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The Hobbit: Battle Of The Five Armies


mydiamond

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First off, here's what happened in Liv's movie day:

1) The cinema was very very crowded. I thought people stay at home during Christmas!

2) I bought tickets to two movies at once, without bothering to ask if their show times collide. The first one is The Hobbit, second is Into The Woods.

3) The show times collide. The Hobbit ends almost 40 minutes after Into The Woods start. Lost five dollars.

4) I returned to the tickets booth, but most shows are sold out or almost sold out. I was meaning to also watch Interstellar and Night At The Museum but the only show times left are way too late. I was lucky I found a taxi yesterday, and the driver can't pick me up too late. So guess what, I bought another Into The Woods ticket.

5) Into The Woods was not exactly bad. It's horrible. My only review for it is: no. Meryl Streep's acting is cool though. Like always.

6) I'm left with only one movie to review. I still wish I could find time (and taxi money) to finish off my "movies to watch" list though!

 

So. The Hobbit. We all know the marketing is insane and the movie no longer costs millions to make... it costs billions. People joke Peter Jackson funded the movie with New Zealand's entire economy :shrug: people also moan about the amount of CGI used in the movie, because hey ho if you're in NZ then go film in real landscapes for once. But nope, most of the movies are filmed in green screens and we see rough CGI every once in a while in the first two movies. Then people make internet jokes about it (because how else do you complaint about Hollywood movies, right?) and they promised to refine The Hobbit's CGI in this last movie. They did.

 

But as you all probably already know, I don't have a good eye for CGI quality nor do I mind it much. What I always, always criticize is the story itself. The Hobbit is definitely a trilogy you can't watch from the middle. The story progresses rather slowly from the beginning, and only makes sense after you watch all three. If you forgot what happened in the previous movie, this one might be a little confusing... which is a pain, because there's a long gap between each movie and not all viewers keep track of what happened in a notebook or something. Other than that, I have one last complaint about the story line: I don't like the ending. There are a lot of subplots going on--such as but not limited to the Legolas-Tauriel-Kili love triangle--and some ends graciously, but weirdly enough what seems to be the main plot during the second movie ( I'll just say it: attempts to murder Smaug) ends very unceremoniously. I'm surprised nobody goes: "that's it?! BOOOO!!" during the movie, because the whole theater wasn't shy to laugh during some, well, laughable fight scenes. But hey, cut the guy some slack. I guess when you direct fight scenes every single day of your life for that many years, you'll run out of logical, non physics law-defying ideas after a while.

 

SPOILER ALERT: this paragraph is reserved for those who don't mind both spoilers and Liv's mini rant. So "the battle of the five armies" here refers to the battle between dwarfs, elves, men and orcs. It's either Peter Jackson can't count or they count the two dwarf kingdoms (further spoiler: Thorin has a cousin who just appeared out of thin air) as two separate armies. I refuse to believe they count wizards as the fifth army because there are only two wizards involved in the battle: Gandalf and Radagast. Hardly a party, let alone an army. Further spoiler: though, after some tedious politics stuff, the battle soon became more fit to be called "the battle of everyone versus the orcs because nobody likes them". What are they battling for? Money. That's it. Like, really? After all those complicated plot now the main battle is just about the good ol' gold? Here's a zoom in: dwarfs don't want to share their gold, men were promised a share and tried to claim it (the promise is given in the second movie by the way), elves were looking for some never-before-mentioned necklace buried within the dwarfs' treasure room, and the orcs are... just being orcs, I guess. I still don't get the reason why the orcs partake in this battle beside "because shadow man says so". But hey it's not like the orcs need any reason to attack. Isn't that just pretty much what they do since the age of the LoTR movies? :shrug:

 

So yeah. There are plot holes. There are some seriously flawed fight scenes that are strangely kept exclusive to Legolas. Maybe Orlando Bloom lost a truth-or-dare with the director or something. There are endings that will let you down (big time). There are probably also faulty CGIs that my eye didn't catch. But all in all, it makes a great night out. 8/10.

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I haven't seen the movie nor do I intend to. I don't hold the franchise in high regard at all because I strongly disagree with how it was executed. I did give the first two films my patience (a decision I regret), and the list of issues I had with them are many One being that I felt like I was watching a computer game instead of a movie; too much CGI and because the characters broke the laws of physics numerous times it was hard to believe that they were in any sort of peril. Another one being that it moved so far away from the original novel that it's like the makers didn't even know there was a book. Legolas? Tauriel? Really? Is 007 in the movie too? Is Batman? :D They spent more time on a character that wasn't even in the book than they did on the main characters. The whole Tauriel-Kili thing was just not needed and just added to the bloat of the second movie.

 

I won't go on. They could have (and in my opinion, should have) done it in 2 films..and used the same methods as they did in the LoTR movies (which I thought were fantastic). Back then they didn't use CGI for one horse they actually used a horse.

