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

Frankie5Angels · 13-12-2014 12:12pm

I'm torn. I'm gonna watch it again to make up my mind (mainly because I snuck in to watch it on my own, she wasn't available :pac:).

There were a couple of moments for me where I facepalmed, though, namely

the rescue of Gandalf, where two quotes were ridiculous "do you need help milady" and "you should have stayed dead by Elrond

. The whole Tauriel/Dwarf thing was a bit crap too.

loveisdivine · 13-12-2014 12:48pm

I enjoyed it. There were a few things that irked me a little but didn't stop me enjoying the film as a whole. I'll spoiler the bits I didn't like

Why did they make Billy Connollys character entirely CGI? Thought that was really rubbish. It really did make it look like a video game. Too much CGI in general but that bit was particularly bad.

I don't know if this bit happens in the books but at the end when Thranduil told Legolas to go and find Stryder just for the sake of it, annoyed me too. It seems like it was just a way to mention Stryder. Felt out of place to me anyway.

Roar · 13-12-2014 1:20pm

loveisdivine wrote: »

I don't know if this bit happens in the books but at the end when Thranduil told Legolas to go and find Stryder just for the sake of it, annoyed me too. It seems like it was just a way to mention Stryder. Felt out of place to me anyway.

I groaned when that happened, and two people next to me just laughed. Terrible sh!t altogether.

As regards

Billy Connolly being completely CG

, it took me right out of the movie. It looked like something out of Polar Express.

Son0vagun · 13-12-2014 4:21pm

Absolutely loved it. Fantastic movie. As a Tolkien fan it was everything I wanted. With all the character building done in the first two films this film was all about the action. The battle was beyond awesome. Magical sequence after sequence. And when it got tender it got tender, I shed many a tear during it. Only gripe would be that Radagast and Beorn where not in it enough.

It's my favorite of all the six Middle Earth movies. Can't wait to see it again, going tomorrow.

.E_C_K_S. · 13-12-2014 6:10pm

Son0vagun wrote: »

Absolutely loved it. Fantastic movie. As a Tolkien fan it was everything I wanted. With all the character building done in the first two films this film was all about the action. The battle was beyond awesome. Magical sequence after sequence. And when it got tender it got tender, I shed many a tear during it. Only gripe would be that Radagast and Beorn where not in it enough.

It's my favorite of all the six Middle Earth movies. Can't wait to see it again, going tomorrow.

Not sure if you are joking or not. I actually have the complete opposite view to yours strangely enough.

I don't know where to begin. It was just horrendous for the most part, very little I enjoyed about it.

I'm unable to convey here what I didn't like about it which is weird!

Hobbit 1: 7.5/10
Hobbit 2: 7/10
Hobbit 3: 4.5/10

yankdotcom · 13-12-2014 6:52pm

went to see it last night and was disappointed by it
its a 30 minute story stretched out over 2 and a half hours, the ending of the film felt very rushed,i know the events have to lead up to the first lord of the rings movie but i would have liked to see some better conclusions towards the characters stories in the movie.
there was also a great chance to show the audience the corruption of saruman which never materialised,

to answer loveisdivines question about the scene with legolas :he doesnt even appear in the hobbit book at all,why he was in the movie i will never know

BlitzKrieg · 13-12-2014 7:21pm

I've been holding off seriously judging these movies til I saw all 3.

I was very nervous going in because I felt where they ended 2 was a very poor point and made me nervous that 3 was going to have a case of whiplash.

I found my fears were founded but not for the reasons I expected.

overall it's the weakest of the 3 hobbit films, I'll say 2 was the strongest, 1 was the most problematic and this one is just weak, mostly by mistakes made in 1 and 2.

So to sum up

1. I felt dragged on too long while working with so little of the source material, its opening is like return of the king in reverse, the film takes forever just to begin. And while the moments with Gollum and other character centric pieces were nice, it started the trend of these odd action setpieces that will haunt this entire trilogy. (in the first one it was particularly the goblin cave escape sequence. I also found the Orc villain initially very bland and uninteresting and the film felt it was struggling to tell the story of the hobbit but tie it much more firmly to the lord of the rings trilogy.

