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

 

[Bob Loblaw]

I'm wondering how much of the obvious mis-steps (three movies instead of two, overly long/dramatic, epicness dialled up to 11, etc.) are because of executive meddling and not Jackson losing his marbles? I didn't follow production at all (and never saw the movies in theatres), but it sure feels like someone was trying to re-create LoTR again.

 

[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.

 

[Wickwick]

Hesster56[/url]":5ra09zrt]I don't mind having this discussion, but it could be a bit off topic.

Bombadil doesn't work in the movies.

There's nowhere between A Shortcut to Mushrooms and The Sign of the Prancing Pony to drop "and then our characters spend a long weekend having brunch with God."

He's only as much God as Gandalf. He reigns supreme over his garden but not (necessarily) outside of it. At least the Ents did ask about Entwives in the movies. That's about all we get in reference to Bombadil. Oh, and the Barrow Wights swords just happen to show up in Strider's hands.

 

[ubercurmudgeon]

Movie franchises these days have to grow increasingly tiresome over their many installments, otherwise what excuse would the studios have to reboot them in a few years time, when the all-important CGI has incrementally improved?

"Hobbit Reborn", coming in 2019, directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Ben Afleck as Bilbo, with two million individually rendered orcs instead of just one million.

 

[Taesong]

The Hobbit worked as a story because it was a small tale about a small person (literally) taking on big things. It hinted there were even greater things going on, but because it focused on a likeable and relatable main character we were drawn into the story along with Bilbo on his journey. Bilbo is told that what happened to him is part of a much greater whole, but it is also clear that that greater whole is made up of many little stories just like Bilbo's.

I get where Jackson is trying to show the things going on behind Bilbo's adventure and what is happening fits with what we suspect would have been going on. However it drastically changes the narrative of the story, now everyone's story and fate is overshadowed by "epic events" and the "big picture". The attempt to make an epic out of a tale undermines the whole point of the tale in the first place.

 

[ardent]

This really demanded two films and not three.

The primary story is in four parts: the unexpected party and the journey east to Rivendell. The journey over the Misty Mountains. Mirkwood and Smaug. The Battle of the Five Armies.

If you'd done two in each film it would have been fantastically paced and exciting. I hope they edit that together for a release in a few years.

 

[Wickwick]

Faramir[/url]":s239o8py]

Hesster56[/url]":s239o8py]I, for one, am waiting for the De-Extended, one-movie edition. I watched the first, could see the level of cgi "hijinks" they were embracing, and hit the eject button. The LotR movies are nigh-perfect, this series crumbled under its own needless expansion.

The Fellowship of the Ring extended edition was excellent (notwithstanding the tragic elimination of Bombadil). In the Two Towers and especially in the Return of the King, you can tell that PJ was already getting bored of the source material and the quality suffered.

The first hobbit movie was a travesty, and I after that I stopped paying attention.

I will admit that every time since the first read through I do flip pages past the trip of the two Hobbits and Gollum through Mordor.

Woe is me. I'm so tired. I'm so Thirsty. Woe is me.

There are certainly some pacing issues with that.

 

[Hesster56]

Wickwick[/url]":2tl51doq]

Hesster56[/url]":2tl51doq]I don't mind having this discussion, but it could be a bit off topic.

Bombadil doesn't work in the movies.

There's nowhere between A Shortcut to Mushrooms and The Sign of the Prancing Pony to drop "and then our characters spend a long weekend having brunch with God."

He's only as much God as Gandalf. He reigns supreme over his garden but not (necessarily) outside of it. At least the Ents did ask about Entwives in the movies. That's about all we get in reference to Bombadil. Oh, and the Barrow Wights swords just happen to show up in Strider's hands.

Or Gandalf said "Aragorn, you'll be meeting between two and five Hobbits at the inn. Please have some sort of weapon for them; they need to learn how to defend themselves."

And Bombadil has been referenced as "older" than the the rings, which puts him as outside of the effects of the Ring's powers and the world around him.

 

[Wickwick]

ardent[/url]":3trh5p7u]This really demanded two films and not three.

The primary story is in four parts: the unexpected party and the journey east to Rivendell. The journey over the Misty Mountains. Mirkwood and Smaug. The Battle of the Five Armies.

If you'd done two in each film it would have been fantastically paced and exciting. I hope they edit that together for a release in a few years.

Or better yet, a single movie with 40 minutes per section.

 

[Kerry56]

I watched the first two Hobbit films, and thought they were terrible. I won't bother with this one.

But then, I didn't particularly like Jackson's take on LOTR either. Too much needless tampering with the text, and complete misreading of certain characters for my taste. I watched LOTR once, and will never go back to it, which is unusual for me. I re-watch movies quite a lot, and I read the trilogy so many times, I lost count.

 

[tombraun]

99% of the reviews of this film that I've seen, including this one, basically go in determined to dislike it because turning this book into three movies is, by geek consensus, a money-grubbing cash grab.

Well, maybe.

But that aside, I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. More than the second by far, and at least as much as the first. The conflict between Thranduil and Thorin actually IS at the heart of the last section of the book, so the fact that the movie focuses on it is quite accurate. And I thought the battle scenes were top notch for the most part (though I didn't care about the Laketown Master's cowardly sidekick - ugh). The climactic fight out on the ice was stunning.

I think this is a fine wrap-up to a trilogy that is not as good as LOTR but not as bad as people have made it out to be. YMMV.

 

[ardent]

Wickwick[/url]":3jxr56wb]

ardent[/url]":3jxr56wb]This really demanded two films and not three.

