The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies - Movie Review

            

           The ridiculous notion of the studios to split a book half the length of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring into three movies (especially since the movie adaptation of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was only one movie) has had its effects on all of the movies. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was not received well by hardcore fans of The Lord of the Rings franchise due to its large pacing issues, being that the movie was only the first few chapter of the book. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug added in characters that were not in the book - Legolas (Orlando Bloom; a key character in The Lord of the Rings) and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) - in order to add excitement and length the run time of the film. Because of that, it was received much better. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies unfortunately has a problem that is not fixed, like the first. Being the third and final part, in which everything goes down, it becomes mostly payoff with no exposition and buildup, only action. Because of this, the action scenes become exponentially less exciting and exhilarating due to the lack of emotion and motivation behind the events. The Lord of the Rings: The Returnof the King, being the third and final part in which everything goes down, went in with the possibility of the same problems being in the final product. However, that movie took its time to further develop characters and add motivation, substance, and depth to its action. Because of this, that is a fantastic movie. This is a very flawed one.

            The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is the grand finale of The Hobbit trilogy in which everything built up to in the previous two films goes down, as already stated. This movie picks up right after the last, with Smaug having an effect on things due to the events at the close of the last film. Then, we have the elves, dwarves, and orcs all trying to gain control of the abandoned but newly re-inhabited Dwarf Kingdom Erebor in what turns out to be The Battle of the Five Armies.

            This movie has a lot going for it. Its undeniably high budget contributes to some amazing scenes filled with spectacle. This film is very good-looking; the cinematography is very good. And some of the visual effects are great; some of them… Because some are very disappointingly obvious. There is some lazy, full-body CGI that does not work. It is so easy to tell that it is a computer generated image and it takes you out of the movie. Luckily, not all of the CGI is like that, though.

            Anyway, the action in this movie is fantastic. Many shots in it are excellent. And there are hints of the genius, excellent filmmaking used in The Lord of the Rings trilogy that made it so great. It is disappointing that there are not many times, but there are some when it shows. But besides that, the action is exhilarating and not-at-all boring. But as stated above, it could have been so much better if there was substance behind because there is little. Although the action is great, the drama is terrible.

            There is a lot of drama with Thorin (Richard Armitage) and what his character goes through. It is completely rushed and no character arcs are shown. In fact, it is like that with all characters. They go from Point A to Point B to Point C, all with no depth. Therefore, it becomes obvious that they are just used to advance the plot. And when there are rare scenes dedicated to the characters, they are the most convenient, clichéd and predictable scenes there are. They don’t reflect the nature of a living being in that situation at all (I would just say human nature, but since we’re dealing with dwarves and elves here, I can’t).

            A lot of the motivations for the eventual Battle of the Five Armies come from the elfish and dwarfish hate for each other. This hate is very much expressed in the leaders of each army to a maddening level. The motivation is taken to an extreme that is not realistic, and in that it again shows us, the audience, that these characters are just plot devices with no depth but the one distinguishing factor that he/she is given to advance the plot. And this is even taken into the battle, after the plot has already gone in a different direction.

            All of these scenarios are rare times when there is actually is an attempt for depth. The majority of the time, there is no depth. The film has as little as possible. Very convenient things happen so that the movie does not have to show things that are not yet completed and are in the works. A process of something happening or something lining up for something to happen is almost never shown. The armies seem to just appear out of nowhere and be ready, randomly. The buildup is so quick and rushed that the battle seems to come out of a dramatic scene. No real conflict is introduced; just an army.

            And it felt like major portions of the end of the battle were just left out. After a while, the grand scope of the battle is taken from the audience and we never see it again. It felt like scenes were just deleted from the movie, so the last half hour of it seem very rushed so we can have a nice ending wrapped in a bow to lead into The Lord of the Rings. You just have to assume some things happened, and then the credits start.

            Although the past four paragraphs have been making it sound like I think of the movie negatively, from my rating it’s obvious that I don’t. I really enjoyed watching this movie and was engrossed into the action, no matter how much depth it didn’t have. All of action scenes are done with fantastic direction by Peter Jackson, who is the King of the Vision of Middle Earth. His vision of this place makes it seem like a real place and his direction of the action scenes makes the battle so excellent and fun to watch. The sequences are exhilarating, despite the room for improvement.