2. Continued being haunted by those weird action set pieces, this time with the barrels on the river, buuuut, the elves scenes were good, I really like the laketown scenes and smaug was fantastic. Also the orc villain got fleshed out a bit better. Course the major issue with Desolation of Smaug was where they ended the film. They built up and up and up Smaug and they have this action setpiece again the movies are haunted by these and as far as I can remember does not exist in the original book where the dwarves fight smaug and then it ends on this massive cliffhanger where Smaug is going to destroy laketown with his "I am Death" speech.

3. Which falls so flatly on its face if anyone has read the book cause they know that he dies bloody quickly and the story shifts to focus on the people fighting over the mountain and Torin's fall into madness. Which causes the third film *despite* being 1 film too many for this book feeling very rushed and cramped. Everything happens far too quickly, these is little sense of time or build up. And everything is collapsing on top of each other, the battle got a bit ridiculous, I really wanted to cut in these lines from the bad deep rising movie at the arrival of each army

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRUy1mJdymE

cause they all arrived on the battlefield one after the other so bloody quickly. Course the action set pieces raise their ugly heads again. CGI billy Connolly was terrifying. Torins madness didnt have time to actually brew and most damningly of all, the lord of the rings tie in plot points that led to there being 3 films and the overlong first film went bloody nowhere, particularily elements like the corruption of saruman, the capture of gollum etc would have been a nice endcap to a plot thread that in the films went nowhere. It wasnt all bad. Martin Freeman was enjoyable, and I will say the

Bit where Torin throws the rock back to the orc leader on the ice

was among the most badass boss moments I've seen this year. I genuinely cheered at that. On the villains, I grew to like the main orc boss, his bit in the battle overwatching was interesting, it's a shame the film didnt step back more for that to show the five armies moving around but his second in command was like him in the first film, a blank slate that we were meant to fear or something but he was dull and took waaaaay too long to die off.

Essentially it felt like 3 was rushed and a lot of what was built on primarily by 2 was either wasted because where it was cut (smaug's threats to Bard at the beginning of 3 have little effect when its right at the beginning of a film, but if that was at the end of 2 it would have been a great climax) or it went nowhere (the elf/dwarf love interest, the necromancer plotline) the vfx were ropey at places (that golden floor sequence)

I'd imagine watching back to back this one would improve running straight off 2 but the core problem of this whole part of the book felt very rushed in the film with little sense of time.

TheSheriff · 14-12-2014 11:58am

^^^^

Completely agree with all this. I left the cinema last night feeling let down and tired. It was too drawn out and yet none of the arcs I wanted to see were fleshed out.

This should have been a lead in to the original trilogy - Saurmans corruption was something I particularly wanted to see.

CGI everywhere - it was like an animated adventure.

Also Smaug at the beginning? He lasted all of three minutes.

Disappointing.

micks_address · 14-12-2014 9:20pm

TheSheriff wrote: »

^^^^

Completely agree with all this. I left the cinema last night feeling let down and tired. It was too drawn out and yet none of the arcs I wanted to see were fleshed out.

This should have been a lead in to the original trilogy - Saurmans corruption was something I particularly wanted to see.

CGI everywhere - it was like an animated adventure.

Also Smaug at the beginning? He lasted all of three minutes.

Disappointing.

Seen today at the imax actually fell asleep in middle for few minutes and didn't feel like I missed anything... Couple of key sequences in all three films that put together would have made two very good films.. Maybe a fan edit some day? I liked the ending tied to very nicely to the fellowship.. But my standout moment from all three was probably golllum

Smartly Dressed · 14-12-2014 11:01pm

Someone said that in the original Star Wars films, George Lucas used special effects to tell a story, but in the prequels, he used a "story" to tell special effects.

Although the Hobbit films aren't nearly as bad, I still got that sense in some parts, which really took me out of the experience.

There's a segment in one of the vlogs where Peter Jackson requires a CGI shot of goblins moving something along the walkways. A stopwatch appears and the SFX team hammer out the shot in just a few minutes, and they seem terribly proud of themselves. I think they should've taken a bit longer with it. Or better yet, just avoid CGI as much as possible.

