The Hobbit : Battle of the five armies (December 2014)

billyhead wrote:

Well I enjoyed the LOTR trilogy but heard the 1st 2 of the recent movies were rubbish but this is supposed to be the best out of the 3 with a big battle scene thrown in

from what I've read here The Battle scene looks ****. Might be better waiting for some reviews. saying it's the best in the series is just damming with faint praise imo

Are people going to be posting spoilers? Just wondering as I won't be able to see the film until next weekend. I know what happens from reading the books, but I would like to avoid hearing anything just in case!

Well I'm glad that's over with.

It's not terrible, but it's also not very good. And I was incredibly bored throughout the battle. Seems to last longer than the rest of the movies combined.

It should never have been split into three movies.

david75 wrote: »

expecting at least a few posts shortly about their experience watching this tonight

The 3 hobbit movies have been a massive missed opportunity but they still have some good bits in them.
The CGI is bad in places but not watching it in 3D and 48fps really helps it out. Azog looked excellent in the latest one and I actually liked him, the only Orc with a bit of personality.

This movie wasn't bad but shouldn't have existed. Massive editing of the three movies and cutting them down to two and we would of had an excellent addition to middle earth.


They should have started the movies with the battle where they got rid of the Witch King of Angmar and introduced the threat of Sauron that way and left the White Council attack until the climax of the last movie. Also here Legolas's mother dies creating the tension between him and his father and his father and the white council. With the threat growing throughout the movies, with Gandalf distracted by quest to the mountain/Smaug. Gandalf would have left for his confrontation at the start of the 2nd movie after meeting Ragashast, leaving the others to go onto Laketown to wait for him. Thorn gets impatient - the greed already getting to him - convinces them to go in and they unleash Smaug. Gandalf gets defeated and the white council rescue and banish Suaron at the same time as the battle of the five armies and death of Smaug. Gandalf calls the eagles, so he can get to the battle at Dale and helps save the day. Cut out the dwarf elf romance, increase the part with the spiders and the wood in the first movie and remove some of the superfluous crap.

I have to say I came away fairly disappointed (after watching earlier tonight). I'm a massive Tolkien fan, and I enjoyed Jackson's LOTR films, but alarm bells started ringing for me back when The Hobbit was split into two parts, never mind 3 parts. It's simply not a story of the same scale as LOTR, and I think that Jackson set expectations too high (particularly for those who haven't read any Tolkien) by splitting The Hobbit into 3 parts. Overall, it's probably about as disappointing as I expected from the outset. And I do acknowledge that content from the Appendices was featured. That was probably my favourite part of the film. I won't say any more for fear of spoiling ;-)