'The Battle of the Five Armies' in theatres | SPOILERS

I am rather looking forward to the Dol Guldur scenes, well to editing them right back out that is!

Ahhhh... Teleporno. A blast from the past...

feanor 1999 wrote:Ahhhh... Teleporno. A blast from the past...

Wasn't there a Teleporno who used to post on Bree?

The place has been gone so long now I find it hard to recall much

Bree Bree Bree halcyon days of hope

Why does THORIN DIE? yes I know it happened in the book but they recreated the whole thing so why not let him live? the way he died too was awful and no one seemed to do much
including Bilbo who sat there like a loser...it was horrible...why couldn't Bilbo use the ring to get invisible and kill ozarg? why couldn't he have let thorin use it to get ozarg?? why did thorin fight alone
rather than take his cousin or more people? why did they split up? why did the magical bears take so LONG to come as well as the eagles? why didn't they aid thorin in his fight with ozarg?
why didn't the eagles take ozarg in the first one and get him then?? I mean really...this makes NO sense at all...there were 100 possibilities and they ended up killing thorin and ozarg didn't even exist
in the books...this was just stupid...also they made thorin look like a total idiot as if he really thought ozarg was gone in the frozen water...seriously...thorin isn't that stupid...
the movie was ridiculous it ruined the whole series...THORIN was the whole reason for the entire damn series..with him gone who cares..it's just messed

Hello Jenn9922, welcome to the forum!

I feel your pain. It really doesn't make a whole lot of sense to produce a trilogy of films in which most of the focus slides onto a character that dies at the end of the trilogy.
It's not even as if Thorin's death accomplishes anything beyond just getting rid of him so that the survivors of the battle can sort through who should get what treasure and so on.

yes forest shepherd..exactly..its so frustrating. His death really was so pointless and meant nothing- it was dark almost and a representative that someone as awesome as thorin someone so strong and brave and who worked so hard, ended up getting nothing and his life was taken to save the rest of the others. Normally that would seem a noble thing but not with thorin...he just deserved so much more...also worse, not sure about the book but in the movie, the brothers die and thorin dies..not many other major characters. they even let tauriel who doesn't exist survive..which makes no sense...Richard Armitage plays a really good thorin and he was my favorite character out of everyone because of his passion and strength and bravery...he did whatever he could to help regain the homeland for his people...its just devastating...

Welcome to Forumshire Jen.

As a lover of the book I have to say Thorin has to die in any film adaptation- PJ's mistake was making these films the story of a competent heroic Thorin reclaiming his home land- which it never was in the book- the book the tale of how a stuffy, stay at home respectable middle-class hobbit goes on a big adventure and learns and grows.
Book Thorin is much older, much more prideful and consumed with a sense of grievance and greed for what his family once had and he is poor leader.
They don't even go on the quest to kill Smaug, because there is only 13 of them and that would be suicidally stupid, or to reclaim their homeland, they go to just scout out the area to find out if Smaug is still there and hopefully steal some treasure to ease Thorin's yearning and lust for heirlooms and some treasure.

If the films focus had remained where it should be- on Bilbo throughout. No Necro nonsense, no shitbeard Raddy, no Azog nemesis for Thorin (Azog has been dead for ages before the book even starts) and Thorin had died as he does in the book, with Fili and Kili falling defending his body, it would have been so much better.

But alas for the poorness of the scripts and of the adaptation.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
They don't even go on the quest to kill Smaug, because there is only 13 of them and that would be suicidally stupid, or to reclaim their homeland, they go to just scout out the area to find out if Smaug is still there and hopefully steal some treasure to ease Thorin's yearning and lust for heirlooms and some treasure.

If the films focus had remained where it should be- on Bilbo throughout. No Necro nonsense, no shitbeard Raddy, no Azog nemesis for Thorin (Azog has been dead for ages before the book even starts) and Thorin had died as he does in the book, with Fili and Kili falling defending his body, it would have been so much better.

