Movie Review: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Just got back from seeing the final Hobbit movie, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, and wanted to share my thoughts under the cut! Please beware of spoilers and don’t read until you’ve seen it!
Obviously, as a huge fan, I really enjoyed this last one. I actually felt much more emotional about seeing it beforehand, more because of the end of the era it represents than the movie itself. I’ve never been able to fully recapture that feeling I had when watching The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in the theater at midnight, tears in my eyes because it was over, because those movies represented so much in my life. So I was thrilled when I heard they would be making the Hobbit, and into three films at that! I would very happily watch as many Hobbit films as this team wants to create. That said, I am glad that everyone involved is freed up now-particularly Martin Freeman-and I will watch anything else that Peter Jackson cares to make in the future.
So here are things I loved:
-There are some fantastic things in this film. First of all, Lee Pace as Legolas’ fabulous dad, Thranduil, is basically hysterical. I mean, I thought he was great before, but he totally steals this show with his nasty snide looks and smug one-liners. There is this one line that he delivers to Bard that I laughed out loud at-his “It is meaningless to reason with a Dwarf. Still, you tried.” It’s hard to describe just how fantastic his delivery of this line is, but it’s so flat and monotone and totally unsurprised and just wonderful.
-Tauriel and Kili’s relationship and Kili’s death scene really got me. God, that was well done with them fighting the orc together and him mouthing the words to her. Definitely teared up at that one. Evangeline Lilly is wonderful, and Tauriel is a really great addition to the series. And I mourned for Fili (and anticipated Thorin’s death) there as well, since I didn’t really get a chance to before.
-Legolas runs out of arrows. He actually runs out of arrows! And at a crucial moment, too. What a great scene. And just like that, they’ve beautifully explained why he will never run out of arrows again.
-Although I’ll admit the entire scene was probably overkill (but hey, I live for fanservice), I loved Galadriel rescuing Gandalf and turning on her powerful dark queen persona. It was a wonderfully creepy flashback to The Fellowship of the Ring when Frodo offered her the Ring and she resisted the temptation at the Mirror. (“In the place of a dark lord, you would have a queen. Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the morn, treacherous as the seas, stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”) I didn’t like how much it seemed to exhaust her, especially in comparison to the barely-winded-from-fighting Elrond and Saruman, but I understand it must take a ton of energy to push back Sauron and his cronies.
-I’m not one for battle scenes, but Peter Jackson always does them well, and he does it by having the contrasting silences buffeting big fight scenes or moments of drama. I remember during The Two Towers, he cut to the Ents or to the dwarf-tossing thing or the Legolas/Gimli jokes after particularly tense moments, which gave us a little breather. Here, there is a climactic fight between Thorin and Azog the Destroyer that takes place on ice and is just jaw-droppingly stunning. So…quietly deadly, and such great use of scenery. I’ve never seen anything like it, though I guess the cold and the quiet remind me of the fight in Kill Bill Vol. 1 with Uma Thurman vs. Lucy Liu.
-Speaking of Thorin-wow, Richard Armitage. So excellent and creepy. He can rightly add his name to the list of all those characters who go believably mad in this series, though I think only he and Denethor went crazy for reasons not related to the Ring (Sméagol, Boromir briefly, Bilbo, and Frodo all had Ring-induced madness ). The message against the “dragon sickness” of greed, as always, still resonates strongly in these times of terrifying wealth inequality. I loved the scene where Thorin and Bard conversed through the hole in the wall. It was funny on the surface, yes, by just how ridiculous it was, but then the longer it went on, the more haunting it became for me because we could see the depths to which greed had brought him.
-Also, I was not expecting to now be shipping Dain/Thorin, wtf? I guess it was Dain (Billy Connolly)’s “Where’s Thorin? We need him!” and that cute hug that did it for me.
-Billy Boyd (Pippin from LotR)’s beautiful song “The Last Goodbye,” which played during the credits. Totally gorgeous. The parts where he sings, “…and I must away...” brought tears to my eyes.
-And then there’s Martin Freeman. Need I say more? Finally I got some stretches of time with him just doing what he does, conveying things with a look instead of needing dialogue. Like, there was his one line-you know, “The eagles are coming!”-that he has to deliver because Bilbo just has to say that line despite its ridiculousness, and I was thinking, “God, it’s such a shame because Martin really doesn’t need this line; he’s conveying it with a look right there.”
