Zach Goodier
The long anticipated and dreaded finale to the Middle Earth
saga is upon us, and Tolkien traditionalists have lined up alongside Jackson
film fans to pile into the theater and see the finale we’ve all been waiting
for. So, does it deliver? Well, the answer is a little tough to explain,
but the answer is a disappointing no, at least in terms of giving us the finale
we all hoped for. Warning, some
*SPOILERS* ahead
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| The most praiseworthy use of CGI is Smaug, but he isn't in the film for long. |
Story:
For starters, Smaug is bearing down on Laketown, as he seeks
to burn it down for aiding the Dwarves in their quest to reclaim Erabor. This only lasts about 10 minutes, as things
reach a rather quick and unsatisfying end as Bard shoots him dead. This is following the book fairly well, but
it all just happened too quickly, and if felt like I had just gotten
comfortable and one of the most popular characters of the last movie was
already kicked off and the story continued on a poorly paced mess as the
Dwarves are faced with Bard and the survivors from Laketown who seek the share
of the treasure horde they were promised, and the Wood Elves soon arrive to lay
claim to the treasure, as well.
 |
| Bard is a good character, but he feels too much like a discount Aragorn at times. He doesn't want the position of power... check. Natural leader who everyone wants to follow... check, and so on. |
Meanwhile, Gandalf, Saruman, and a few other familiar faces
face off against Sauron in his keep, where he has begun to revive the 9 wraiths
of the fallen kings of men. After a
fight, Sauron is driven off to the east, where he will eventually rebuild his
kingdom in the lands of Mordor. As
Gandalf moves to aid the Dwarves and Bilbo in finishing their quest, he arrives
just in time to find that an army of dwarves has moved in to aid Thorin and his
party in securing the Lonely Mountain and the kingdom of Erabor. However, things reach a peak as two armies of
orcs and goblins move in to lay waste to all the races of Middle Earth.
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| Elrond gets a good action sequence in the 1st act. |
Most of the 2nd and 3rd acts are
heated battles, which make gratuitous use of CGI and over-the-top stunts. The pacing of the story really started to
wear thin, as I became increasingly impatient with the story that felt filled
to the brim with nonsense rather than the more direct feel of the original LOTR
films. That isn’t to say that it was all
bad, but in LOTR, battles felt grounded, epic even, but the battle in this
movie felt chaotic, messy, and just nonsensical at some points. For example, the dwarves that come to aid
Thorin are pinned by the armies of orcs that have come to take the mountain,
and the dwarves are all holding out waiting for Thorin to join the battle and
save the day… but how? Thorin has a
small questing party, not an army. Sure,
some of them are tough as nails, but they can’t turn the tide of a battle they
are decisively losing. Still, it somehow
all works out, and these leaps of logic break the immersion that made LOTR so
gripping and brilliant.
Characters:
Despite all of the characters who are showcased here, the
only ones that matter all that much are Thorin, Bilbo, and perhaps
Thranduil. Bard has his moments, but he
exhausts most of his significance to the story in the first half hour. Thorin is being gripped by madness, as he
obsesses over the treasure he now possesses, and Bilbo has to make a difficult
decision on whether or not he should step up and try to take action to confront
Thorin about how he’s changed. This
makes for some great moments, although there is a lot of drawn out scenes
involving Thorin’s decent towards madness.
Thranduil has some strong moments in this film, which help him become
more likeable, as you understand his plight, and that there is a more “human”
person there.
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| The Necromancer story doesn't take up a lot of time in the movie, much like Smaug, which is a shame because it's arguably more relevant to LOTR fans than Bilbo's story, as it does more to set the stage for the rise of Mordor and the Ring Wraiths. |
Bilbo is obviously central, as his struggle walks the line
of helping the dwarves in protecting their new home, while trying to find a way
to make peace with the surrounding factions, all of whom have grown weary of
Thorin now that he is hoarding the treasure and going back on his deals. This is arguably the strongest theme in the
movie, as we see there is justice behind many of these characters, with the
exception of the orcs. This keeps the
tension high if you haven’t read the books.
 |
| Gandalf is... here. He just doesn't feel as significant as he did before, though. |
Presentation:
The action is fairly good, with good choreography. However, the use of CGI can make the fights
look too animated (probably because most of them are). Like the previous films, live characters
fighting cartoons just doesn’t work. It
never looks right, and since virtually all the fights are like this, it really
breaks the immersion within the film.
One of the reasons LOTR went down as one of the greatest franchises of
our time was because virtually all of the close-up fighting was done by actors,
not cartoons.
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| I'm not sure how LOTR did it, but many of these scenes I felt very aware that there must be a green screen right behind these guys. |
Speaking of how cartoony it all felt, the characters all
seemed well aware of their plot armor, as a pair of dwarves has no doubts at all
about fighting a horde of 100 goblins and easily emerging victorious. Granted, this is the Hobbit, not LOTR. But when it’s being marketed as the LOTR
prequel we’ve all been waiting for, it feels like these trilogies are in 2 separate
universes, since Aragorn never swaggered into an engagement with 50 orcs
single-handedly and strolled out like a boss. Sure, he easily killed more than
that throughout the movies, but it was with an army at his back, and friends at
his side.
Overall:
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| Even the epic battle just felt too dragged out and uninteresting. |
This movie wasn't completely terrible,
but it did leave a very unsatisfied feeling as I walked out. A lot of this was carried over from the first
films, but made even worse in this one.
Sure, the orcs were always animated, but since they have so much screen
time, you forget if you’re watching a live-action movie or an animated film.
Furthermore, the story felt slow and dragged out, and tries to fill up its
lengthy run time with enough add-in material to say this movie was
approximately 90% filler story rather than source material. That’s not surprising, since they had only
about 50 pages of the original book left to cover anyways.
Whether it was Peter Jackson’s fault, or the studios, or
something else, it doesn’t really matter.
This movie was a conclusion to
the Middle Earth films, but not at all the one that I felt Middle Earth
deserved. It trips over its own feet so
much it seems to forget where it was even going until the last half hour or so. It tries to throw in some of the epic battles
that defined LOTR, but there was no feeling of build-up, like they just
dumped the battle in, and even then it never felt as real as the classics, which almost ruined the battle entirely.
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| This was a difficult movie for me. As a LOTR/Hobbit fan, I wanted this to be the last epic film in one of my favorite movie franchises of all time... But it just didn't live up to those expectations at all. |
To make it perfectly clear, I didn’t hate the film, but it certainly didn’t feel like it was at all up
to the standards set by the previous Hobbit films, films in general, or The Lord of the Rings, that established
Middle Earth as one of the greatest cinematic universes of all time. And I can't blame the actors, who all did a great job; however, I felt this movie was deeply flawed from the conceptual stage, as you can tell they tried to drag this ending out, despite a lack of remaining source material.
Good:
-Interesting story on the side of Thorin, Thranduil, Bard,
and Bilbo.
-Some strong moments for several of the main characters.
-Bringing in some of the other Tolkien material helped the
story along, like the Necromancer and bringing Saruman and Elrond into that fight.
Bad:
-Story dragged out and bogged down way too much with filler
scenes and stories.
-WAY too much CGI where it shouldn't have been needed.
-Hardly feels like the same Middle Earth we know and love.
-Not at all the ending the Middle Earth movies deserved.
Scully Rating: 6 out of 10
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