I think that it is really important to remember this point - the book is not necessarily about how the Dwarves' quest is to 'reclaim their homeland' but rather to literally "steal" (hence a burglar) some gold. Perhaps the option is there for some point in the future, but reclaiming Erebor is never to explicitly stated in the book (Insofar as I recall). Making it a nationalistic quest (and making Erebor the "strongest kingdom in Middle-earth" or whatever such nonsense that was) immediately amplifies the stakes and ensures that the Hobbit movies are poised to compete with their naturally epic predecessors. As many have noted, this more or less guarantees the lesser critical and financial success that they have enjoyed.

By contrast, imagine if the book had been adapted on its own terms. As Petty says, without a Necromancer (at least without him written in as a specific element in the narrative) without Azog, Radagast, Tauriel or any of the myriad other such redundant characters. A film that embraced the ambiguity of the fairy tail, focalised its narrative energy through Bilbo, didn't try so hard to 'link' everything with The Lord of the Rings, etc, etc.

Standing on its own terms the Hobbit would not have needed to compete in the minds of many fans with the LOTR. Financial success on LOTR levels may still have eluded it, but I daresay it would have been a greater critical success.

It might have had greater financial success I think- people wold still have gone to see it because of the LotR's buzz and without all that extra nonsense it would have been considerably cheaper to make.

Maybe you should give my purist edits a go Trans, as they pretty much do remove all the unnecessary guff.

Thorin has to die for the message that 'greed is bad' to sink into young brains. Thorin was not a hero, but PJ turned him into a romantic leading man, hence people are getting upset when he pegs it. For those invested in handsome hero Thorin It would be like watching Aragorn die. But you have to remember that Richard Armitage isn't really the real Thorin, the real Thorin is a bumbling moaning and selfish idjit until the bitter end. He gets his moment of reconciliation at the end and that's the important bit.

I think it is important to remember that when Tolkien first wrote The Hobbit, it was conceived as a stand alone fairytale drawing on Tolkien's love for European Mythology, and loosely inspired by early drafts of The Silmarillion. It was intentionally written to be an episodic moriality tale, Thorin's greed (yet underlying courtesy) written as a very clear parallel to Bilbo's ever increasing bravery, it was never supposed to be published, many elements of the book seem tailor made for the interests his children had in literature. At this stage of 'The Silmarillion' writings, I don't think Dwarves had really been developed as a race, The bumbling fools in The Hobbit, being rather different to the noble race later hinted at in the LOTR appendices.

From the wiki:

Tolkien borrowed Thorin's name from the Old Norse poem "Völuspá", part of the Poetic Edda.[1] The name "Thorin" (Þorinn) appears in stanza 12, where it is used for a dwarf, and the name "Oakenshield" (Eikinskjaldi) in stanza 13.[2] The names also appear in Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda.[3] The Norse Þorinn means darer or bold one,[4] which is apt for the dwarf who initiated the quest of Erebor.

I think Tolkien was being intentionally ironic when he named Thorin 'Bold One', the Quest to reclaim the gold was never well thought out, and as Narrator Tolkien frequentyl makes subtle hints to Thorin's misplaced arrogance and pride, as if he were hammering home a point.

I actually like Thorin more in the books anyway, his pride and arrogance always seemed to be part of the tragedy for me, he was a deeply flawed character from the start, filled with a false confidence reinforced by age and noble blood.

But it actually made it easier for me to relate to him than a dashing and oh so tragic young prince in his prime-Book Thorin has a very nasty streak to be sure, but at least he a had a personality you wouldn't expect from a leading character, it was refreshing to me (I read The Hobbit after LOTR) to get such a flawed character, after the virtually flawless and heroic arachtypes of Aragorn or Faramir in the LOTR book.