 

So yeah, I don't like the films :rofl:

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See, that's my problem. I never catch bad CGI until somebody pointed it out. That's why I don't mind The Hobbit trilogy. That being said, since I keep my ears open for movie-related gossips, I did hear that Ian McKellan (better known as Gandalf) was so frustrated about being cooped up in a green room all the time he actually cried. I really, really don't see the reason why they can't film in real landscapes. I mean, they're already in NZ! Go and make use of all that money spent! :huh: I do think the whole Legolas-Tauriel-Kili thing was added to give significance to the three characters. Because really without the triangle, these characters are not needed in the story. What role does Tauriel play beside being the weeping maiden torn between Legolas and Kili? That's fake hate though because I think she's super awesome :) evidence: I named 'my' feral cat's latest kittens Legolas and Tauriel :D :D

 

Last one: was Arwen in The Hobbit?? I can't seem to work out just who the heck is that fairy lady Gandalf had a crush on. Saruman called her "Lady Galadriel", which is a name that meant absolutely nothing to me. Why does she look so much like Arwen? I thought she's Arwen all along until the third movie. Is she Arwen's mom or is Galadriel simply a pseudonym? I mean, that should make sense. They did, after all, reveal that Gandalf's real name is Mithrandir. You see, watching this movie makes my head spin :lol: but since I'm easily pleased and would do anything to catch another glimpse of Middle Earth, I stand by my 8/10 rating :P

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Well, the reason behind the 'green screen' is not because they're not able to film on location, but because they're dealing with characters of different sizes; hobbits, dwarves and wizards differ a great deal in size. In Lotr they used 'forced perspective', which is ok when you have 2 people of different size. But it would be considerably harder with 3 differently sized people. With technology being what it is today, doing the whole thing digitally would be faster. So thats why McKellen was frustrated; because he's having to say his lines to essentially thin air. If you watch the LOTR behind the scenes stuff you'll see what I mean about forced perspective...it's very complicated. Simply put, if you have two similarly sized people and put one about 6ft behind the other, that person would look smaller depending on your viewpoint. They also used scale doubles for when this method would be too difficult to implement. I don't think they should have used antiquated methods for the sake of it, but rather, they should not make each character either laughable in appearance or indestructable.

 

I just found the whole romance thing cringeworthy. I can't see what it added to the plot. It's supposed to be about Bilbo's journey, but interestingly, we see less and less of Bilbo as the films progress. I heard that Thorin is more of the center piece in the third film. Arwen wasn't in The Hobbit. Neither was Galadriel or Saruman...or Radagast for that matter. Although Radagast did get one mention. They briefly covered areas which deserved more, and went into too much detail over things that were barely there or simply not there at all.

 

The only scene that I did like was Bilbo and Gollum because they got that absolutely right. Martin Freeman is perfect for Bilbo, just like how McKellen is perfect for Gandalf. I don't think Richard Armitage was great as Thorin. To me, they just tried to make him look like Aragorn.

 

 

If someone had told me before going to see the first film that it was going to be 'based' on the book as opposed to being a literal interpretation, I probably wouldn't have minded them so much.

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Yeah somebody on Cracked explained the forced perspective thing to us readers a while back. But still :( if you're gonna be in a green screen all day then stay in The States for goodness' sake!

 

EDIT: Rob, now I'm glad I let you know about this movie. If Thorin's resemblance to Aragorn annoyed you then you might as well flip out when you see that they make Thorin's cousin (don't know how to spell his name so I'll leave it blank) look a whole lot like Gimli :lol:

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  • 1 month later...

can i just say, i watched the hobbit botfa , and i was in pain the whole way through it. i'm a mentally crazy lotr fan and was looking forward to the hobbit, i never minded the first movie and thought the second wasnt the best but seriously the last movie killed me in one foul sweep. it was horrifying! i like that lotr hasnt got much cgi and felt that the last movie was just cgi i thought i was watching a xbox game or something?! and yeah why is legolas involved so much? my family have gotten bored of me talking about how much i disliked this movie so i am actually banned from mentioning it now, but why was thorins cousin (billy connelly) like full on cgi? i dont understand?! it hurt my soul i swear. most of the fight scenes were laughable in my opinion and i just didnt connect to this movie in any way what so ever. but maybe my love for lotr has ruined my chance of ever enjoying the hobbit trilogy as i compared it too much to lotr?

i mean even the soundtrack was nothing in comparrison to lotr. *rant rant rant rant* 

i don't know. maybe i'm just a massive geek. lmao

p.s tauriel wasnt even in the books so whyyyyy

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How they ever did this in 3 parts will always beggar belief from me. The book is a child's story, written at child's length, and I loved it, still love it. But please  I will never watch this and pay for the pleasure as I find the whole commercial enterprise behind it offensive. 

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It's blatant money-making...should have been done in 2 films. They weren't dealing with a 1200 page novel they were dealing with a book with only a quarter of that amount, so they could have covered everything in the book in great detail. One thing I won't forget is thinking to myself why the second film is 2 and a half hours long...what could they possibly put in it to make that long? Then I saw Tauriel...and it was like 'ah of course, now we know why'. And of course we had this stuff going on in Laketown which nearly put me to sleep....of course, that wouldn't add to the bloat at all :rofl:

 

I resent how you get those people who say that they're a true fan of the whole franchise purely because they like the drivel that is the Hobbit films..

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