The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies

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

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.

Elrond gets a good action sequence in the 1st act.

Most of the 2^nd and 3^rd 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.

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. 

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:

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. 

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

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Review by Zachary Goodier

Buy "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" at Amazon

Peter Jackson's return to Middle-earth follows Frodo's uncle, Bilbo, on his quest to help a party of 13 Dwarves, led by Thorin Oakenshield to reclaims the lost kingdom of Erebor.  Bilbo starts out in his home in the quaint region of the Shire; however, the peace is soon interrupted by Gandalf the Grey, who seeks to find someone to join in an adventure.  Bilbo quickly refuses, saying that his place is in the Shire.  Hobbits are naturally grounded, and rarely travel.  However, after having a party of Dwarves show up at his home, Bilbo can't help but join in on the journey.  Their journey takes them through the wilderness; facing Goblins, Orcs, Wargs, as well as a sinister presence that is beginning to spread across the land.  And even if they ever manage to get passed all of that, there is still the threat of having to face a dragon once they reach their destination.  However, this movie is the first installment in a trilogy that will chronicle this entire quest.

Sure, this is a picture of Bilbo going off to join in his adventure, but I did the same thing going to grab this from the delivery guy.

Probably the very first thing people will be concerned with is, "Is The Hobbit as good as The Lord of the Rings?"  Well, that is a difficult question to answer.  In short, this is completely worthy of being placed alongside LOTR, but this is a different story.  As much as I love the original trilogy, its' story is somewhat generic in its' "good vs evil" theme.  On the other hand, The Hobbit isn't that profound with its' "dungeons and dragons" theme to the story (excuse the pun, couldn't resist).  However, what is crucial is to realize that The Hobbit was published in 1937, and obviously it must have been worked on for years prior.  These stories serve as THE basis for almost all contemporary fantasy works, including our beloved Dungeons and Dragons. 

Dungeons? Check. Dragon? ....That is a very big check, a check with sharp teeth, big eyes, and some killer breath that I could only imitate after eating a triple helping of my "Surprise Attack Jalapeno" omelet. 

Is the story completely fresh? Of course not.  However, it's the execution that makes this story so great... Once you get started about an hour into the movie, or so it felt.  The brush strokes may seem broad; however, that opinion is quickly forgotten once you get into the details.  However, if you have read the book by J. R. R. Tolkien, which I highly recommend, then there will be a lot of changes to the story here.  Namely, the addition of a "Azog, the white Orc" who serves as an old enemy of Thorin Oakenshield, as well as the inclusion of the Necromancer.  While the Necromancer was technically in the book, that story was never delved into fully within the book; merely serving as a side quest that Gandalf is forced to undertake separate from the quest of Bilbo and the Dwarves.  What is important to know is that this won't leap out at those who haven't read the book; it is written in rather smoothly and seamlessly, and proper credit to the writers for pulling it off.  Still, this is part of the reason that this one book is being stretched out into three movies.  I will definitely go to see all of them, but part of me feels like this is just an attempt to shake more money out of the fans.

Christopher Lee and Hugo Weaving return to reprise their roles as Saruman and Elrond, respectively.

How are the characters?  Well, this is one of the reasons the old LOTR trilogy appealed to me more, while there are a great many faces returning to their old roles, the new faces might not all hold a great deal of appeal for you.  While The Fellowship of the Ring took the time to showcase each individual character's personality, this movie doesn't quite do that.  You will literally have a pile of Dwarves fall into the door, and sure they all get a couple of moments in the spotlight, but this doesn't feel as personal as the old movies did.  That isn't to say that the new Bilbo and Thorin don't do well as central characters, because they really do.  However, the rest of the party is not as involved.  While they definitely have a great deal of charm and humor to them. They are obviously not to taken seriously, except for those couple of scenes where the tone becomes more serious.

With enough crazy Dwarves, you can solve just about any problem.

That brings me to another thing that differs from the LOTR trilogy: The tone.  While the LOTR was a very dark and serious story about the battle to save Middle Earth, this story is much lighter and not as dark as the old movies.  While this is by no means a bad thing, it does lead to this movie lacking some of the seriousness and weight.  The reason for this is primarily because the original book was written for children.  So, not a great amount of death takes place, aside from the heaps of Goblins and Orcs that our heroes slay.  Does that make this a children's movie? Well it's still PG-13, but then again, our ratings system is touchy compared to what children were allowed to read back in Tolkien's day.

The dialogue is also worth noting, with more of the brilliant lines that you would expect after watching Lord of the Rings.  Gandalf stands out, as always, but Bilbo and Thorin, as well as some of the Dwarves, also have their stand-out moments where you really come to understand them and respect them for it.  This may not seem like much, but it's the cherry on the sundae for these stories.  We meet a lot of familiar faces, like Sauroman  One wonderfully done scene is the meeting between Bilbo and Gollum/Sméagol, where they begin a game of riddles to see whether or not Bilbo will be allowed to escape the caverns.  This is also a powerful scene because it is where we are introduced to the Ring of Power, which will help Bilbo more and more as the journey progresses, but will also be the center of the quest that takes place in Lord of the Rings.

Give actor Andy Serkis and the computer team credit for turning this...

Into this.

Overall, does this replace The Lord of the Rings?  Of course not, those movies will forever be the brilliant, almost classic works that I still love to this day.  However, The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey is plenty worthy of standing alongside them as a worthy addition to any fan of either Tolkien's writing or Jackson's directing.  The only thing that bothers me is the attempt to drag this out into another trilogy.  However, the general switch from the costumed actors to CGI Orcs and Goblins has a negative impact on this movie in relation to the old ones.  While the additions and alterations to the details are somewhat extensive, they don't get in the way of enjoying the ride, and in many ways they help supplement an already brilliant story.  Whether or not the attempt to make this one-book story into 3 separate movies is an attempt to take more money from us is debatable.  However, I will gladly pay to see all of these movies, just to visit Middle-earth one more time.  These aren't the same movies as you've likely already seen, this is a brand-new adventure with different characters, mostly.  I would definitely recommend this for anyone who wants to revisit Middle-earth, or simply go on a brilliant, epic adventure that served as one of the main origins of contemporary fantasy and fiction.  Would I call this as great as the old movies? No... 

This movie, while not the same as its' predecessors, is still.... "Precious" to me (pun obviously intended).

The Good:

-Brilliant story and characters to follow throughout this lengthy quest.

-Lot of old faces to tie this into the story you may already know.

-Good old-fashioned "dungeons and dragons" style to this story; kill the dragon, get the loot.

-Lighter tone makes this more accessible to a broader audience, I think.

-Still plenty of those powerful moments that helped define the LOTR trilogy.

The Bad:

-Takes a while for the story to truly kick off.

-Well, I could cite that the attempt to make this single, not-so-large book into three movies adds a somewhat greedy overtone to this new trilogy, but I'd say just shut up and enjoy it, not like they're not giving you your money's worth.

Scully Rating: 9.0 out of 10