The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies

[Brandon Rhea]

I haven't seen this one yet, but An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug were just meh to me (though Desolation was an improvement). Not particularly bad, but just fairly boring. Too much bloat, too much CGI, and way too dragged out. Like Kaeb said, they're nowhere near the levels of the Star Wars prequels, and these Hobbit movies still look like they belong in the same universe (whereas the Star Wars prequels do not), they're just meh.

 

[Cainhurst Crow]

I liked this movie, though it did suffer from pacing issues and of course that some of the action sequences went on longer then they should have. A lot of problems are solved quickly, where as other events are dragged out longer then they should have.

I don't think they were worse then the others, but I don't think they improved on them either. If you thought the others were meh, this will be much of the same. If you enjoyed it though, there shouldn't be too much to drain that enjoyment, provided you didn't lose investment in all the characters from the previous film like my brother did, then this movie is apparently, and I quote, "worse than attack of the clones, but kinda in more of a cool world sense."

 

[Clayton]

I thought there was a lot of unnecessary fluff. Galadriel fighting Sauron was incredibly, horribly awkward. And then Dooku saying he'd take care of Sauron, gee, wonder how that turns out. Admittedly a lightsaber would have made that scene a thousand times better.

IMHO, the best part of the movie is when Bilbo explains why he has an acorn to Thorin.

Second honest opinion, would have been better as two movies. An Unexpected Journey and There and Back Again.

 

[Vulpes]

I liked this movie because the mindless violence for a good half of the movie. The transition between the fighting and the 'we're doing nothing' scenes were kinda weird. It felt like too big of a switch between the two.


On the other hand, my girlfriend and I discovered last night that the armrests in the movie theater lift up for easy cuddling. Did not know that.

 

[Liam]

Way too many instances of "Oh no this main character is about to be killed by a baddie- OH WAIT Legolas/Bilbo/She-elf/random dwarf saved him/her at the last second!"

 

[Miz]

Way too many instances of "Oh no this main character is about to be killed by a baddie- OH WAIT Legolas/Bilbo/She-elf/random dwarf saved him/her at the last second!"

This.

 

[Blaxican]

Second honest opinion, would have been better as two movies. An Unexpected Journey and There and Back Again.

Indeed- that is in fact what it was supposed to be. The series had been written as a duology, and Jackson had been nearly done filming the second movie when they decided to covert it into a trilogy, so he ripped a bunch of footage out of the first two movies to form a third one, then filmed some additional footage to shore up the gaps.

That, combined with the fact that Jackson had zero desire to actually make these films in the first place, really paints a picture asto just what the hell went wrong with this project.

 

[Vulpes]

Just wondering, how do you guys ranked the Hobbit trilogy from best to worst. I'm torn deciding whether I liked Unexpected Journey or Five Armies more. Desolation of Smaug was definitely the weakest point of the set.

 

[Blaxican]

They got progressively worse, imo. An Unexpected Journey is probably my favorite.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

I haven't seen this one yet, but I would say Desolation is the best of the first two. It held my interest, despite its flaws.

The first one was dreadfully boring.

 

[Kaeb]

Just FYI, I don't like pretty much any of the Hobbit films.

They're lazy, muddling and confused with occasional bouts of interesting shit, but beyond that...they're pretty boring tbh.

 

[Cainhurst Crow]

I enjoyed the first one, and I thought the second was one of the best simply because it developed a more focused way of telling the story, with the company and galdulf having clear endgoals they were working towards, rather then bouncing around from place to place in what felt like a semi endless fashion. IMO, nothing wrong with that inherently, it can just get tedious to watch after a bit if the plot feels like its getting too sidetracked.

Third was the weakness, because again it has a lack of real focus until the battle, and the battle goes on for a long time with too much emphasis on the fighting over the characters fighting in it. Basically same problem as the first where it feels like we're killing time over doing main plot stuff, only done in the opposite way, where we put too much focus on the battle and everything became padding.

I don't think these films are bad or boring, and I would even dare suggest they rise above the standard of mediocre to going into the good category with at least a B- worth of effort. But they do have faults, and if they are the types of faults that bother you, then they will do so until it becomes unbearable.

 

[Bantha]

I liked the film. I really do, at least for how well Bilbo and Ganldalf were played. But it overall leaves something to be desired, as if something is missing. What bothers me is I cannot pinpoint exactly what.

 

[Skyway]

This is the age of CGI and while I noticed a few places where the CGI shine though, I can't bit** about how well done it was.

I liked the film. I really do, at least for how well Bilbo and Ganldalf were played. But it overall leaves something to be desired, as if something is missing. What bothers me is I cannot pinpoint exactly what.

This..

 

[Brandon Rhea]

I think part of the problem is that the better story was told first. The Lord of the Rings is a far superior piece of literature than The Hobbit, which was a children's book (a very good one, mind you). And narratively, it also has more stakes. So when we've already seen the movie about the fate of the entire world, it's harder to invest in a story about 12 people trying to get their gold back. Peter Jackson was smart to bring in information from the ancillary tales to raise the stakes of the Dwarves' quest, and tie it into the War of the Ring, but that wasn't enough.