            Overall, I think this is an alright movie. It is in fact my least favorite Middle Earth (The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) movie, but An Unexpected Journey is just above it by a little. I wouldn’t really mind watching it again because of how fun it is, but some elements beyond the entertainment value of the movie are very flawed.

Exodus: Gods and Kings - Movie Review

            In the past decade, we have started to have trends in film. For a few years, there will be one or more “trends” going on in the type of movies that are being made. Granted, there will be many other films not in one of these categories. But multiple movies will be in one “trend” in a year. In the past few years, we have had more and more indie biblical films. But in this year, we now have two biblical major motion pictures - Noah and Exodus: Gods and Kings. With Exodus being a $140 million Ridley Scott epic, a new trend is being set in motion.

            Exodus: Gods and Kings follows the biblical story of Moses (Christian Bale), who is a Hebrew in Egypt, but not among those enslaved by the Egyptians. He is actually living with the royalty in the country and is being treated so. Although he was born a slave, he is believed to be the prince’s cousin. There are very few that know this, and Moses is not one of them. But when word gets out that Moses actually is a Hebrew, the prince (now the pharaoh) who had believed Moses to be his cousin for all his life, Ramses (Joel Edgerton), is forced to banish him, although the two had grown up close as brothers and been close for all their lives. When this happens, Moses seeks the help of the Hebrew God to help free his people.

            In the role of Moses, Christian Bale does a very good job. His performance is oftentimes sympathetic, and he’s able to create a general understanding of his actions. He gets every emotional cue and hits them well. Joel Edgerton is also impressive in the movie. Like Bale, he is able to create an understanding; but for him, it’s interesting, due to the fact that he is technically the villain of the movie. He does make sense at times, however. And that is due to the writing and the acting; the script actually sets up its two main characters well, and, for the most part, I liked the directions it took them in. The actors made sure to transfer these emotions to the screen in their roles, and they worked well together, too.

            Of course, like most of Ridley Scott’s movies, this one looks great. The cinematography, costume design, production design, etc. seem to have been taken to painstaking measures in order to engross the audience into this time period and location. And they do that. It’s great to look at and Scott makes sure that we see this entire place with his huge, wide shots. This non-minimalistic style makes all of the visual elements of the film more impressive and ensures the success of the effects in the movie.

            Scott is also able to take the camera during the scenes and create a sort of atmosphere that is present in many of his movies, especially Gladiator. He captures tone well in his direction and uses it to sometimes add entertainment to the movie. He succeeds in that here. However, he only exceeds to a certain extent…

            My compliments on the film now dwindle and then disappear. This is a very flawed movie that very much should not have been coming out in December. It succeeds in spectacle but fails in most everything else. As I said, I did like the direction it took the characters in; but after a while, they went the same clichéd way most do. I liked the initial direction they went in because I could understand both sides. But it got to a point when it was so familiar I knew exactly how it would play out.

            The overall script is not so great. With its four writers, there are inconsistencies, sudden jumps to a completely different scene, conflicting styles of dialogue, and poorly built scene structures. It seemed like there were communication issues between these writers; it seems like there was no working together on this project. Sometimes it takes up a minimalistic style of writing when things must be inferred and the dialogue is not very thick. Sometimes it takes up a style that draws out scenes and portions of the film. It jumps back and forth between these two. But each style doesn’t work its function and actually shows only its flaws. When minimalism is used, depth in the story is lost. When non-minimalism is used, enjoyment is lost due to the dullness that arises. There will be gaps where scenes could be, then a long stretch of boring scenes that don’t have much to do with character development, the plot, or anything.

            The dialogue itself doesn’t add much to the movie either. Most of it is there because there needs to be dialogue. It doesn’t seem like the writers explored the different ways they could make it interesting. And even when a change in the writing style occurs, the dialogue just seems like a plot tool and nothing more. When the audience needs to learn something about a character in order for them to understand something about the plot, there will be a quick line to them that. This is a very lazily written movie.

            And although Scott does a good job with tone, he does not do a good job with pacing. There were large portions of the film where I was bored. I was not interested in anything going on; and although that is partly the writers’ fault, Ridley Scott is at fault here as well. His directing style is so repetitive and overly-consistent that, although I knew it was a different scene, it seemed like the same scene over and over again.

            Although it does have some cool elements and it does not disappoint in spectacle, Exodus: Gods and Kings is a very disappointing movie. It is not a good epic, and although it’s not bad, it is pretty boring for sections of the movie. The script is poor and the direction has issues. It’s not a movie I’d recommend.