2043

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.

2044

Don’t forget about the goats? Where did the goats come from!?

2045

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.

2046

I don’t think you guys understand. Dwarfs ride around on battle pigs in this movie. Battle pigs!

-Tom

2047

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.

2048

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.

2049

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.

2050

Never bothered with the sequels after the first one. At least the costumes look good, but what’s with the overdone bloom?

2051

That’s a Peter Jackson thing he gave to all the movies. Give it that fantasy other world look or something.

2052

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.

2053

They are not in the theatrical edition until they suddenly just pop up with the gang. Another example of sloppy editing.

2054

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.

2055

[quote=“Khelavaster, post:2050, topic:39100, full:true”]
Never bothered with the sequels after the first one. At least the costumes look good, but what’s with the overdone bloom?[/quote]

I think the Bloom was overdone as well. I mean, Legolas wasn’t even a character in The Hobbit novel.

2056

He was hugely popular with the original trilogy. I mean say what you will, but this is still a movie. If they can grab someone from a hugely popular movie and stick them in another movie, they’re going to do it. Legolas was certainly around during that time whether he was mentioned in the book or not… I’ll forgive them for that. And that doesn’t mean I actually liked their little love triangle either.

2058

Bravo, Mr. Dreadful! That couldn’t have gone better if you guys planned it.

-Tom

2059

“woosh”

2060

I prefer the version where boar-riders are halflings (according to the Illwinter guys). Boars are forest creatures, dwarfs are not. Fantasy history is full of false accounts!

2061

So I watched the first one and the second one (The Desolation of Smaug) on Blu-ray and they were OK. Should I bother with the third one?

2062

To me the second one was the worst and felt like filler material on top of filler material. I’d argue the barrel/river is right up there with the Episode 1 pod race - as in it’s an action sequence that seems tolerable during its first minute and then very quickly overstays its welcome.

That said, I just recently saw five hours of behind-the-scenes material on Desolation of Smaug - and that stuff was worthwhile. As much as I didn’t care for the movie, watching the WETA people talk about production design and whatnot was a joy.

2063

Except the podrace scene gave us one of the greatest games of the 64 bit era, so I will always forgive its excess for that. It was one of the few things in EP1 that I remember fondly.