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: The Desolation of Smaug

Well, Peter Jackson's latest installment in the Hobbit trilogy is out, and it picks up right where the last movie left off (so re-watch it if you want, couldn't hurt before jumping into this one).  Bilbo Baggins and Thorin Oakenshield's group continue their quest to the Lonely Mountain to reclaim the lost Dwarven kingdom.  However, the story soon becomes more complex.  There is a darkness creeping across the land, and while Smaug the Terrible is a source of darkness sitting on a trove of gold and jewels, this is something even more terrible than one dragon.  What is this threat, and will the group still be able to succeed in their quest? Well if you read the book, then you already know, and just want to know if this is a solid adaptation, so let's dive right into it.

Thorin's quest continues, but even as the dangers outside the group grow, you start to see a danger rise from within.

The story is more of what we saw in the last film.  The core material is taken right from Tolkiens The Hobbit, and it also adds more material outside of the original work.  This time, however, Legolas makes an appearance.  This is something we already saw in the previews, but he really plays a significant role beyond a simple cameo appearance.  While he is a character I could hardly dislike from The Lord of the Rings, he really is a different type of character this time around.  Part of the reason is that he is part of the Wood Elves, who are less civil than the elves we have come to know.  But this really is a different Legolas: less aloof and more jealousy.  While there are some other, more clever references to Lord of the Rings, Legolas is part of another side plot introduced during this film.

Bard the Boatman provides a very compelling voice of reason along the way against the quest for the Lonely Mountain, but he'll be even more important in the next film.

Another big issue, as mentioned, is the rise of this new threat.  It was hinted at in the first movie, with the "Necromancer" subplot, but this time it is delved into in more detail, and it provides one of the major plot twists of the film that ties into the original movies.  While the Necromancer was in the original film, it was only mentioned as the reason for Gandalf's departure, so the detail were not in the original book.  This also ties into the Pale Orc subplot, helping bring these characters and story elements together.

Stephen Fry adds a great deal of comedy in his role as the Master of Laketown

Now to the main plot.  It tries to seamless meld the original story with the additions, but obviously if you have read the book, there's no overlooking what isn't supposed to be there, but that doesn't mean it's bad; on the contrary, it's very well-done, and if you haven't read the book, you really wouldn't be able to tell the difference, anyways.  However, some of it does feel like a desperate attempt to draw out the story, since they are making another film out of it.  And that does make for some disappointment as somebody who wants to simply see a movie adaptation of the book itself, which should have only taken up one or two films.

Nice to see some Tolkien vets return to do these films.  A cameo would have felt more appropriate, but Legolas is here to kick some orcish, and possibly dwarfish, ass.

As for the characters, Bilbo and Thorin are both very well portrayed, just like the previous film, and Gandalf is Gandalf, so there should really be no doubts there.  The new central characters, King Thranduil of the wood elves, Tauriel (another add-on), and Smaug himself.  Thranduil provides an interesting conflict with Thorin, who still recalls when Thranduil betrayed the dwarves in their time of need.  Tauriel has a little romance throughout the film with Kili, which adds some humor initially, but evolves into something more serious.  This pits Kili against Legolas, who has his own sights set on Tauriel, so there is some additional conflict there.  Bard, who is important in the 3rd act of the story, is introduced, and has a very level-headed presence in the film, just like in the book.  He fears the dwarves' quest will anger Smaug, which could lead to dire consequences for Laketown, despite everyone believing the dwarves will bring riches to share with the town, saving it from poverty.

Tauriel is an add-on to the story, but she has a lot to bring forward.

Now for Smaug. Anyone who has read the book knows just how big (pun intended) this character is in the climax of the film, and the short but sweet back-and-forth with Bilbo provides some of the greatest tension between this halfling and the towering monster that destroyed a kingdom.  Smaug (along with "The Necromancer") is voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Khan in the latest Star Trek film.  His voice acting is incredible, making Smaug into a dark, yet intelligent and charismatic character on-screen.  The detail that went into animating this dragon shows, and his every movement looks as life-like as a towering mythical beast can look.

Nice dragon...... NIIIIIICE dragon.

The only major detractor from the film is the ending, which I saw coming.  As I stated before, the book didn't really fit into a trilogy of films, and one of those reasons is there is no good place in the source material to break the story up at this point.  From the time that the group reaches the Lonely Mountain, it becomes a straight dash to the finish, so no matter how it ended, it didn't provide any sense of closure; and while cliffhangers aren't bad, this wasn't so much of a cliffhanger as it was a mandatory cut-off, which hurts the film as a whole. 

It's for visuals like this that we want to see epics like The Hobbit  and Lord of the Rings turned into film, and this film brilliantly executes the beauty and scale of the world, along with the depth and dimension of the story and characters.

Overall, this is a great film.  Despite the awkward timing of the ending, which honestly couldn't have been avoided (unless the greedy studio could just leave it be and only do one or two films).  The characters from the book are all there, and well-adapted.  The story-crashers, as I like to call all the additional characters, are very well implemented into the film, but there is no mistaking one when you have read the book.  The story is more of what you expect from the first film, and the CGI looks a lot better this time around, for the most part.  Smaug is an amazing presence on screen, feeling just as imposing as a dragon should.  Should you see this film? Hell yes.  Is it beyond fault? obviously, no.  But still, this is a very enjoyable film, and I can't wait for the final installment in the trilogy.

The Good:

-More of The Hobbit, 'nuff said.

-"Smaug the Terrible?" More like "Smaug the Awesome."  Benedict Cumberbatch plays the role well, giving that same charismatic, yet sinister feeling that you saw in Into Darkness.

-Some nice cameos to the original Lord of the Rings films for long-time fans of Tolkien's work or Jackson's films.

-New characters from the book are all very well portrayed, and give some dimension to the story by challenging the nobility of the quest, warning of the consequences and dangers outside of just the protagonists.

The Bad:

-Ending is a little awkward and sudden, with some filler bits along the way, which was unavoidable unless you cut down on the number of films, which is what should have been done in the first place.

Scully Rating: 9.7 out of 10