One last edit: did they blow the budget on Smaug?

seligehgit · 14-12-2014 11:37pm

Extremely disappointed with it,one long boring battle...this trilogy is'nt a patch on the LOTR trilogy IMO.I suppose it was a bit much to expect that 3 films could be extracted from a much less extensive source material.

Saruman simply disappears to deal with Sauron??

Mr E · 15-12-2014 12:27am

I liked it well enough, but found it pretty soulless. Unlike the drawn out ending to ROTK, the ending(s) here worked much better and tugged at the heart strings a bit.

Fuzzy_Dunlop · 15-12-2014 12:49am

loveisdivine wrote: »

I don't know if this bit happens in the books but at the end when Thranduil told Legolas to go and find Stryder just for the sake of it, annoyed me too. It seems like it was just a way to mention Stryder. Felt out of place to me anyway.

Also does the timeline make sense? Like what age would he have been?

mikehn · 15-12-2014 12:51am

Saw it today, loved the LOTR and other hobbit but this one was a real let down, it was like a movie made up of clips from a video game. No logical flow and the ending ugggh. Couldnt wait to get out.:mad:

Smartly Dressed · 15-12-2014 12:52am

Fuzzy_Dunlop wrote: »

Also does the timeline make sense? Like what age would he have been?

Around 28. He's 88 in The Two Towers, according to the extended version where he tells Eowyn.

DVDM93 · 15-12-2014 1:07am

Mr E wrote: »

I liked it well enough, but found it pretty soulless. Unlike the drawn out ending to ROTK, the ending(s) here worked much better and tugged at the heart strings a bit.

I don't know about ye but I cry like a baby at the end of RotK, every time :P when Frodo has to leave, hits me right in the feels

Having watched the 2 Hobbits (extended edition) for about the 10th time and the new Hobbit within the last week I'm not long in to The Fellowship. I enjoyed all The Hobbit movies as I am a huge LOTR fans and my opinion was always going to be biased. Never expected them to be a patch on the LOTR films tbh so I can't say I'm overly disappointed.

Have to say though I grew really fond of Bilbo in The Hobbit films. On first hearing Freeman was going to okay him I was immediately turned off as I just couldn't see it happening from knowing him from The Office. One of my more liked characters across all 6 movies.

The dwarves were fun at times, kind-hearted but to be honest I didn't find myself getting emotionally attatched to any of the characters in the Hobbit films like I did with the LotRs. Didn't feel much at the end with Thrain, more so with Fili & Kili because they remind me of myself and the brother haha, two messers :P Balin would be my favourite of the lot. Jesus if anything happened to Gimli though I'd have been a broken man haha, even Legolas. Yet he comes across differently in the Hobbits

Gandalf is just after falling with Balrog and the water works are in full flow here haha

The music adds to that scene big time!

SherlockWatson · 15-12-2014 6:01am

I prefer the hobbit(s) to the lotr movies to be honest.

I enjoyed them all, the CGI doesn't bother me.

seligehgit · 15-12-2014 2:15pm

As mentioned already it would been nice to see how Saruman was turned by Sauron.

micks_address · 15-12-2014 2:22pm

seligehgit wrote: »

As mentioned already it would been nice to see how Saruman was turned by Sauron.

I'm sure we'll see more in the extended edition

jaykhunter · 15-12-2014 2:25pm

SherlockWatson wrote: »

I prefer the hobbit(s) to the lotr movies to be honest. I enjoyed them all, the CGI doesn't bother me.

Nice! Can you rate the 3 hobbit films out of 10?

bucketybuck · 15-12-2014 3:07pm

seligehgit wrote: »

As mentioned already it would been nice to see how Saruman was turned by Sauron.

There will probably be three films coming out about that over the next 2 years.

Zombienosh · 15-12-2014 3:30pm

The CGI was so much at some points I found myself looking down for a game controller.

SherlockWatson · 15-12-2014 4:16pm

jaykhunter wrote: »

Nice! Can you rate the 3 hobbit films out of 10?