I'm rambling here, but this excellent essay points out the Many good points about Thorin's character, and the reasons why he acts the way he does:

http://thorinoakenshield.net/in-defense-of-thorin-oakenshield/

I think it's relevant that the movies play up the notion of dragon sickness and Thorin no longer being himself so much. This idea had it's origin in the book, and Thorin certainly gets worse once they reach the mountain, but his actions near the end of the book are a natural extension of how his character had acted up to that point. Not so much in the movies. I think the age point is a good one too. Book Thorin is much more set in his ways, while Movie Thorin is still a young character struggling with the weight of expectations and daddy issues. In the book, he is justifiably proud of what he had built for the Dwarves in the Blue Mountains, even though he desired more. And when he learned Gandalf had the map and key, his pride was kindled far more visibly than his love for his father. Not to say that he didn't care about his father, but Book Thorin was a supporting character and we didn't get as much insight into his inner emotions.

Eldorion wrote:I think it's relevant that the movies play up the notion of dragon sickness and Thorin no longer being himself so much. This idea had it's origin in the book, and Thorin certainly gets worse once they reach the mountain, but his actions near the end of the book are a natural extension of how his character had acted up to that point. Not so much in the movies. I think the age point is a good one too. Book Thorin is much more set in his ways, while Movie Thorin is still a young character struggling with the weight of expectations and daddy issues. In the book, he is justifiably proud of what he had built for the Dwarves in the Blue Mountains, even though he desired more. And when he learned Gandalf had the map and key, his pride was kindled far more visibly than his love for his father. Not to say that he didn't care about his father, but Book Thorin was a supporting character and we didn't get as much insight into his inner emotions.

Yes good point. Have you read Tolkien's Poem The Hoard? It ties in with the concepts of greed and morality.

I think Thorin being a bit of a flawed git it is another reason why I like the hobbit book more than LOTR (though I concede it is far worse book, in terms of plot, style, execution, character development and so on...) it's more unconventional.

(I also like Feanor and Turin alot, even though they are b*stards)

That's the point Tolkien made with Thorin though, he was older and on in years. Kind of a big windbag who felt the need to show others how important he is. I think once he had the map and key the quest was rushed together and not well thought out. Showing the first of many of Thorin's flaws. From there it just got worse. Thorin even had his arrogant tone even though Bilbo had saved them time and again. Once they reached the dragon horde and Small defeated by sheer dumb luck, his arrogance grew more and his humility less. It took being mortally wounded and knowing he was going to die to truly make him understand. Movie Thorin was horrible in comparison

Well, I have seen it, and I've had some time to think about it, and to be honest I don't feel like I have much to say.

I felt better prepared going into BOFA than DOS (I didn't feel as crabbit during BOFA as I did during DOS.). Most of the cringey moments I just laughed off or ignored. Legolas grabbing onto the bat's legs actually gave me a good chuckle. I wonder if that was the intended reaction, or if I was supposed to think it was cool.

When I reviewed DOS I structured my review around all the major set pieces in the story's progression. I feel like it's harder to do that here because the episodic "A to B to C" formula is gone, and makes it harder for me to gather my thoughts as some events get jumbled up.

There's also no point in talking about this movie as an adaptation of the book. That was made pretty clear about halfway through AUJ, it's only now during BOFA that I accepted it. This is not based off the book The Hobbit, it's based off PJ's LOTR movies. There's nothing else that can be said about that; it is what it is.

Here I will try to attempt a beat by beat recall of the movie like I did with DOS, but I'm sure I'll forget a lot of stuff.

1. Fire and Water: I had already seen this (plus about 20 extra minutes) because I had watched the beginning of that Spanish bootleg. I kind of regretted watching it now, because overall it's a pretty good sequence. I liked Bard's moment with his son, and Bard telling him to look at him when it seemed like things were going to go very bad. What I didn't like here was more of Smaug's vain, sanctimonious blathering. He pretty much offers himself to Bard. "Oh, you over there! Let me talk to you for a minute so I can let you kill me!"

Now I'm having trouble remembering what came next. I guess I'll just talk about the Dol Guldur sequence.

2. Doggle Door: I was pretty sure this would be the only sequence I would enjoy, but it ended up being one of the more disappointing parts. The Nazgul look terrible, and the effects are pretty bad. Once they're "killed" by Saruman and Elrond, they sort of twitch and disappear. The twitching reminded me of a glitch in a video game, or a "glitch in the Matrix," and kind of took me out of the moment. "Ring" Galadriel was stupid, and there's not much else I can say about that.

