Battle of the Five Armies is a soulless end to the flawed Hobbit trilogy

Ars' resident Tolkien nerd on Peter Jackson's problematic final chapter.

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[Ravant]

Honestly, I thought the first two were alright. They were no LoTR, but they were better than a lot of the schlock that the movie industry has piped out lately. Five Armies, however, really deeply disappointed me on various levels.

 

[Ravant]

thomsirveaux[/url]":xt0e1umr]

Ravant[/url]":xt0e1umr]Honestly, I thought the first two were alright. They were no LoTR, but they were better than a lot of the schlock that the movie industry has piped out lately. Five Armies, however, really deeply disappointed me on various levels.

I think I'm mostly in that camp? Taken as a whole the trilogy isn't what it could have been, but the first two had more enjoyable moments than the last one.

I think the issue with me and Five Armies is this:

~Thorin's "greed" was played up in a way that felt far too bleeding-heart compared to the book, and its "resolution" was barely glanced over as sort of an aside. The whole development bell curve of the King's inner turmoil written in the book wasn't conveyed... at all. It was mostly an, "Oh, yeah. It's a thing."
~Alfred was this trilogy's Jar-Jar Binks and got way more screen-time than he deserved.
~The Elven reasoning behind the initial fight was played up as, "oh, my /diamonds/." But it was left again, as an aside. The cultural connection to said jewels was blatantly ignored. That'd be like if someone stole the Crown Jewels from England and some people went, "What's the big deal? It's just some stupid shiny rocks."
~The transition from fighting each other to fighting the orcs was so sudden, so forced and so very painful to watch.
~Thorin and Smaug's deaths were the only two that were made 'powerful' in that I felt an actual connection to the characters. The rest were ragdolls.


The first 30 minutes were alright. It went downhill. Then there were some pretty cool fight scenes, but nothing "Hobbit" about them. Then it went further downhill to an ending that completely left out the whole "storytelling" bit from the beginning of the first movie, which would've offered the possibility of a full-circle resolution to the Trilogy. But, no dice. The movie felt 'hollow' after the first 30 minutes.

I could be wrong, though, but the above is just me, I think. I dunno.