I think there was a ton of pressure on him from a lot of sources to stretch this out into three movies: The studio, the folks working on the movies, and himself. I had forgotten about GDT blowing all of the prep time and it certainly shows. In the end, its very much the flawed mirror image of the Prequels. These fail for trying to give everyone too much of what they want.
Sorry, missed out on all this Hobbit stuff. I had a terrible nightmare that they turned one of my favorite little books into a 3-movie monstrosity with endless CGI filler.
So has the Hobbit come out yet? Looking forward to seeing it this Christmas.
I saw a movie that had something about Bilbo and Moria, ending looking out over the lonely mountain in the distance. What it had to do with the Hobbit, I’m not sure. Supposedly there were some sequels? I don’t know, they seem to have skipped the theaters. I don’t watch direct to DVD sequels.
Snark aside, I stopped after the first. I love the LotR trilogy, they would number among my favorite movies ever. However the first Hobbit movie was only ‘meh’. The padding destroyed the pacing, the movie struck the wrong tone, and only occasionally showed glimpses of what it should have been. While I know more than a few people dislike the dwarf singing, that’s what the movie should have been in my opinion. Lighter, fun, with no sense of the darkness lurking in the background. The scene with the trolls, too, was mostly good. But it felt like a forced attempt to try and strike the same tone as the LotR trilogy.
This isn’t from the perspective of a novel purist either. I am acutely aware of how translation of form requires some changes. My issue comes from the fact that the tone of the movie does not match the underlying structure and tone of the story. The heart of the story is one of whimsy, derived in structure and style from fairy tales and children’s stories. The ‘and then they found some trolls’ structure demands a lightness and brightness that was lacking, at least from the first.
It takes less time to read the book, than watch all three movies.
I fell asleep during the last film last night. I mean it was late when I put it on, but it still felt like a slog.
It was a two hour battle scene that felt like three hours. At least with LOTR there were other plots still moving. They had to make shit up to distract form the battle of five armies just being a long battle scene. Where did those goats come from again? I can’t believe they’re doing an extended. They should do director’s cuts instead and well… cut.
So during one of last week’s Qt3 Livestreams, I mentioned that I only watched Battle of the Five Armies up to when the Dragon was killed. After that, it felt complete to me so I stopped watching. Well, Tom said in that stream that I should go back and watch the rest and that it was pretty good.
And so today I spent about 2.5 hours watching this. I don’t know if I was just in the right kind of mood or what, but I agree with Tom. Some of the fights were actually really entertaining. Now, granted some were very boring. Like Gandalf getting rescued by those elves and Sauromon, that fight was completely stupid and boring. But others actually amused me greatly. I was very amused, for example, when the main villain orc, who has been doing so well with a sword and obviously trained in the sword and specialized in the sword and spent all his points when he leveled up into sword combat, when that orc decides to pick up a 2 handed weapon, a chain with a rock on it. He’s obviously never trained with it, he’s very awkward with it, and he got greedy and saw all the hit points that weapon apparently did and decided to give up his sword for it.
I’ll have to track down the Qt3 podcast for this, if there was one.
He should have put more points into intelligence!
There was not a podcast for this one. By that point, we’d given up on the Hobbit movies. Which partly accounts for why I like this one so much. My expectations were rock bottom and I got a cool 3-hour CG orgy of fantasy war and dragon fighting!
-Tom
Another scene that really amused me was when the Dwarven army setup a double story shield wall with spears sticking out, forcing the Orcs to attack right into the spears. But then just as it was about to work, elves climbed the Dwarven wall and jumped off it towards the enemy, so that forced the Dwarves to drop the shield and charge forward as well.
I also enjoyed seeing the various Ogres and Orcs in specialized roles in the Orc army. Like the battering ram.
The rhinocerous Orcs were kind of cool looking, but they got taken out by … I’m assuming Unseen Dwarven Archers since they were attacking the remnants of the Dwarf army when they got taken out, and there were no Elves nearby by that point. That was disappointing. I really wanted to see what the Dwarven Archery unit would look like.
The Legolas fight I found HIGHLY amusing. I love that Peter Jackson realized that here was one of the characters we knew survived this battle, so he had fun putting him in impossible situations that he hilariously found ways out of.
Sorry…but you guys are wrong. The Battle of the Five Armies is is not worth watching for anything, let alone 2 hours of dwarf on orc combat.
Don’t forget about the goats? Where did the goats come from!?
I truly disliked Battle of the Five Armies. I was able to find aspects of the other two Hobbit films that I liked, while thinking they were poorly compared to The Lord of the Rings movies, but Five Armies crushed my enthusiasm. From the shitty non-resolution of Alfrid’s character, to the asstastic Dragon Sickness sequence, and on down to the battle itself being a series of really dumb fights that made no tactical sense (see @Rock8man’s description of the shield wall scene) Five Armies was a mess.
To date, it’s the only one of the six Jackson/Tolkien movies I don’t own on disc. That’s how much I disliked it. I don’t care if I ever complete the set.
I don’t think you guys understand. Dwarfs ride around on battle pigs in this movie. Battle pigs!
-Tom
I’m pretty sure that War Boar at least showed up with the army. I’ve seen the movie a few times now, and those giant goats pop out of nowhere.
Still like some of the movie though… there are many worse things to watch. The War Elk was fun.
They show up in the beginning with the dwarf army. At least in the extended edition. Not sure if they are in the unextended one, early.
heh. I’ve never seen the extended version for any of The Hobbit movies except the first one. That wagon is not in the theatrical release. It just looks like when it’s handy some goats just suddenly become available to climb cliff sides.
Never bothered with the sequels after the first one. At least the costumes look good, but what’s with the overdone bloom?
That’s a Peter Jackson thing he gave to all the movies. Give it that fantasy other world look or something.
Wow, that’s interesting. In the theatrical cut, they didn’t start fighting each other yet when the Orcs showed up. In that extended scene, we not only got to see a wagon and mounted mountain goat troops, but also an anti-archery archery unit.
They are not in the theatrical edition until they suddenly just pop up with the gang. Another example of sloppy editing.
I might have to finally view the extended versions of these i guess. I mean my first thought when i saw they were doing extended versions was I am pretty sure I already saw those in theater, because each movie was 20-30 minutes too long. I couldn’t even imagine how they would make it longer… and then I saw more slapstick scenes in the first one and decided nah to the other two.