Sauron has the following line: "The age of the Orc has come." Firstly, this is a call-forward to nearly the exact same line in ROTK ("The time of the Orc has come."). Secondly, this makes it seem like Sauron's end game is to establish an orc paradise. I've talked about this here before.

Spoiler:

So I won't talk about it any further.

There's a brief scene with Gandalf and Radagast at Rhosgobel, and I thought here Gandalf would tell Radagast to get reinforcements (Beorn, eagles), because I remember PJ saying in an interview that "the eagles are part of the plan" and wouldn't be a surprise out of nowhere. This didn't happen, wonder if it will be saved for the EE.

3. The Clouds Gather: I was afraid that in all of this big mess that Bilbo would be completely side-lined, and he was just a little bit, but not to the extent that he was in DOS, which was refreshing. Martin Freeman actually gets to do some (pretty good) acting in this movie. His interactions with Thorin in the lead up to the battle are good. The conversation about the acorn was nice, and it would have been refreshing to have more quiet, character moments like that in these movies.

I keep trying to think of something to say about what's going on with the Lake-town people/Bard/Thranduil/Elves, but I can't. I liked the "Thief in the Night" sequence, and how the aftermath plays out the next morning. Bilbo finally standing up for himself was nice.

Dain was okay, I guess. But in his closeups he looked like he belonged in a Robert Zemeckis movie.

Legolas and Tauriel's trek to Gundabad doesn't really add much to the story (most of the scenes Legolas is in, and the dialogue he has, doesn't add much to the story). The idea that his mother was killed there is a total throwaway and not necessary. It doesn't embolden his hatred for Bolg, it doesn't add depth to him or Thranduil, and the movie would have been exactly the same without it. I believe it's talked about twice with absolutely no payoff or purpose.

4. The Clouds Burst: The orc army arrives by were-worm tunnel (on a side note, I always though were- meant it was half human and half whatever, like in were-wolf, it's a man but he also turns into a wolf and the wolf state has human features. So are these worms supposed to turn into humans or orcs? I don't understand the use of the term) and while no one was looking, Azog set up camp at Ravenhill, complete with a signaling device and everything. Seriously, no one saw them setting all this up? It's not like they could just sneak in and set it up in five minutes.

I liked that the battle felt smaller than Helm's Deep and Pelennor (it's bigger than the battle at the Black Gate, obviously). I didn't feel like they were trying to top themselves in terms of scope of the battle and size of armies. However, I don't think they did a good job of establishing the geography of Erebor and Dale, as at some points I was having a hard time picturing where everything was in relation to everything else. At one point Bilbo asks, "Which way is north?" and I thought, "Fuck if I know!"

I really had to go to the bathroom by the time Thorin leads a charge to Ravenhill to kill Azog so it was hard for me to focus on the last 20 minutes or so. I didn't like how Fili was killed, it was humiliating and a spectacle. The character deserved better treatment (in terms of characterization (which he has pretty much none of) and a heroic death).

Ravenhill is pretty much the Thorin and Legolas Show, so I won't get into much detail. I'll just say that I just let go and munched on my candy and most of it didn't bother me.

Edit 2: Wanted to add something here because I just remembered it. Azog once again does something that makes no sense. During his fight with Thorin he offers him up to the goblins to finish him off. I thought the whole thing was about Azog wanting to kill Thorin himself. He does the same thing in AUJ and is foiled by Bilbo, here a goblin almost kills Thorin, but he is saved by Legolas. It makes no sense that Azog would have Thorin exactly where he wants him TWICE! and leaves it up to someone else to finish the job. It's a terrible cliche.

The battle ends abruptly, and the forces that Bolg has brought from Gundabad don't even make it to the battlefield before they are picked off by the eagles. Speaking of eagles, this is probably the most disappointing entrance of the eagles in any Middle-earth movie, it's just so lackluster. I've come to expect some really great camerawork from PJ when it comes to these moments. It felt like he didn't even care here, and just wanted to get it over with.