And what I wasn’t so fond of:
-The bookends of this film-the beginning and the end-were both rushed, which impacted the film’s emotional core. I’m dead serious; I thought this film was too short.
The beginning was more problematic because they really just pop right in there, starting with Smaug’s devastation of Laketown, without setting it up for us again. So instead of really feeling shocked and upset at the wreckage, I was just kind of surprised that we were already getting to it and that there was relatively so little Smaug in this film.
And the end was just surprising because, well, Return of the King had its fifty different fade-out endings, but here I didn’t feel like there was much closure. I think the eventual idea is that you can watch all the extended editions of the films in order, starting with the first Hobbit and ending with the third LotR, so they didn’t want us to be too overcome by this movie because we’re supposed to go and watch Fellowship next. But it does kind of suck when, you know, I’m in the theater watching this movie. I think there was probably a lot left on the cutting room floor for the Extended Editions. I could have used some more time just decompressing a little, or maybe a cute moment with Bilbo and little!Frodo? (Were those portraits Bilbo had of Primula and Drogo Baggins, do you think?)
-Again, the Hobbit cannot compete with LotR in terms of stakes, and it seems silly to try. One is about restoring a homeland and getting some money, while the other is literally about saving the world against nearly insurmountable odds. The filmmakers did their best to tell us about the strategic importance of Erebor, but I think it would have been better if that were established earlier. I got confused as to where all the armies were coming from and why.
But here’s the thing: despite any quibbles I may have with these movies, the fact remains that there simply is nothing else like them coming out today. It just doesn’t exist. Movies with such grand scope, such stakes, such huge ensemble casts whose storylines are all important, such depth of world-building and imagination-and, above all, such heart, such care, such love.
Because in the end, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens understand the best part of what Tolkien created: what’s so beautiful about this series isn’t the fact that there are massive battles with armies and all sorts of creatures, it’s the fact that there’s a hobbit at the center of them to remind us of what’s important. Friendship, love, family, trust, honor, staying true to yourself, having confidence in your own abilities, and having a nice meal at the end of the day.
Related reviews: (The Hobbit part 1 and part 2), ( Martin Freeman’s filmography), ( Benedict Cumberbatch’s filmography)
Obviously, as a huge fan, I really enjoyed this last one. I actually felt much more emotional about seeing it beforehand, more because of the end of the era it represents than the movie itself. I’ve never been able to fully recapture that feeling I had when watching The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in the theater at midnight, tears in my eyes because it was over, because those movies represented so much in my life. So I was thrilled when I heard they would be making the Hobbit, and into three films at that! I would very happily watch as many Hobbit films as this team wants to create. That said, I am glad that everyone involved is freed up now-particularly Martin Freeman-and I will watch anything else that Peter Jackson cares to make in the future.
So here are things I loved:
-There are some fantastic things in this film. First of all, Lee Pace as Legolas’ fabulous dad, Thranduil, is basically hysterical. I mean, I thought he was great before, but he totally steals this show with his nasty snide looks and smug one-liners. There is this one line that he delivers to Bard that I laughed out loud at-his “It is meaningless to reason with a Dwarf. Still, you tried.” It’s hard to describe just how fantastic his delivery of this line is, but it’s so flat and monotone and totally unsurprised and just wonderful.
-Tauriel and Kili’s relationship and Kili’s death scene really got me. God, that was well done with them fighting the orc together and him mouthing the words to her. Definitely teared up at that one. Evangeline Lilly is wonderful, and Tauriel is a really great addition to the series. And I mourned for Fili (and anticipated Thorin’s death) there as well, since I didn’t really get a chance to before.
-Legolas runs out of arrows. He actually runs out of arrows! And at a crucial moment, too. What a great scene. And just like that, they’ve beautifully explained why he will never run out of arrows again.
-Although I’ll admit the entire scene was probably overkill (but hey, I live for fanservice), I loved Galadriel rescuing Gandalf and turning on her powerful dark queen persona. It was a wonderfully creepy flashback to The Fellowship of the Ring when Frodo offered her the Ring and she resisted the temptation at the Mirror. (“In the place of a dark lord, you would have a queen. Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the morn, treacherous as the seas, stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”) I didn’t like how much it seemed to exhaust her, especially in comparison to the barely-winded-from-fighting Elrond and Saruman, but I understand it must take a ton of energy to push back Sauron and his cronies.
