Battles, Battles

I should be ashamed. I liked the first two Hobbit movies. I didn't think An Unexpected Journey is a bloated mess like everyone else claimed. And The Desolation of Smaug was beyond expectations. So, is it childish and moronic of me to think that I would be satisfied by the overly-lit, CGI-overloaded last chapter of The Hobbit, titled There and Back Again The Battle of the Five Armies? Of course not. But the fact that it was based on a 300-page movie should make you think twice. The last chapters of Harry Potter, Twilight and Hunger Games are all split into two. Harry Potter 7.1 is one of the series best, Harry Potter 7.2 isn't bad but it didn't justify the splitting since it left out many things. Twilight were awful and the penultimate Mockingjay doesn't hold up with the previous two. And now they want to split a book into three?

The movie quickly solved the whole Smaug-trashes-Lake-Town affair in 6 minutes maybe, which is a total bummer and then moved on to setting the stage for the sub-titular Battle of the Five Armies. Thorin Oakenshield has succumbed to greed, betraying his own promise to the people of Lake Town, waging war with the Elves led by Thranduil and the men led by Bard the Bowman. He received help from fellow dwarf clan of Ironfoot but the real enemy is the horde of Orcs led by Azog the Defiler as an attempt for Sauron to claim Erebor for its strategic location to reestablish his power.

To be honest, the moment they killed Smaug before the subtitle comes on screen ruined the movie. It is the perfect example of the perils of splitting a book. I didn't quite like the movie. It was hollow and even at 2.5 hours it felt endless. The previous five Middle-Earth movies although 3 hours each, doesn't feel that long. The CGI are sometimes awesome but the artificial look of everything bugs me. It's distracting. Oh and I believe that Dain Ironfoot is CGI. Please someone confirm it, I find it really distracting to see the unnatural movement and the blatant effort to minimize his visibility from us. There are some unintentional humor too during what should be an awesome sequence: keep an eye out on Legolas in his own Super Mario game. Thorin is degraded with having a dragon-sickness that came out of nowhere. It's shameful for a great established character like him. I feel that this film became too contained. It never felt as epic as The Lord of the Rings. The battles were too much, and I usually don't mind. Maybe the thing is the characters were never established in the previous two films so that we have no personal connection to them. Even Thorin's emergence to the battle is really short and he went on to ride some mountain goat. And the Eagles man, it's getting really old.

The saving grace for the film is Bilbo. Martin Freeman did a very nice job. His last farewell to the dwarves gets to me. Ian McKellen as always. Richard Armitage, given the character he played, did a very good job too or maybe because we've seen him kicking all kinds of ass with his deep voice in the previous two films. Then the Dol Guldur scene is also awesome. I mean who doesn't want to see Hugo Weaving, Christopher Lee (his stuntman maybe), and Cate Blanchett fighting off evil? Among the newcomers, I find Lee Pace really good as Thranduil, his fight scenes are awesome too. Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), this fan fiction, is also great, with Aidan Turner's Kili they make a killer fantasy couple played by more than able actors. I hope to see the Extended Version of the film make it really good. I never have the need to see the extended versions of the other Middle Earth films because it's already great for me, but maybe Battle of the Five Armies need it. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies: rated 2/4.