especially prevalent in the interrogation scene with that orc. It gave a nice message that this was an elf, but that he was also a bit more ruthless and wild than the elves we see in Rivendell. I think it was a missed opportunity to not extend this to more of the elves in Mirkwood or wherever. Also, he lost that unsettling nature in the third film which really bothered me. I can't remember what he was like in the first movie, but his things were very brief there.
Also, that elf/dwarf romance. It was way more cringey to me when I watched it the second time around, and the writing just got worse into the third movie with that stuff. I would have been okay without any of that. Female Legolas just felt really out of place to me. Maybe it would have been a little better had Legolas not been in the movie? There would have been less superhero elf action going on at least, and it wouldn't have been as overbearing to me. Even then, I just didn't think her character was done very well considering her sole purpose of existing seemed to simultaneously get Legolas to care about/participate in the events and to add more drama where it wasn't needed. I don't know. I just didn't like it.
Saw it again yesterday because, why not.
100% decided that this film was just rubbish.
There was pretty much 0 character development in it, 0 story, and was just 2 hours of various fantasy races beating each other up over a mountain that the supposed strategic importance of was never really clarified. Don't get me wrong, I still laughed at Ogre headbutting wall, at Dwarves on Rams etc but by the end of it I was like... well that was pretty much all style and no substance.
This film completely lacked the novelty, charm and quirky humor of the first two. The camaraderie between all the characters was sparse at best and it's attempts at humor were pretty much on a Beadle's About level of slapstick that at times I often asked my self "was that really necessary?"
All in all, a disappointing end for me.
If you're looking for 2 hours of various CGI'ed fantasy creatures beating the crap out of each other, then it nails that. But for a climax to the charming adventure we've had in the first two films, it fell miles short of the mark.
I must admit I was expecting a further hour of exposition at the end with evil wizard guy frolicking around with Sauradouchebag to tie into the first LOTR film more... so glad that didn't happen as I think I may have pulled my eyeballs out with the straw from my drink.
edit: Also I have never read any of the books, I'm also fairly liberal and easy going when it comes to films. I didn't really have any expectations going into this and it still left me feeling disappointed.
Last edited by Aulayna; 12-27-2014 at 12:05 PM.
It's a huge fortified mountain filled with gold and supplies, it's strategic by definition. xD Guess I'm kind of a nerd for stuff like that though.
Yeah, Erebor has huge strategic value, for several reasons.
First because a mountain fortress is an inherently defensible position (to say nothing of one built by Dwarves, who are canonically the best builders in Middle Earth).
Second, it's the Lonely Mountain - it's the only one for hundreds of miles. Combined with the above and it will serve as a tremendous castle from which to project power, just as traditional castles did. No force could be sufficiently omnipresent to exert its influence all over the lands held by their leader, so you built a castle and have a safe base to sally out from as needed.
Third, Smaug's been hoarding unimaginable wealth within it for two centuries. I mean, there's enough gold in there to take a Scrooge McDuck-style swim in, to say nothing of the special treasures like objects made of mithril (remember that the mail vest Bilbo gets is worth more than the entire Shire) and the Arkenstone. Quite aside from any value in the fortress itself, it's totally worth a raid, either for personal wealth or to fund your armies for an extraordinary period of time.
Haven't seen it yet but I assume this is another action scene directed and animated by people who have never seen real objects affected by gravity (or any other physical laws)? That'd be par for the course for this series to be honest.
The scene in question is so far beyond what you can possibly imagine. I wanted to leave the theatre and take a shower.
I look forward to watching it and swallowing back my own vomit then. We watched the second Hobbit movie a couple of days ago since my wife hadn't seen it yet and the whole river sequence and everything with Smaug after the dwarves catch up to Bilbo reminded me of why I don't like Weta these days. In fact, I actually liked the scene in Bard's house when the Orcs show up and they fight them more than I remembered because they used actual people in Orc costumes and make up and it looked fabulous by comparison.The scene in question is so far beyond what you can possibly imagine. I wanted to leave the theatre and take a shower.
I'll just have to enjoy the movie enough for everyone.
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