Wouldn't have them higher than 7-8 really, preferred 2 and 3 to 1, but I still enjoyed 1 overall.

Regards LOTR just in case anyone is thinking i'm crazy/trolling, the only versions of them I have seen, were the Blu-Ray Extended versions, and watched one after the other, I found them to be fairly boring for large parts, but by god the action scenes were incredible in them, and the use of practical effects with CGI made it look so authentic, but there so much boring parts in it, I never really took to the movies like everyone else did.

Ave Sodalis · 15-12-2014 4:25pm

I don't really completely understand the backlash. Okay, there were a few dodgy moments

the slow motion of Legolas running up the falling tower and just about the whole love story... "because it was real" bleugh

but overall, despite knowing what was going to happen, I still found myself at the edge of my seat. They actually used real horses this time, which I was grateful for and I thought that out of the three, this was probably the best. I really enjoyed it, and I don't think its faults were worth some of the comments here. I would (and most like am going to) watch it again.

DVDM93 · 15-12-2014 4:49pm

micks_address wrote: »

I'm sure we'll see more in the extended edition

I certainly hope so, then again Saruman's death wasn't even shown in the original RotK movie, ONLY in the extended version. Maybe Jackson just doesn't Like working with Christopher Lee :P

Saipanne · 15-12-2014 4:55pm

Overall, I enjoyed the trilogy. It should have been just two films though.

Freeman was every bit as good as I knew he would be. Good actor. Smaug was truly terrifying. And Armitage was amazing as Thorin.

LOTR towers above this trilogy, though.

DVDM93 · 15-12-2014 8:32pm

Saipanne wrote: »

Overall, I enjoyed the trilogy. It should have been just two films though.

Freeman was every bit as good as I knew he would be. Good actor. Smaug was truly terrifying. And Armitage was amazing as Thorin.

LOTR towers above this trilogy, though.

Post of the thread imo, genuinely.

orubiru · 16-12-2014 12:29am

Please excuse the rather long rant... a lot to think about with this movie.

When we came out of the movie my girlfriend said "well that was sh!t" but for me I really wanted to like it so my initial reaction was that the movie wasn't THAT bad.

I think I was just in denial though. The film throws some pretty cool lookin images at your eyeballs but beyond that? There is almost no substance at all.

The opening scene with Smaug was good BUT is it really a good idea to have the natural climax of the second movie as the "prologue" to the third? I felt here that the film basically threw it's best scene at the viewer straight away and then never recovered from that. Bard had his main character moment in the first 10 minutes and then has to go through the rest of the film having essentially completed his character arc.

Even the opening was not without flaws. Remember the "windlance" that was essentially the towns defence against dragons. Not even mentioned here. They built that up in the 2nd movie and never paid it off at all. Even having Smaug destroy it as Bard was trying to get to it would have been OK.

Meh. The scene with the refugees from Laketown was up next and filled with some really bad and uncomfortable acting. Their entire town has been burned to the ground, people dead and we have a scene with no weight at all. Not even some sad musical moments from Howard Shore... nothing. This is the point where we re-introduce Alfrid and he is one of the main failures of the movie. I thought he was shaping up for the standard "redemption" arc but the character really adds nothing and only takes up time that could have been better spent doing other things.

By the time we get to the Dwarf and Elf saying "goodbye/i love you" I am already frustrated by the flimsy and inconsequential plot lines in this film. There's no real exploration of their feelings or what it even means for a dwarf and an elf to be "in love". None of the dwarves seem to care that much really. Legolas is supposed to be jealous, I suppose but they just say "they love each other OK, lets move on".

The scenes with Thorin becoming more withdrawn and the "Dragon Sickness" were OK. Nothing too great but at least the acting was solid enough here.

Any time Bilbo is on screen you get an idea of how amazing and emotionally involving these movies could have been. He gets brushed aside way too quickly to make room for...

The fight at Dol Guldur. Ugh. Another utterly weightless scene. We know that ALL of these characters make it to LOTR so the only potential point of interest here is the corruption of Saruman. Did we really need to see Elrond and Galadriel in a battle with Ringwraiths and Sauron. This was just a few minutes of pretty good fan art. It looked nice and was "cool" but there was zero substance to it.

