CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
OKAY, you've probably all heard everything by now but I need to write a long review, it's the law, sorry.
So it starts with Smaug attacking Lake Town. I liked that it didn't start with another 8 minute flashback/prologue going over stuff we've already seen. The problem is that Smaug is dead within about ten minutes so it just makes you think "wait, why didn't they put this at the end of the last movie?" There certainly would have been time if they'd cut some of the pointless stuff from DoS (and there was a lot of it!)
The four dwarves that stayed behind don't do anything at all in the Smaug attack so having them stay behind was pointless (they get back to Erebor pretty quickly here.) Tauriel doesn't do anything but say "leave them behind!" every time someone gets left behind.
Bard escapes because for some reason there was a rope in his jail cell and Stephen Fry's neck is stronger than iron bars(!?) No one else tries to fight Smaug but him. The visual of Smaug dying is impressive.
Legolas is just standing on the shore after Smaug dies. I honestly can't remember what he was doing at the end of the last movie but I assume he wasn't just standing there watching people die.
Okay so the start was fairly spectacular, but the problem is where do you go from here? Because it turns out there isn't actually very much plot left at all. This is of course a result of diving the book into three movies and after Smaug is dead there's nothing left to happen but the battle of five armies. So we get stage setting for that. A lot of stage setting. And it isn't really all that interesting? I mean once you've seen a dragon die, discussions on the fair distibution of gold aren't very thrilling.
One of the ways the movie pads things out is by having Thorin do everything in slow motion. He starts talking in an EVIL VOICE just so that you get that he's evil now. In slow motion. He has a weird dream where he's supposed to be sinking into gold but it looks like Cadbury's Caramel advert. In slow motion. He decides to be good again after about four different characters give him the same "you have to be good again!" speech and walks in front of a sunrise. In slow motion.
Then there's the Sauron stuff which after two movies of build-up is done in one scene here. It's undeniably cool seeing Galadriel, Elrod and Saruman fighting the Nazgul...then Galadriel turns into the girl from The Ring to scare away Sauron. The one thing in Fellowship Of The Ring people complained about and they bring it back. Then Saruman says his "leave Sauron to me!" line from the trailer and in the trailer I thought that meant we'd see Saruman fight Sauron or meet with him...but no that's the end of the subplot. If I hadn't seen LOTR I would be wondering what the point of this was (and I have seen LOTR and I'm still wondering what the point of half of it was.)
Alfrid - Okay WTF were they thinking giving him so many scenes? I mean the I know the reason, I can just imagine Peter Jackson saying "he wasn't supposed to be in it so much but we liked the actor so we kept giving him stuff to do *chuckle chuckle*" on the commentary. They just repeat the same thing again and again by having characters idiotically trusting him to do something important and then he fails to do it. Why would they even trust him for a second? It would be like Eomer going up to Wormtongue and saying "okay I want you to look after Eowyn for me BUT DON'T PERV ON HER." Then the pay-off to all this is...Bard just lets him go. The greedy murdering coward who threatend to hit women and was happy to watch children die gets an "aww shucks, it's Alfrid!" ending. Hardly sticking to the spirt of the book, is it? And it's also Bard's last line in the movie which is completely bizarre. I actually like the actor as King Louis in The Musketeers so this is all on Peter Jackson.
Bilbo actually does something (meaning they stick to the book) when he steals the Arkenstone and manages to stop the elves attacking. It's probably the only useful thing he does in the movie.
Billy Connolly shows up and his voice is quite amusing. I really couldn't tell if he was CGI or it was a different actor playing his body. I think what must have happened is he filmed all his scenes three or four years ago (I remember him talking about the make-up in interviews so he definitely filmed some stuff) but they needed him back for reshoots and he was available because he's been ill. So they just drew over him with CGI in all his scenes for consistency? It looks weird. He kills orcs that are wearing helmets by headbutting them and it makes no sense.
The orcs have WERE WORMS and they use them to dig tunnels then we never see them again.
