The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies

The long-awaited finale that no one was looking forward to has arrived. Peter Jackson Takes us back into the world of The Hobbit with another long exhausting adventure that was completely unnecessary. The only way that this film would be a good movie is if the entire thing were a battle of the five armies, which it was not. Jackson fills in details on the book that were not needed. He has completely forgotten what made the Lord of the Rings trilogy awesome.  He seems to believe the fans went to the theater to see fancy special effects when in reality they wanted detailed characters and good fight scenes. In this finale he goes over the top with all of his CGI characters that make no sense. He even goes so far as to CGI Orlando Bloom in order to make him appear younger which actually made him look older. Because Jackson failed miserably in the previous films to develop characters that people actually like, the first hour and a half of the film is boring character development that is come too little too late.  Then when the action begins it comes as a complete disappointment. There are no characters that you care enough about to draw you into the action. The only time there is drama or emotion is when the mounts of the characters are killed. Another aspect of the battle that is disappointing is that it is completely unrealistic. The amount of orcs and goblins far surpass the amount of humans, elves, and dwarfs combined. Had this battle actually taken place not in Hollywood, the villains would have won by sheer strength of force. Now you might say that all Lord Of the Rings battles are like this and this may be true, the difference is that in those films there is an explanation as to why the smaller force can defeat the larger one, be it reinforcements, better tactics or just blind luck. In Battle of the Five Armies, the eagles show up and we are supposed to assume that 10-15 eagles can take out an army 10,000 or more strong. While it could happen, we are never shown the finale, all we get is a dust over after the climactic disappointment of a battle between Azog and Thorin. Only those who enjoy bloated convoluted money grabs need spend their time seeing this movie in theaters.

½ star out of 4

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

1 pipe out of 4

What a disappointment. Two and a half hours of dwarfs and a hobbit running around only to not complete any type of the journey. I have had feelings about this for a long time now but this film finally proves it, that Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit series is simply a money grab. He adds random characters that have no business being there, ads aspects that virtually nullifies the first half of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and takes forever to do it. What seemed like an amazing idea of having Bennedict Cumberbatch be the voice of Smaug turned out to be wasted by the horrible interaction he has with Bilbo. The Hobbit also rehashes the issue of trust between Thorin and Bilbo that was supposed to be solved at the end of the first Hobbit. There were a number of cool but completely unnecessary action and chase scenes. The white orc is also relegated to the background after dominating most of An Unexpected Journey which is aggravating because it is an obvious attempt to drag out the storyline till the final film. Jackson also creates tension in the group of Dwarfs and even breaks them up when none of that happens in the book, simply to create unneeded tension and provide an opening for his addition of a female elf and Legolas. The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey had changes from the book but that was to be expected and they were not incredibly drastic. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug goes in the opposite direction, basically defecating on the source material and changing the whole essence of the book. This film is only recommended to be watched at home so that you can multitask because sitting in a theater for a two and a half hour movie was trying.

The Hobbit

2 ½ out of 4

Let’s take a ride with Peter Jackson once again into the world of Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, this time into the original novel The Hobbit. Broken into 3 movies at close to 3 hours a piece Jackson has plenty of time to expand minuscule details and keep everything from the book. Just keep in perspective, all totaled Jackson’s Hobbit will be longer than the audio book. All that aside, Jackson does a good job of connecting The Hobbit to his other Lord of the Rings films since they came first. There is an interesting cameo for Frodo (Elijah Wood), and the connection to Bilbo’s birthday in Fellowship of the Ring is purely delightful. I will also say that Jackson sure knows how to do a voice over prologue; he did it to introduce the history of the ring in the Fellowship of the Ring and does it again to introduce the history of the dwarfs. There were a couple of scenes that Jackson drags on for no apparent reason other than to keep his tradition of a 3 hour movie. Many of these scenes took place with scenery porn. Granted the scenery chosen is magnificent but there is just too much of it, it honestly took more than half an hour of the film put together. Jackson needs to let go of the 3 hour mold and accept that good movies can be an hour and a half or even two hours and doesn’t have to be three hours every time. Martin Freedman does a wonderful job as a young Bilbo Baggins and Ian McKellen plays Gandalf in masterful mystical way. But the character that stole the movie was Gollum/Smeagol played by the brilliant Andy Serkis. The dual personality of the tormented mind of Gollum and Smeagol is on full display in the interaction between Bilbo and Gollum. This interaction goes far beyond the small role it had in the book and becomes one of the largest and most anticipated parts of the movie. The scene may be slightly drawn out but Serkis’ performance simply makes it great. The Hobbit definitely doesn’t deserve the 11 Oscar nominations given to Return of the King but is still a fun adventure.