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.