The battle starts off pretty good with the part where the elves jump over the dwarves. Then there's a lot of (too much) fighting in Dale (which I don't think happened in the book?) and Bard has to save James Nesbitt's daughters again because we haven't heard "Da" enough yet.
Then we end up with Thorin, Bilbo, Legols, Tauriel going off to fight boss battles in the snow stage with the CGI orcs. I don't mind giving Bilbo more to do in the battle because the more Bilbo the better, but he doesn't actually do anything useful. There were times in the final fight where I honestly ccouldn't tell which one was Bolg, which one was Azog and which were just lookalike orcs (there was a bit where Legolas threw Orcrist through an orc's head and I thought "oh, Bolg's dead" but then he was fighting Bolg again a minute later.) The problem with ending with one on one fights is that it makes the rest of the battle (which we've cut away from for a long time now) look pointless. Especially since...
The eagles show up and just wash over a load of orcs and it's almost like the ghost army just deleting all the orcs from Minas Tirith. Peter Jackson isn't good at ending big battle scenes. At no point do we even hear that the battle is ended. I guess we're just supposed to assume the eagles killed all the bad guys offscreen. Beorn shows up for a few seconds, which is pathetic. If you're going to introduce a guy that can transform into a bear at least have him fucking do something cool. Radagast also joins the final battle because...Radagat is a killer now? We don't see him doing anything anwyway. We don't even see the bats (BRED FOR WAR) and the eagles fighting each other!
Tauriel - It's funny that when the character was first announced everyone making the movie said she wouldn't just end up being a love interest or a damsel in distree when that's literally all she was here. She spoke to Kili for about five minutes in total over the two movies and we're supposed to think it's REAL LOVE because she cries when he dies? Enough to convince Thranduil to turn face AGAIN? (He already turned face once when he aided the dwarves during the battle but then he turned heel by threatening to leave agian for no reason.)
Legolas - Legolas and Tauriel travel all the way to Angamar which is I think hundreds or thousands of miles away just to look at some bats. At least it means Legolas isn't involved in the fighting as much as he could have been. A bat gives him a lift to the ice stage for some reason. He steers a troll by using his sword like a joystick in its neck. I don't actually mind the running on falling rocks as much as some people did because Elves are supposed to be light on their feet, but it looks kind of fake and silly. Thne there's the "GO FIND ARAGORN BUT I WON'T TELL YOU HIS NAME FOR SOME REASON" bit. Are they trying to set up a "Legoas and Aragorn!" spin-off series, but without Viggo because he hated these movies and would never return?
It's weird how the movie feels simultaneously too dragged out but also too rushed. We don't really get proper resolutions to several of the stories. We don't find out what happens to the Arkenstone after it being built up to be a big deal in all three movies. We don't find out who the new King Under The Mountain is (it's Dain by the way) after it being the reason the dwarves were doing all this for the last three movies. We don't find out what happens to the Lake Town people or if Bard becomes their new King (he does.) I KNOW some will say "DON'T WORRY HE'LL FIX THIS IN THE EXTENDED EDITION" but the EE shouldn't be there to "fix" things. We should see all the character and storyline resolutions in the actual movie. The EE should be for stuff like the Alfrid scenes that are fun but non-essential (except good stuff instead.)
Bombur still doesn't get a line. I thought after three movies of silence they were building to something but I guess not. James Nesbitt only gets about one line which is weird since he was presented as being semi-impotant in the previous two movies. Thorin kind of says the lines from the book to Bilbo when he dies so it's a nice scene but it's changed a bit and Gandalf kind of says the final lines from the book to Bilbo but the context is different so they don't really make sense?
There's a weird bit where Gandalf plays with his pipe for a minute while Bilbo just sits there.
The book ends with Balin and Gandalf visiting Bilbo and giving him a recap on everything that's happened since and I really think the movie could have used that to give more of a sense of closure but instead it ends with a "LOTR prequel!" moment.
Billy Boyd is a good singer.