Bilbo's final moments with Thorin are good, and Gandalf's quiet scene with Bilbo is also good. There's actually some pretty okay things here. The scenes between Thranduil/Legolas/Tauriel don't add much. The dialogue between Thranduil and Tauriel could have easily been replaced by a brief silent moment and a look of acceptance. Bilbo's farewell to the dwarves is brief and acceptable.

5. The Last Stage: Gandalf leaves Bilbo at the edge of the Shire in a very nice scene. And then Gandalf says this line: "You're a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I'm quite fond of you. But you are really just a little fellow, in a wide world after all."

A line.

From the book.







My favorite line from the book. They actually put it in. Holy shit. Was it worth nine hours of cinema just for that one line? I'm not sure at the moment, but I'm leaning toward "maybe."

Overall, the best of the three, especially if you go in and just accept what it's going to be.

My ratings of the Hobbit movies so far have been:

AUJ: 4/10 (bumped up from a three once I saw DOS)
DOS: -1/10

I think I'll give BOFA a 6/10. I'm feeling generous.

Edit: Just wanted to say here at the end that I did not cry, but left the theater and drove home smiling knowing that there would never be any more Middle-earth movies ever again. It's a good feeling. I also didn't stay to watch the drawings during the credits because of an urgent need to use the restroom.

I almost have the exact same things to say as Bungo, particularly his opening line of "there isn't much to say." Of course I smacked my head a couple times and plugged my ears because I couldn't handle the dialogue, but there were some really fine moments (my favorite being when Bilbo arrives with the Arkenstone. That was almost exactly as I had pictured it from the book). Richard Armitage did a very good job in this movie. The Thorin we get is deeper than in previous movies because it's no longer just talking about dragon sickness. Armitage really plays it. Does it get ridiculous? Of course. Especially when Thorin is in the middle of the molten gold floor hallucinating about falling into a malestrom of gold. But the acting felt real for once.
Gotta say, Thranduil and Bard made the movie for me. Both Luke and Lee really did well with their characters. The first 3/4 of the film were pretty good (apart from the Tauriel Kili crap which was not hugely important thank Eru) as a result of those two. The bit about Legolas's mother was utter crap and it was just some false emotional stakes to make the "love" theme more relevant in the story. However, I almost teared up when Legolas left and Thrandy is just standing there watching him leave. Sure, it made no sense at all, but Lee Pace's face got me. The only thing I can see that justify's the mention of Strider being applicable at all to the story is that the time lines in the movies and the books are completely different. Going off of the movie time line, Strider would probably be a young man at the point of BOFA. Is it excusable though? Absolutely not.
Bard's family as a plot device is something that I approve of very much. It made his actions valid, and if nothing I'll say he's one thing PJ's creative license got right. His natural ability to lead however is still unexplained. He just kind of glides into the role without much self doubt or reason.
Two things that I thought were so unnecessarily violent: Fili's death, and Tauriel's fight with Bolg. My mouth was wide open for a while after Fili was dropped by Azog and fell sickeningly in front of Kili. Just, stop right there. This is a children's book. That was something completely uncalled for and gruesome to watch. His death meant nothing really, and neither did Kili's. They both died for no real reason. Tauriel was viciously hit over the head by Bolg. My friend and I both jumped out of disgust. We thought she was dead. It didn't matter that she was a woman, it was shockingly violent regardless.
Galadriel's zombie form returns when she's challenging Sauron, and I thought I was going to have a seizure from all his flashing. The weird dark think, whatever, fine, I can swallow it, but having her utterly weakened by it and having to hang on Elrond like she's helpless? Un-fucking-acceptable. I wanted to cry at that point because I thought she was going to go Luthien on his ass but instead she just went psycho after not really doing anything at all. It was such a great moment and they wasted it in my opinion.

I'll probably have more to say later, or not. Those were the only things that really bugged me, and that's because I didn't expect them. Everything else lived up (or down rather) to par, so I found that it was tolerable to sit through. The pacing was good and the action rose to a pretty clear climax. I thought the ending was fine, succinct and tied into the fellowship nicely.