And that's not just a problem with this trilogy. Whenever you make a prequel, creating stakes is difficult, particularly when you're using many of the same characters. In this case, we know where Bilbo, Gandalf, Galadriel, Saruman, Elrond, and Legolas end up. We know that Sauron returns, and we know what happens to him. So a good prequel needs to have other characters who you can invest in, who raise the stakes when the original characters can't. In this case, I think Jackson failed at that. Thorin was a decent character, but the rest of the dwarves are mostly forgottable. Other than Kili, I don't remember any of their names. I thought Tauriel was a decent addition to the characters, though.

The lack of stakes is what plagues the Star Wars prequels too. There are no non-original trilogy characters (or characters whose fate you didn't deduce within the first 30 seconds, like Padmé and the entire Jedi Council) who you can really invest in. The stakes of the galactic war are limited because you already know what's going to happen, and because of the lack of good new characters, you don't really have any reason to care about the conflict. When you know what's going to happen, you need to have characters who have question marks hanging over their fates, or else why should you care about the story?

Don't take that to mean I'm suggesting equivalency between The Hobbit and the Star Wars prequels, though. Other than some of the aforementioned problems, they're not really the same. The Star Wars prequels are visionless, uninspired, and all-around lazy filmmaking, so I don't think it's fair to compare The Hobbit to them. Because despite its many faults, The Hobbit trilogy clearly had a ton of effort, love, and care put into it. There was a vision there. Peter Jackson clearly knew what he wanted to achieve, he just missed the mark and made three movies that are just kinda meh.

I will say this for The Hobbit, though. I recently re-watched The Lord of the Rings, and the scene where Bilbo says he wanted to wander the paths of Mirkwood, visit Laketown, and see the Lonely Mountain again has a lot more weight after having seen The Hobbit. Same with the other references that The Lord of the Rings make to The Hobbit. Not to belabor the point about the Star Wars prequels, but unlike those prequels, which don't feel contacted to the original trilogy, it actually feels like The Hobbit is in the same world as The Lord of the Rings. It's just not as good as The Lord of the Rings.

 

[Endling vas Precious]

I thought it was an okay movie, it didn't really wow me.

However, I was pleased with the Elf fanservice. Tranduil~ *swoons*

 

[Kaeb]

The main problem for me was the dreadful CG and use of green screen. Everything looks incredibly fake in these movies, while the real to fake ratio in the original LOTR trilogy has far more grit and believable nuance to it's imagery.

There's very brief flashes of that in this new trilogy, but it's overshadowed by all of the fake shit, meandering plot and lame character dynamics and character motivations.

It's good to be back in the world don't get me wrong, but it's not quite the same as it used to feel.

 

[Phil]

The main problem for me was the dreadful CG and use of green screen. Everything looks incredibly fake in these movies, while the real to fake ratio in the original LOTR trilogy has far more grit and believable nuance to it's imagery.

There's very brief flashes of that in this new trilogy, but it's overshadowed by all of the fake shit, meandering plot and lame character dynamics and character motivations.

It's good to be back in the world don't get me wrong, but it's not quite the same as it used to feel.

I'm not arguing or taking a shot at you, but I'm just curious if you can give me and others a few examples on what you consider good CGI in films.

 

[Kaeb]

There's plenty of good CG in films, because CG is now in ****ing everything, the problem is a combination of excess and lazy filmmaking.

''I don't want to film a scene where a real dwarf rides a real war pig because that's too hard, I'll just do it all in a computer.''

And it ends up looking like a cartoon...in the middle of a Lord of the Rings movie, which had a lived in, realistic aesthetic when it came to how it presented it's world. The same can be said for the depiction of magic. There's no fairy dust or Harry Potter sparkling, lazer, tendril firework effects coming out of wands, it's all mysterious and ethereal, much like the Force in Star Wars until you get to the lightning. I mean, do we even see any ''magic'' in the traditional sense, on screen in the OT LOTR films?

I'd compare it like this, the Lord of the Rings trilogy (except towards the end when Return of the King started to develop similar problems with CG integration and green screen integration), can be seen as a Saving Private Ryan, while the Hobbit remind me more of the Transformers movies with how they present their world.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

Even with The Return of the King, though, it generally only used more CGI when it needed to. Like in the battle at Minas Tirith, more CGI was necessary considering the giant elephants, massive military forces, and what not. I think the issue with CGI in that movie was mostly because it was still fairly early-ish in the CGI era, and so CGI hadn't been as refined as it is now.

Early CGI is part of the problem with the CGI in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith; though there was too much in those movies in general, it was further hurt by the fact that it looked cheap, particularly when combined with shooting on digital.

As for some examples of good CGI, I'd offer up the Marvel movies, as well as The Phantom Menace (though I know Kaeb disagrees with me on that one).