The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

Watched the screener. I've never been so bored with an hour-long action sequence in my life. Orcs look fake as shit, terrible job with the CGI. And the Dwarf king dude going mega-emo for most of the movie was incredibly boring and tedious as well.

I'd have to say that I was almost as disappointed in the Hobbit movies compared to LOTR as I was in the Star Wars prequels compared to the original trilogy.

To be fair, he turns into a mega-dick in the book as well. I actually thought the films did a much better job of planting the seeds of his turn towards blind greed and arrogance. It wasn't a big surprise if you were paying attention.

In the book hes basically normal Thorin and then he's suddenly trying to throw Bilbo off the side of the mountain.

Zignor 3_sl said:

To be fair, he turns into a mega-dick in the book as well. I actually thought the films did a much better job of planting the seeds of his turn towards blind greed and arrogance. It wasn't a big surprise if you were paying attention.

In the book hes basically normal Thorin and then he's suddenly trying to throw Bilbo off the side of the mountain.

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Bilbo gave away the Arkenstone that they traveled all that way for.

TJT_sl said:

I struggled to enjoy this. Truly struggled. I couldn't even finish it. I mean, damn. Dwarf King was just SUCH a prick and emo-nuts for seemingly little reason. He just went nuts the second he stepped into the mountain?

Bor: Hey bro, I totes slayed the dragon that displaced your entire society for you... since our town was destroyed in the process could you help us out a bit?
DK: Lol fuck you, I don't care what I said. Me precious Goooold.

Such disappoint...

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Yeah, thats what I was saying earlier, that part of the movie was very poorly handled. If you really didn't finish it, the way it ends is even worse, instead of coming to his senses for good reason, like to avoid being attacked, or at the trust of his closest friends, or all his dwarven kin are about to die; instead he has a horrible flashback sequence, many of them scenes we just watched, and just has an epiphany all of a sudden. Granted many of those flashback scenes are the good reasons for him to come to his senses, but there really could/should have been one event that set him over the edge, not here lets rehash these scenes you just saw and "lol, I guess these guys were right." But after that epiphany I found the movie much more enjoyable.

That does remind me of something that slightly bothered me too, right after that when the remaining dwarves are holding down for their last stand, the enemy has a greater surface area of attack and is about to charge head on into the dwarves defensive position and then Thorin and co. bust out and they go on the offensive and it happens in another scene in the movie too. This is just a minor nitpick, but watching those scenes I'm thinking no one would ever do that. Oh yeah, the other scene is at the start of the fight when the elves leap over the dwarves and charge into the charging orcs that were about to charge into thousands of dwarven spears.

mures_sl said:

Oh yeah, the other scene is at the start of the fight when the elves leap over the dwarves and charge into the charging orcs that were about to charge into thousands of dwarven spears.

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Wood Elves are well known for being powerfully stupid.

yeah the second half of the movie is definitely better than the first half, but it still pales in comparison to LOTR. It was just a really, really bad idea to try and make the Hobbit 3 movies, a single movie with a condensed plot that didn't try to tie into LOTR would have been much better in retrospect. I can't fault him for trying to do more, sometimes you get it right and sometimes you don't (wachowski brothers are famous at this). I bet PJ is happy with the way things came out unfortunately

like in the first trilogy there was that palpable tension of whether the humans would survive, whether their allies would come, and you knew all the setup long before hand of who the allies were and when they might come and why they may not. or the undead being recruited and offered their freedom for redemption. in 5 armies very little made sense. So a massive orc army is about to crush the dwarfs/elves/humans and they are rampaging through the town streets slaughtering humans, but suddenly 12 extra dwarves show up and the tide turns? da fuq. or the stupid eagles at the end, yeah there was the one liner about "go get da animals to help, rabbit fucker!" but that was pretty much as anti-climatic a rescue as could be.

a good star wars trilogy comparison is yoda and elrond/saruman. did fucking anyone watch LOTR and think "yeah, this elrond guy is pretty cool but it would be really sweet if he was a SHAOLIN MASTER!!!" might as well have had saruman and gala do some backflips and bullet time kung fu, PJ. heck, throw in a lightsaber and call it an elvish energy sword!!!!!

Zignor 3_sl said:

Of course it's not needed, but stupid? Nah. Drawing comparisons between that and Yoda mentioning Han Solo to a young Obi-Wan, however, is. Thranduil would have known of - if not outright known - Aragorn. His lineage was of extreme importance to the "elders" of Middle Earth. Han Solo didn't mean shit to anyone until he helped to blow up the Death Star.

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Again... it being possible doesn't make it not be stupid. Thranduil wasn't one of the White Council and was a third rate night elf (literally) so who knows what he knew.

I also couldn't take Bilbo Baggins seriously anymore after watching the Fargo miniseries earlier this year. That dude is Lester Nygaard from now on. The mannerisms were too similar.

Also threw me off my game that the main wood elf SOB Thranduil is the dude from the series Halt and Catch Fire, which I watched for several months this year. Killed my suspension of disbelief(also had no clue that same guy is the main bad guy/Ronan in Guardians of the Galaxy, he's made some nice money this year)

I remember practically going crazy trying to remember where I'd seen/heard Ronaan's actor the first time I saw GotG. About halfway through the movie it finally clicked based on his voice, which I think is fairly distinctive (or, at least, the way he spoke in both movies was similar).