I give it a 6/10 as well: it stuck pretty close to the book (minus the obvious deviations) and was just a better made film over all.

The Mayor of Forumshire wrote: Martin Freeman actually gets to do some (pretty good) acting in this movie. His interactions with Thorin in the lead up to the battle are good. The conversation about the acorn was nice, and it would have been refreshing to have more quiet, character moments like that in these movies.
.....

Bilbo's final moments with Thorin are good, and Gandalf's quiet scene with Bilbo is also good. There's actually some pretty okay things here.
.....
Bilbo's farewell to the dwarves is brief and acceptable.

5. The Last Stage: Gandalf leaves Bilbo at the edge of the Shire in a very nice scene. And then Gandalf says this line: "You're a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I'm quite fond of you. But you are really just a little fellow, in a wide world after all."

A line.

From the book.

Thanks Bungo! I think that's enough of a lifeline to get me through the quagmire.  

Going into AUJ I told myself I'd be satisfied if Bilbo and Gollum from Riddles in the Dark was good.
Going into DoS I told myself I'd be OK if only Bilbo and Smaug from Inside Information worked.
And now preparing to go into Bo5A I'm telling myself all I really need to see is Bilbo and Thorin from Clouds Burst/Return Jouney.  

Those three interactions more than anything else define "The Hobbit" for me. In my opinion, if PJ hits all 3 of those points, whatever else he throws into the stew along the way, it won't be the worst adaptation of a Tolkien book ever....

{{{{There! I hope I've set the bar low enough! }}}}

Tinuviel wrote:... I thought she was going to go Luthien on his ass ....

Tinuviel wrote:my favorite being when Bilbo arrives with the Arkenstone.

Very much agreed with you here, Tin. That was a great scene.

Two things that I thought were so unnecessarily violent: Fili's death, and Tauriel's fight with Bolg. My mouth was wide open for a while after Fili was dropped by Azog and fell sickeningly in front of Kili. Just, stop right there. This is a children's book. That was something completely uncalled for and gruesome to watch.

I'm thinking more about Fili's death now and it's odd because all Azog does is hold him over the ledge, stick a blade in his back, and let him fall to his death. It's pretty simple and they don't show the blade enter his body, and there's no penetration through the other side. To me that comes across as pretty tame, but it still felt really violent and shocking. To think if Azog has Fili on display and wants to mock/intimidate Thorin, he would have done something way worse. We know what PJ's capable of in terms of violence and gross-out horror, so they might have been limited if they wanted to keep their PG-13 rating.

Imagine that! An R rated Hobbit movie! I really wouldn't put it past him!

Edit: I see a lot of people upset that Beorn only got 15 seconds of screen time. Frankly I don't care. The character they created for him in DOS wasn't very compelling to begin with. But here they set up his big beef with Azog with no payoff, so they pretty much set themselves up to not fulfill on a possible showdown between either Azog or Bolg.

bungobaggins wrote:
I see a lot of people upset that Beorn only got 15 seconds of screen time. Frankly I don't care. The character they created for him in DOS wasn't very compelling to begin with. But here they set up his big beef with Azog with no payoff, so they pretty much set themselves up to not fulfill on a possible showdown between either Azog or Bolg.

Spinoffs, Bungo...spinoffs.

I will just say thanks to Tin and Bungo for their reviews, I will go watch it tomorrow, so I can add my two penneth then.

I'm too tired and sick to give a real review like I did for AUJ or DOS, so here are some stream-of-consciousness impressions. I doubt I'll feel up to writing a lengthy review of the film tomorrow or later since the main point of these response posts (for me) was to record my thoughts and feelings in the (more or less) immediate aftermath of having seen the film.

- It really should have been half a movie at most, but at least it was better than HP-DH2, which in a just world wouldn't have even been a third of a movie.