-I’m not one for battle scenes, but Peter Jackson always does them well, and he does it by having the contrasting silences buffeting big fight scenes or moments of drama. I remember during The Two Towers, he cut to the Ents or to the dwarf-tossing thing or the Legolas/Gimli jokes after particularly tense moments, which gave us a little breather. Here, there is a climactic fight between Thorin and Azog the Destroyer that takes place on ice and is just jaw-droppingly stunning. So…quietly deadly, and such great use of scenery. I’ve never seen anything like it, though I guess the cold and the quiet remind me of the fight in Kill Bill Vol. 1 with Uma Thurman vs. Lucy Liu.
-Speaking of Thorin-wow, Richard Armitage. So excellent and creepy. He can rightly add his name to the list of all those characters who go believably mad in this series, though I think only he and Denethor went crazy for reasons not related to the Ring (Sméagol, Boromir briefly, Bilbo, and Frodo all had Ring-induced madness ). The message against the “dragon sickness” of greed, as always, still resonates strongly in these times of terrifying wealth inequality. I loved the scene where Thorin and Bard conversed through the hole in the wall. It was funny on the surface, yes, by just how ridiculous it was, but then the longer it went on, the more haunting it became for me because we could see the depths to which greed had brought him.
-Also, I was not expecting to now be shipping Dain/Thorin, wtf? I guess it was Dain (Billy Connolly)’s “Where’s Thorin? We need him!” and that cute hug that did it for me.
-Billy Boyd (Pippin from LotR)’s beautiful song “The Last Goodbye,” which played during the credits. Totally gorgeous. The parts where he sings, “…and I must away...” brought tears to my eyes.
-And then there’s Martin Freeman. Need I say more? Finally I got some stretches of time with him just doing what he does, conveying things with a look instead of needing dialogue. Like, there was his one line-you know, “The eagles are coming!”-that he has to deliver because Bilbo just has to say that line despite its ridiculousness, and I was thinking, “God, it’s such a shame because Martin really doesn’t need this line; he’s conveying it with a look right there.”
And what I wasn’t so fond of:
-The bookends of this film-the beginning and the end-were both rushed, which impacted the film’s emotional core. I’m dead serious; I thought this film was too short.
The beginning was more problematic because they really just pop right in there, starting with Smaug’s devastation of Laketown, without setting it up for us again. So instead of really feeling shocked and upset at the wreckage, I was just kind of surprised that we were already getting to it and that there was relatively so little Smaug in this film.
And the end was just surprising because, well, Return of the King had its fifty different fade-out endings, but here I didn’t feel like there was much closure. I think the eventual idea is that you can watch all the extended editions of the films in order, starting with the first Hobbit and ending with the third LotR, so they didn’t want us to be too overcome by this movie because we’re supposed to go and watch Fellowship next. But it does kind of suck when, you know, I’m in the theater watching this movie. I think there was probably a lot left on the cutting room floor for the Extended Editions. I could have used some more time just decompressing a little, or maybe a cute moment with Bilbo and little!Frodo? (Were those portraits Bilbo had of Primula and Drogo Baggins, do you think?)
-Again, the Hobbit cannot compete with LotR in terms of stakes, and it seems silly to try. One is about restoring a homeland and getting some money, while the other is literally about saving the world against nearly insurmountable odds. The filmmakers did their best to tell us about the strategic importance of Erebor, but I think it would have been better if that were established earlier. I got confused as to where all the armies were coming from and why.
But here’s the thing: despite any quibbles I may have with these movies, the fact remains that there simply is nothing else like them coming out today. It just doesn’t exist. Movies with such grand scope, such stakes, such huge ensemble casts whose storylines are all important, such depth of world-building and imagination-and, above all, such heart, such care, such love.
Because in the end, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens understand the best part of what Tolkien created: what’s so beautiful about this series isn’t the fact that there are massive battles with armies and all sorts of creatures, it’s the fact that there’s a hobbit at the center of them to remind us of what’s important. Friendship, love, family, trust, honor, staying true to yourself, having confidence in your own abilities, and having a nice meal at the end of the day.
Related reviews: (The Hobbit part 1 and part 2), ( Martin Freeman’s filmography), ( Benedict Cumberbatch’s filmography)