The Ancient_sl said:

Bilbo gave away the Arkenstone that they traveled all that way for.

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The point is that the Arkenstone is barely discussed in the book. I don't even think it's even mentioned at all until after Smaug leaves Erebor. If memory serves, it's described as an heirloom of Thorin's family and the centerpiece of the giant treasure collection, but it's not given a large amount of significance by Tolkien, which is why when Bilbo attempts his little bargaining scheme with it, Thorin's sudden anger seems ridiculous. Tolkien chalks it up to something like, "Well, Dwarves can be pretty greedy where treasure is concerned," and we're supposed to accept that this is why Thorin becomes a murderous nutcase.

At least the movies attempt to give his turn more depth and explanation with the "dragon sickness", Thror going gold-crazy in the prologue, providing more insight into what the Arkenstone represents to Thorin, etc. Sure, it's contrived, but I thought it worked well enough up until his bizarre epiphany at the end of it.

Thror was corrupted by one of the Dwarf Rings which Sauron took for him after torture. Why would they swap that epic tale with "dragon sickness"... just put the ring in the movie if you like to make some meatier additions. Maybe Sauron subtly sends it to him.

That's Thrain.

Oh, damned dwarves. Well Thror still had the ring before Thrain so that still explains the crazy. He just died differently (wandering into Moria because he was nuts).

joeboo_sl said:

Watched the screener. I've never been so bored with an hour-long action sequence in my life. Orcs look fake as shit, terrible job with the CGI. And the Dwarf king dude going mega-emo for most of the movie was incredibly boring and tedious as well.

I'd have to say that I was almost as disappointed in the Hobbit movies compared to LOTR as I was in the Star Wars prequels compared to the original trilogy.

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Bullseye.

etchazz_sl said:

Bullseye.

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I'd say the only difference in my Hobbit/SWPrequel comparison would be that while each SW prequel got a tad better than the last(although all were still disappointing), each Hobbit movie got worse than the last.

joeboo_sl said:

I'd say the only difference in my Hobbit/SWPrequel comparison would be that while each SW prequel got a tad better than the last(although all were still disappointing), each Hobbit movie got worse than the last.

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I'd easily put this one ahead of DOS, no question. It's tougher to compare to the first one, since it's good/bad in different ways. This one should definitely benefit the most from the EE, though. This is certainly the only one of the three where I think adding more material would net a bigger improvement than trimming. The others were far more bloated with shit.

Add back more Beorn and actually provide a real closure to the battle, complete some of the big plotlines that simply got dropped for what I guess was fear of RoTK's criticism of its multiple endings, get rid of that fucking completely useless Alfrid character and a couple of other quick scenes, and it'd easily top both of the others for me.

joeboo_sl said:

I'd say the only difference in my Hobbit/SWPrequel comparison would be that while each SW prequel got a tad better than the last(although all were still disappointing), each Hobbit movie got worse than the last.

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Don't agree at all the prequels got better as they went on. The phantom menace sucked, but it was a damn masterpiece compared to the last prequel.

The whole "dragon sickness" business is even more stupid when you take in consideration that the Arkenstone is probably one of the Silmarii, and that alone would explain why it drives people crazy to obtain it. In the Silmarilion, it's explained how the Silmarils shine very brightly and reflect light everywhere (like the Arkenstone) because they were literally forged from the light of the Trees of Valinor. Eventually after many wars over obtaining the Silmarils from whatever owner they had at the time, they ended up eventually scattered, one in the sky made into a star by the Valar, and the other two stolen by the descendants of their original maker, who had become too greedy and despicable to "deserve" them and ended up burned by the Silmarils, so they commmited suicide each with their own Silmaril, one by jumping into the sea and the other by jumping into a "chasm of fire". It's the leading theory in Tolkien lore (post-rewrites) that the Arkenstone is the latter Silmaril, which ended up buried in the earth under the Lonely Mountain.

That movie was still a piece of shit though.

Runnen_sl said:

The whole "dragon sickness" business is even more stupid when you take in consideration that the Arkenstone is probably one of the Silmarii, and that alone would explain why it drives people crazy to obtain it. In the Silmarilion, it's explained how the Silmarils shine very brightly and reflect light everywhere (like the Arkenstone) because they were literally forged from the light of the Trees of Valinor. Eventually after many wars over obtaining the Silmarils from whatever owner they had at the time, they ended up eventually scattered, one in the sky made into a star by the Valar, and the other two stolen by the descendants of their original maker, who had become too greedy and despicable to "deserve" them and ended up burned by the Silmarils, so they commmited suicide each with their own Silmaril, one by jumping into the sea and the other by jumping into a "chasm of fire". It's the leading theory in Tolkien lore (post-rewrites) that the Arkenstone is the latter Silmaril, which ended up buried in the earth under the Lonely Mountain.

That movie was still a piece of shit though.

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That's not a fair explanation for Thorin's behavior in the book considering he never actually saw the Arkenstone after Bilbo recovered it. He was a big dick to the Lakemen before he was saw the Arkenstone when it was offered in trade.

I can't remember though if the Elves showed up at the same time as the Lakemen wanting treasure. It'd be more understandable for Thorin to tell them all to fuck off if the Elves who imprisoned him showed up wanting gold.