- There were a lot of parts, especially in the end, where it felt like they had a lot of material that they were deliberately saving for the EE in order to keep the running time of the theatrical cut low enough to satisfy critics.  I'm not sure whether this was a good decision or not.

- The opening scene of Smaug destroying Lake-town was really good.  Luke Evans impressed as Bard and whatsisface did a good job as Bain, too.  Arguably the highlight of the movie right off the bat.

- I agree that Bilbo got more attention here than he did in the theatrical cuts of either AUJ or DOS (at least after the first half of AUJ), which was very nice to see.  Freeman felt more Bilbo-ish here, too, despite the facial expressions.  I was glad he only had one brief montage of stabbing that I can recall offhand.

- Speaking of the battle though, I'm pretty sure it made up like two-fifths of the movie's running time, so they really have no excuse for it being impossible to follow.  Bungo mentioned the geography being weird (and I think that Bilbo's "which was is north" line was a very self-conscious insert), but that just scratches the surface.  The geography of the Erebor area doesn't match the map that they showed in AUJ and again at the end of the film.  It seems like everything is "north" from Erebor even though that doesn't fit the maps shown elsewhere in the series.  Erebor is not strategically located and has fuck-all to do with Rivendell, especially when Sauron had control of Dol Guldur.

- Dain was useless.  Forget the complaints about Beorn (though I still maintain that they should have cut him from the whole trilogy since PJ clearly had no use for him).  I can only imagine that they're saving a scene or at least a mention of Dain becoming king for the EE, but it feels like his only purpose in the movie was to scream stereotypically Scottish slang.  Also, why is a guy who's nickname is "Ironfoot" the only person in his entire goddamn army who rides into battle?

- I have mixed feelings about the dwarvish deaths at the end.  On the one hand, it's nice to see a movie that has the balls to actually allow its characters to get hurt, much less die.  However, after all the ludicrous shit that the heroes survived up until that point, I couldn't shake the feeling (even when watching the scene, with the music swelling up) that the only reason Azog was suddenly an effective fighter was authorial fiat.  It felt completely unearned; I'd say "out of the blue" except we all knew it was coming from the book, which I'm pretty sure is the only reason why PJ had those characters die.  Even though it didn't mesh with their changed roles in the rest of the trilogy.

- Nuclear Galadriel Redux in Doggledoor probably annoyed me the most out of anything in the movie.  Forget how goofy it looks (though honestly; it makes her glowy moment in FOTR look perfectly tame).  I've maintained for years that including the Necromancer plot in The Hobbit marginalizes the main plot because it highlights how much Smaug and Erebor are ultimately a sidebar to the main historical thrust.  The movies tried to ameliorate this by making up ways for Erebor to be important and by giving the Dol Guldur stuff so little screentime, but this only obscures the odd questions, it doesn't answer them.  But the trickiest issue is a problem entirely of their own making: how do you maintain tension in the outcome of a battle that's taking place after the Big Bad who instigated the conflict already got kicked out of his HQ.  Previously, I speculated that the filmmakers might depict Dol Guldur and the BOFA as taking place concurrently, but instead they took the easier and more predictable route and just completely ignored the question by giving no mention of Galadriel and almost no mention of Sauron after their confrontation early in the film, even though both of them had been hyped up as major players in Middle-earth, and despite Legolas saying that everyone who was anyone was gonna pay attention to Erebor after Smaug's death.

- I dunno.  There was plenty of good stuff in the films: mostly technical, though the music has grown on me a lot since AUJ (still doesn't hold a candle to LOTR in my eyes, but it's hard to compare it objectively due to the feelings attached to certain pieces of music).  The reuse of lines and musical cues from LOTR is pandering bullshit, though fortunately it didn't seem to happen as much here as in the first two.  Almost all of the dwarves blend together: this time around Thorin, Balin, Dwalin, Fili, and Kili are the ones who get lines, the rest are almost completely indiscernible.  Yes, there was no easy way around this, but still; the filmmakers foisted those ridiculous costumes on us in the name of individualization, so they could have at least tried to do the same on the writing front.