I was pretty intrigued by the scene where Legolas and Tauriel go to the gates of Angmar. Too bad they used it only to show us "War Bats". Lame.

A point I wanted to make here is that we have 14 dwarves in this film. They basically give most of those dwarves nothing to do. We already know Legolas story. He gets enough screen time in LOTR yet they give him so much to do here. Baffling decision.

I was more interested in the character of Thranduil and what his motivations were but we didn't get enough of him in the second movie (instead devoting more time to barrel chases and dragon antics) so his weight in this story is not as it could have been.

The treatment of Dain is even worse really. This guy shows up and we don't really get to learn much about who he is or what he wants.

The only good thing about the build up to the battle is Bilbo Baggins. Again we see the potential in this movie through following a believable, likeable, intelligent and caring character.

Once the battle begins... its a mess. Yes, its pretty to look at but there are no stakes. The battle has no weight at all. Theres no danger to anyone important and its tough to follow whats going on. Sure, they keep raising the bar with troll catapults and trolls smashing down walls and war bats. Really its just an incoherent mess. There are no real heroic scenes nothing that stands out. Just meh. Boredom. We see Bard riding a wooden cart down a hill to save his kids and Alfrid gets more character moments that are not relevant to the story.

I started to zone out of the movie at this stage. I kind of envy people who can watch 45 minutes of anonymous soldiers randomly slashing and be entertained. I just can't do it.

Things only really get going towards the end where we have Thorin and Azogs head to head battle and some real emotional moments between Bilbo and Thorin.

Legolas vs Bolg is rendered pointless by the fact that we know Legolas will win. The ridiculous Elven Physics on display here are the least of this scenes issues. Why not have Taureil and Bolg fight to the death? At least there was "story" there. Again, Legolas gets a huge role in a movie that he doesn't really belong in. Beorn vs Bolg?

I don't think I'll ever understand how anyone who pays attention during this film can justify a 7, 8 or 9 out of 10 score. In a way I sort of resent those people because they can go and enjoy what is, essentially, a pretty amazing story (The Hobbit book) turned into a mind numbing series of good looking images and as a result more and more of these movies get made.

The only reason this was 3 movies was to make money. The only reason Legolas was in the movie? To make money. Dwarf/Elf romance? You get the idea.

I think that taking good, beloved, literary works and turning them in to cash cows is kind of shameful, really.

There is too much in these 3 films that has no weight, no stakes or is not properly developed. The concept of character and story is basically abandoned in favor of "look cool things!" There is no reason why The Hobbit could not be adapted into a solid, engaging and emotional pair of movies. I don't buy into the "extended editions will fix that" thing because the theatrical release should not be a sort of unfinished or incomplete version.

The ending was nice. Again revealing the squandered potential of this Trilogy. Martin Freeman is outstanding in virtually every scene he appears in.

Yet, they even manage to botch this ending. Gandalf knocks on the door and they use the exact dialogue from LOTR except for one line "you haven't aged a day". Obviously they had to cut that because Bilbo obviously HAS aged since Gandalf last saw him. Why not just cut that scene altogether as it makes no sense? I can't understand folks saying it was great how they tied the ending to the start of LOTR when actually there is a glaring error with the "you haven't aged a day". The writers took out that line because they know the scene doesnt work with it in there right? So why have that scene at all when it cant, and doesn't work.

A disappointing end to a disappointing adaptation, really.

valoren · 16-12-2014 10:48am

To paraphrase an old saying "Peter Jackson raped my childhood"

Heroditas · 16-12-2014 10:48am

Regarding that last "you haven't aged a day scene", I wouldn't be surprised if PJ is going to do an Annakin on it and superimpose Martin Freeman in place of Ian Holm in a rereleased FOTR for the portion of the film where he had his birthday and then leaves for Rivendell.
Then when the Fellowship meet in Rivendell, he's aged into Ian Holm.

Hasn't PJ always hinted he'll tweak the films in future years to " improve" the continuity?

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

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