TL;DR: making The Hobbit into three movies was a bad idea.
So it starts with Smaug attacking Lake Town. I liked that it didn't start with another 8 minute flashback/prologue going over stuff we've already seen. The problem is that Smaug is dead within about ten minutes so it just makes you think "wait, why didn't they put this at the end of the last movie?" There certainly would have been time if they'd cut some of the pointless stuff from DoS (and there was a lot of it!)
The four dwarves that stayed behind don't do anything at all in the Smaug attack so having them stay behind was pointless (they get back to Erebor pretty quickly here.) Tauriel doesn't do anything but say "leave them behind!" every time someone gets left behind.
Bard escapes because for some reason there was a rope in his jail cell and Stephen Fry's neck is stronger than iron bars(!?) No one else tries to fight Smaug but him. The visual of Smaug dying is impressive.
Legolas is just standing on the shore after Smaug dies. I honestly can't remember what he was doing at the end of the last movie but I assume he wasn't just standing there watching people die.
Okay so the start was fairly spectacular, but the problem is where do you go from here? Because it turns out there isn't actually very much plot left at all. This is of course a result of diving the book into three movies and after Smaug is dead there's nothing left to happen but the battle of five armies. So we get stage setting for that. A lot of stage setting. And it isn't really all that interesting? I mean once you've seen a dragon die, discussions on the fair distibution of gold aren't very thrilling.
One of the ways the movie pads things out is by having Thorin do everything in slow motion. He starts talking in an EVIL VOICE just so that you get that he's evil now. In slow motion. He has a weird dream where he's supposed to be sinking into gold but it looks like Cadbury's Caramel advert. In slow motion. He decides to be good again after about four different characters give him the same "you have to be good again!" speech and walks in front of a sunrise. In slow motion.
Then there's the Sauron stuff which after two movies of build-up is done in one scene here. It's undeniably cool seeing Galadriel, Elrod and Saruman fighting the Nazgul...then Galadriel turns into the girl from The Ring to scare away Sauron. The one thing in Fellowship Of The Ring people complained about and they bring it back. Then Saruman says his "leave Sauron to me!" line from the trailer and in the trailer I thought that meant we'd see Saruman fight Sauron or meet with him...but no that's the end of the subplot. If I hadn't seen LOTR I would be wondering what the point of this was (and I have seen LOTR and I'm still wondering what the point of half of it was.)
Alfrid - Okay WTF were they thinking giving him so many scenes? I mean the I know the reason, I can just imagine Peter Jackson saying "he wasn't supposed to be in it so much but we liked the actor so we kept giving him stuff to do *chuckle chuckle*" on the commentary. They just repeat the same thing again and again by having characters idiotically trusting him to do something important and then he fails to do it. Why would they even trust him for a second? It would be like Eomer going up to Wormtongue and saying "okay I want you to look after Eowyn for me BUT DON'T PERV ON HER." Then the pay-off to all this is...Bard just lets him go. The greedy murdering coward who threatend to hit women and was happy to watch children die gets an "aww shucks, it's Alfrid!" ending. Hardly sticking to the spirt of the book, is it? And it's also Bard's last line in the movie which is completely bizarre. I actually like the actor as King Louis in The Musketeers so this is all on Peter Jackson.
Bilbo actually does something (meaning they stick to the book) when he steals the Arkenstone and manages to stop the elves attacking. It's probably the only useful thing he does in the movie.
Billy Connolly shows up and his voice is quite amusing. I really couldn't tell if he was CGI or it was a different actor playing his body. I think what must have happened is he filmed all his scenes three or four years ago (I remember him talking about the make-up in interviews so he definitely filmed some stuff) but they needed him back for reshoots and he was available because he's been ill. So they just drew over him with CGI in all his scenes for consistency? It looks weird. He kills orcs that are wearing helmets by headbutting them and it makes no sense.
The orcs have WERE WORMS and they use them to dig tunnels then we never see them again.