- There were several moments where I did feel genuine emotion creeping in, though it's hard to say how much of that was the film itself and how much of that was because of my investment in the source material and in the feeling of the "passing of an age" for the fandom, which has been a huge part of my life for the past six years.  I actually wasn't latching on to that many stupid plot points as I was watching, although more are coming to mind now that I'm thinking about it.  I'm trying to not be unfair to the movie; for example, I really liked the opening scene, but I did roll my eyes at Bain dangling over the edge of the tower because that trope had been so overused in AUJ.  And you can't really judge a film like this as a stand-alone work when it is, by design, so dependent on previously released films for any sense of identity.  For as interconnected as the LOTR films were, each film felt unique in its own way, but I didn't really feel that about TH.  It really did just seem like one movie that was arbitrarily broken into multiple installments.

- Honestly I left the theatre feeling pretty positive, but if the pattern from the last two years holds, I will be considerably more negative about the film when I watch the EE in a year's time, even if the EE brings with it numerous improvements.

- So yeah.  The Hobbit is now officially a thing that happened.  There was a while there in like 2010 where I didn't think it would ever actually be released.  I'm glad it did though; not only did it help the forum grow, but it's removed a lingering what-if that otherwise would have been eating away at some of us for decades.  As the release hype fades away and the pendulum of public (and fannish) opinion swings further and further away from PJ's favor, I'm sure some people will try to argue that it was inevitable that TH would be a disappointment, just because it didn't have the novelty factor that LOTR did.  To which the reply is and always should be: that's only a problem if you try to make TH be as similar to LOTR as you can.

- I suspect that in 10-15 years, some teens and twenty-somethings who are too young now to have really paid attention to the movies will argue that there isn't really a big difference in quality between LOTR and TH, just like some people currently argue that about the Star Wars prequels.  I hope that I will be able to engage in such discussions with grace and not just be an obnoxious grumpy old man.  But seriously.  The movies went out of their way to remind us of LOTR at nearly every turn, and they just don't measure up.  I suppose that's still a subjective opinion, though.  At least PJ's statements that he doesn't really care about the book have helped bring the argument about faithfulness into a grey area between opinion and fact.

- And now it's over, probably not for the rest of my life, but quite plausibly until I'm well into middle age.  Even having known this was coming for years, I'm not sure I was ready for this.  Fuck.

It was good to read your thoughts, Eldo, it starts to bring out the crabbit in me for things I hadn't give much thought or just brushed off. Particularly the part about Dain having absolutely no purpose other than supplying an army. I did like the brief ending and was glad that we didn't get 30 minutes of endings like in ROTK, but that seemed to be at the expense of a coherent and logical wrapping up of the story.

Overall I'm really glad we didn't get a scene like they had at the end of Revenge of the Sith with everything being tied up in a neat bow, ready for Episode IV. And I think I would prefer the brief ending that we got to something along those lines.

Eldorion wrote:though the music has grown on me a lot since AUJ (still doesn't hold a candle to LOTR in my eyes, but it's hard to compare it objectively due to the feelings attached to certain pieces of music).

Something I hadn't talked about in my review, but I'm glad you mentioned it. For the sake of being positive I liked the reuse of two themes from AUJ in this movie. First is the "Ancient Enemy" theme during Azog's fight with Thorin, and second is the new "Eagles" theme that can only be heard in the film's score and is not heard on the soundtrack. However the statement of the new "Eagles" theme was truncated which was such a shame because it's a beautiful melody (it can be heard in its entirety in the track "To The Death" on the BOFA soundtrack).

Just to be clear, this is the theme I'm referring to:



Other musical moments that I liked were the dwarves charge from the gate, and Thorin's charge to Ravenhill. It was also interesting to hear the people of Lake-town playing the Erebor theme on those big horns at the end of the movie. I think that's the first time in any Middle-earth movie that a musical theme has passed from non-diegetic to the diegetic.

Hope you are feeling better soon.

thanks for the review Eldo, hope you get well soon. considering you didn't feel up to giving us a lengthy review, that was pretty great. and detailed.