Dec 19, 2014
SCORE: A-
I think ol’ PJ finally hit the ground running in this final Hobbit film (kind of like how Lucas FINALLY made a decent Star Wars film again with ROTS).
The acting is great, as always. As is the writing, directing, yada yada yada.
But this time around, the events don’t seem as forced (at least to me).
Basically, the ENTIRE film is one big war (but the title does suggest this). However, PJ did a good job editing the film because you don’t really ever get war-weary (or at least I didn’t).
While I’m on the topic of the title, the film should have been titled more simply, like “The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies”. Instead, they throw in two unnecessary thes to make it “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”, which doesn’t roll off the tongue in the slightest. Whatever.
PRO:
I liked seeing Angmar. It’s too bad that they cannot reference the queen of the vampire bats, Thuringwethil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuringwethil) in these films, because she’s mentioned in “The Silmarillion”, which MGM/Warner Bros. do not own the rights to.
Speaking of which, they also never mention in the film that the Arkenstone is more-than-likely a piece of one of the three Silmarils for the same rights issues. Lame.
This is neither Pro nor Con: All of the kings in this film are total a-holes. Thorin is greedy and turns on his friends. Thranduil is just an asshole to everyone: his son, the chick his son likes, Gandalf, everyone.
I liked seeing Thorin speaking Smaug’s words when he turns super-greedy.
Alfrid (the Lake Town guy in black) continued to be funny in this film. He was probably even funnier than in Hobbit 2.
There are two very good acting scenes: one between Thorin and Bilbo, the other between Thorin and Dwalin.
The White Council vs. the Nazgul was a pretty good sequence. They went with showing the Nasgul as they really looked, but flickering in-and-out of reality. Cool, but an odd choice.
Having Billy Connelly as King Dain riding in on a huge hog was pretty neat (although he looked too CG-ish).
The big goats that Thorin and company ride are really cool. I wish they were in it more.
It’s good to see Galadriel using her powers.
The whole Kili/Tauriel thing seems way less forced this time around and actually ends well (dramatically speaking, not for the characters themselves).
I appreciate when I can see the director having fun, as when a huge Troll is killed and falls back onto a whole troop of Orcs, killing them, too.
I’m glad PJ didn’t inject one last cameo of Gollum into the film.
CON:
Thorin’s fight with Azog was drawn out to almost comical proportions, but was still interesting to watch.
I kept waiting and waiting for Beorn to show up and rip all the Orcs new assholes. And he does make an appearance and it is a cool appearance at that... but he’s not in the film for more than about 30 seconds. What a missed opportunity. For all the beefing up of the Hobbit book that PJ did, he left Beorn out of the major battle? Blarg.
Shai-Hulud (the worms from DUNE) make an appearance for some strange reason. I later read that they are supposedly “were-worms” that are referenced in passing in “The Hobbit” novel. But according to Tolkien Gateway (http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Were-worms), Tolkien meant worm in the Old English sense; wyrm meaning dragon. So a were-worm is supposed to be a human that can turn into a DRAGON. I don’t understand why they went with the current meaning of worm, and not what Tolkien intended. But then again, Smaug is supposed to be the last dragon alive, so it wouldn’t really make sense to have some were-dragons running around. But the original reference to were-worms were an allusion to a creature that was mythical in Middle-Earth. Are you confused yet?
There’s a bit too many mutilated Orcs for my taste. In LOTR the Orcs were scary-looking and sometimes deformed (the Orc leader in ROTK), but in the Hobbit films the majority of the Orcs are mutilated, which is not scary, it’s just gross. The one that was over the top for me was a Troll that Legolas rides briefly. The Troll has had its feet cut off and replaced with stilts, its hand cut off and replaced with wrecking balls, and strangest of all it has no eyes, but chains that hook into its eye sockets. Huh? It reminds me too much of “300”.