The battle starts off pretty good with the part where the elves jump over the dwarves. Then there's a lot of (too much) fighting in Dale (which I don't think happened in the book?) and Bard has to save James Nesbitt's daughters again because we haven't heard "Da" enough yet.
Then we end up with Thorin, Bilbo, Legols, Tauriel going off to fight boss battles in the snow stage with the CGI orcs. I don't mind giving Bilbo more to do in the battle because the more Bilbo the better, but he doesn't actually do anything useful. There were times in the final fight where I honestly ccouldn't tell which one was Bolg, which one was Azog and which were just lookalike orcs (there was a bit where Legolas threw Orcrist through an orc's head and I thought "oh, Bolg's dead" but then he was fighting Bolg again a minute later.) The problem with ending with one on one fights is that it makes the rest of the battle (which we've cut away from for a long time now) look pointless. Especially since...
The eagles show up and just wash over a load of orcs and it's almost like the ghost army just deleting all the orcs from Minas Tirith. Peter Jackson isn't good at ending big battle scenes. At no point do we even hear that the battle is ended. I guess we're just supposed to assume the eagles killed all the bad guys offscreen. Beorn shows up for a few seconds, which is pathetic. If you're going to introduce a guy that can transform into a bear at least have him fucking do something cool. Radagast also joins the final battle because...Radagat is a killer now? We don't see him doing anything anwyway. We don't even see the bats (BRED FOR WAR) and the eagles fighting each other!
Tauriel - It's funny that when the character was first announced everyone making the movie said she wouldn't just end up being a love interest or a damsel in distree when that's literally all she was here. She spoke to Kili for about five minutes in total over the two movies and we're supposed to think it's REAL LOVE because she cries when he dies? Enough to convince Thranduil to turn face AGAIN? (He already turned face once when he aided the dwarves during the battle but then he turned heel by threatening to leave agian for no reason.)
Legolas - Legolas and Tauriel travel all the way to Angamar which is I think hundreds or thousands of miles away just to look at some bats. At least it means Legolas isn't involved in the fighting as much as he could have been. A bat gives him a lift to the ice stage for some reason. He steers a troll by using his sword like a joystick in its neck. I don't actually mind the running on falling rocks as much as some people did because Elves are supposed to be light on their feet, but it looks kind of fake and silly. Thne there's the "GO FIND ARAGORN BUT I WON'T TELL YOU HIS NAME FOR SOME REASON" bit. Are they trying to set up a "Legoas and Aragorn!" spin-off series, but without Viggo because he hated these movies and would never return?
It's weird how the movie feels simultaneously too dragged out but also too rushed. We don't really get proper resolutions to several of the stories. We don't find out what happens to the Arkenstone after it being built up to be a big deal in all three movies. We don't find out who the new King Under The Mountain is (it's Dain by the way) after it being the reason the dwarves were doing all this for the last three movies. We don't find out what happens to the Lake Town people or if Bard becomes their new King (he does.) I KNOW some will say "DON'T WORRY HE'LL FIX THIS IN THE EXTENDED EDITION" but the EE shouldn't be there to "fix" things. We should see all the character and storyline resolutions in the actual movie. The EE should be for stuff like the Alfrid scenes that are fun but non-essential (except good stuff instead.)
Bombur still doesn't get a line. I thought after three movies of silence they were building to something but I guess not. James Nesbitt only gets about one line which is weird since he was presented as being semi-impotant in the previous two movies. Thorin kind of says the lines from the book to Bilbo when he dies so it's a nice scene but it's changed a bit and Gandalf kind of says the final lines from the book to Bilbo but the context is different so they don't really make sense?
There's a weird bit where Gandalf plays with his pipe for a minute while Bilbo just sits there.
The book ends with Balin and Gandalf visiting Bilbo and giving him a recap on everything that's happened since and I really think the movie could have used that to give more of a sense of closure but instead it ends with a "LOTR prequel!" moment.
Billy Boyd is a good singer.
TL;DR: making The Hobbit into three movies was a bad idea.
