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THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES (2014)
Well, I got back from watching The Hobbit 3 by myself since no one else could come with me...yet after having seen it I'm glad they didn't.
Hobbit 3 being the final chapter of what otherwise did not need to be a trilogy of movies surrounding this one little book just couldn't live up to being a complete and tidy end to the whole story.
I loved the first two movies for reasons you'll all probably agree with me on, and most definitely the second movie because of SMAAAUUUG and like everyone I was like "UUUGHH COME ON!" when it had ended on a black-screen cliffhanger.
Remembering that, I feel like the first half of this 3rd movie should have been included in the end of the second movie, sure it could've slowed down sales for anyone who would be interested in the rest of the story and how it ends, but I would've still had seen the 3rd movie regardless.
I liked how the story was focused on how Thorin was going to defend himself from the 3 armies, I say that because there are the Elves, the Orcs and the Dwarves...unless you count the Laketown people, that's only 4 armies so the title lies to you, but I was still interested in Thorin and how he was slowly being caught up in his greed and learning that he has become something he fought against becoming the most even quoting Smaug's lines which I thought was pretty clever.
Bilbo is just kind of there and while it was suppose to be his story he's still just more of a background character and with everything there was that was going on he really was not given enough focus to help take us the audience through the story which I think contributes to this film's biggest flaws, say what you will about Frodo's character in the LOTR trilogy he was still a character who we latched onto to help carry us through the story. But Martin Freeman is still good as Bilbo.
The rest of the movie is just about how all these armies lead by rulers of power fight for control of the mountain for powers and stuff and the arkin stone which I thought was powerful but it gets tossed aside as nothing more but a useless stone, yeah did I mention there's a lot of plot holes in this movie that never seem to add up to much meaning?
Let's get to the bad parts:
SPOILERS AHEAD
-Smaug attacking Laketown~ I loved this scene so much especially with Smaug sending fire to the town who you got to see burn to death and their homes and lives destroyed and Benedict Cumberbatch bringing on his sexy amazing dragon voice for the sinister beast...only one problem...IT. IS. SOOOOO. RUSHED!
It literally felt like it was horribly rushed just to get the rest of the movie going, while the effects were good (for the most part) I felt that this scene should have been executed with better pacing, more tension, and with Smaug's last few words he's not given much interaction to our Bowman Bard to not make his dialogue sound out of place and awkward and his death scene was also rushed and kind of funny in that over-dramatic sort.
-Bad CGI/Missing Frames~ In one scene where Thranduil (Lee Pace's character) is riding through a pack of orcs he kills off instantly on his giant elk, but when he comes in contact with more orcs who shoot his elk down you can clearly see the horribly choppy and missing frames of the elk when its falling down and yet Thranduil has all of his frames that really ruined the scene for me and really made the movie's whole experience a little low-brow.
Some of the CGI in most of the battle scenes seemed like they were good for the most part, while I then started to get really sick of it and really wished Peter Jackson could've added more makeup prosthetic orcs or something to make it look like it was less synthetic.
Aside from that horrible CGI goof on Thranduil's elk, Billy Connolly's character Dain looks extremely awkward, it looks like they just put makeup on his face and they CGIed his entire body that moves unnaturally to that of Thorin and his dwarves, very much like that of Crispin Glover's character from that fucking shitty Alice in WonderwhythefuckTimBurtonfuckedthismovieupLand.
A bridge is breaking while Legolas is fighting Bolg and he's jumping on every stone that falls in mid-air and the effect looks AWFUL he looks like he's trying to be Mario jumping up on platforms and like the other CGI effects it makes it very distracting for the rest of the film.
-The Eagles scene~ Fuck the eagles, fuck everything about the eagles, they were a dumb plot device that should never existed in this installment to fix whatever problems there were, they should've used the eagles for everything if they're so damn brilliant or just remove them for better conflict. Fuck. The. Eagles.
-Thorin vs. Azog~ For the most part, their fight is really good, yet I feel like the very end of the fight when Thorin stabs Azog I felt like he should've beheaded him for good measure because Azog seemed like he could survive even a stab wound...then again Thorin was using the Goblin Cleaver which clears him up but are orcs and goblins the same? I don't know, I still think he should've beheaded him because I didn't really buy Azog's death scene.
-The Ending~ I'll wrap this part up as quickly as possible, the ending was horribly rushed and left absolutely no charm or anything memorable to keep itself as a good tie-up of all three films into a complete and fulfilling narrative for Bilbo's journey nor a stand-alone film that would eventually lead into Lord of the Rings.
Peter Jackson may have had a shit ton of stuff to put into The Hobbit Extended Editions, if that will even be a thing, and many of the horrible flaws there are will be fixed, because this ending wrapped up what was a movie that held such promise and had a lot to live up to and it was very underwhelming.
Over all, Hobbit 3 is no where near as good as the first two and sadly isn't a very memorable final installment to this Hobbit trilogy and doesn't live up to much of a pay off, it's horribly rushed at the worst of times, it has bad CGI scattered around the place that takes you out of the magic, the script kind of loses its way at times, plot holes that are left loose and only few are tied together, and probably should've been cut down a few minutes or rewritten.
6/10