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.

Read the whole story

 

[gijames1225]

I pretty much agree with every thing Andrew says. The Hobbit trilogy is unique in not only betraying the source material very thoroughly, but also in becoming a very poor film in the process. Three quarters of the deviations from the book are for the obvious purpose of making a trilogy out of what should have been a brisk, brief dualology, and it's made worse because Jackson obviously knows how to be both a good director and good steward of Tolkien's works but decided to abandon both for the all mighty dollar. American audiences have largely just lapped it up, though (although if you read their reviews, the English have been a bit more frustrated with Jackson's taking a dump on Tolkien's strongest, self-contained narrative).

 

[gijames1225]

multimediavt[/url]":kr93ynnh]

심돌산[/url]":kr93ynnh]Here's the only review that matters to me, from my 11-year-old: "That was great!"

That's a nice review. Too bad none of Tolkien's stories were ever intended for children.

Uh, The Hobbit most definitely was, but that's part of the reason the movies are so abysmal, they totally abandon the fairy-tale and folklore feel of the book and just chase after the mindless, blockbuster action movie crowd.

 

[gijames1225]

Goofball_Jones[/url]":18gbdkp2]Have said this a lot, but once they release this on Blu-Ray, some enterprising student film editor should take all three movies and use them as raw footage. Then cut together one, tight, 3-hour epic movie that's based only on scenes from the book...or as close as you can get from the footage. It would be a good exercise I think.

That's bound to happen, and I look forward to it when it does.