The primary story is in four parts: the unexpected party and the journey east to Rivendell. The journey over the Misty Mountains. Mirkwood and Smaug. The Battle of the Five Armies.

If you'd done two in each film it would have been fantastically paced and exciting. I hope they edit that together for a release in a few years.

Or better yet, a single movie with 40 minutes per section.

I don't know that would be the best pacing, but you could try it. I'd like to see both tried.

When I said two films I meant two 110-120~ minute films. Not two 160 minute films.

 

[Wickwick]

Hesster56[/url]":151rb6x7]

Wickwick[/url]":151rb6x7]

Hesster56[/url]":151rb6x7]I don't mind having this discussion, but it could be a bit off topic.

Bombadil doesn't work in the movies.

There's nowhere between A Shortcut to Mushrooms and The Sign of the Prancing Pony to drop "and then our characters spend a long weekend having brunch with God."

He's only as much God as Gandalf. He reigns supreme over his garden but not (necessarily) outside of it. At least the Ents did ask about Entwives in the movies. That's about all we get in reference to Bombadil. Oh, and the Barrow Wights swords just happen to show up in Strider's hands.

Or Gandalf said "Aragorn, you'll be meeting between two and five Hobbits at the inn. Please have some sort of weapon for them; they need to learn how to defend themselves."

And Bombadil has been referenced as "older" than the the rings, which puts him as outside of the effects of the Ring's powers and the world around him.

The 5 are also older than the ring (Gandalf, Radagast, Saruman and two unnamed) . They're direct agents of the Valar to oppose Melkor/Morgoth.

 

[Wickwick]

ardent[/url]":7vbok8bh]

Wickwick[/url]":7vbok8bh]

ardent[/url]":7vbok8bh]This really demanded two films and not three.

The primary story is in four parts: the unexpected party and the journey east to Rivendell. The journey over the Misty Mountains. Mirkwood and Smaug. The Battle of the Five Armies.

If you'd done two in each film it would have been fantastically paced and exciting. I hope they edit that together for a release in a few years.

Or better yet, a single movie with 40 minutes per section.

I don't know that would be the best pacing, but you could try it. I'd like to see both tried.

When I said two films I meant two 110-120~ minute films. Not two 160 minute films.

No, I meant a single 160 minute movie. That would have been just enough to fit the material, not miss anything major, and not have to introduce any characters not in the book.

And to leave the off-scene action off-scene.

 

[tombraun]

ardent[/url]":2aowffel]This really demanded two films and not three.

The primary story is in four parts: the unexpected party and the journey east to Rivendell. The journey over the Misty Mountains. Mirkwood and Smaug. The Battle of the Five Armies.

If you'd done two in each film it would have been fantastically paced and exciting. I hope they edit that together for a release in a few years.

It's not clear that this arbitrary four part division is as obvious as you make it. I think Mirkwood is its own section, with the spiders, the enchantment of the forest and then the elf kingdom, for example. Any division you make will be arbitrary.

 

[rick*d]

tombraun[/url]":20qjr277]99% of the reviews of this film that I've seen, including this one, basically go in determined to dislike it because turning this book into three movies is, by geek consensus, a money-grubbing cash grab.

Well, maybe.

But that aside, I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. More than the second by far, and at least as much as the first. The conflict between Thranduil and Thorin actually IS at the heart of the last section of the book, so the fact that the movie focuses on it is quite accurate. And I thought the battle scenes were top notch for the most part (though I didn't care about the Laketown Master's cowardly sidekick - ugh). The climactic fight out on the ice was stunning.

I think this is a fine wrap-up to a trilogy that is not as good as LOTR but not as bad as people have made it out to be. YMMV.

I think you missed the part about how The Hobbit is not a trilogy. It's just one book.

 

[Wickwick]

tombraun[/url]":sv3dez54]99% of the reviews of this film that I've seen, including this one, basically go in determined to dislike it because turning this book into three movies is, by geek consensus, a money-grubbing cash grab.

Well, maybe.

But that aside, I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. More than the second by far, and at least as much as the first. The conflict between Thranduil and Thorin actually IS at the heart of the last section of the book, so the fact that the movie focuses on it is quite accurate. And I thought the battle scenes were top notch for the most part (though I didn't care about the Laketown Master's cowardly sidekick - ugh). The climactic fight out on the ice was stunning.

I think this is a fine wrap-up to a trilogy that is not as good as LOTR but not as bad as people have made it out to be. YMMV.

My 13 year-old son (who's never read anything written by any of the Tolkiens) likes the three Hobbit movies as much as he loves the LotR movies. I think the clamor amongst us nerds is how little the movies share with the book beyond the name.

 

[caldepen]

It strikes me that these movies are the creation of a person with a genius for visual filmmaking that has lost or stopped listening to the voices that tell him that hey, maybe this is a bit over-the-top

Add Nolan and a few others to this category.

 

[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).

 

[arcite]

Taesong[/url]":2sbrnzok]The Hobbit worked as a story because it was a small tale about a small person (literally) taking on big things. It hinted there were even greater things going on, but because it focused on a likeable and relatable main character we were drawn into the story along with Bilbo on his journey. Bilbo is told that what happened to him is part of a much greater whole, but it is also clear that that greater whole is made up of many little stories just like Bilbo's.

I get where Jackson is trying to show the things going on behind Bilbo's adventure and what is happening fits with what we suspect would have been going on. However it drastically changes the narrative of the story, now everyone's story and fate is overshadowed by "epic events" and the "big picture". The attempt to make an epic out of a tale undermines the whole point of the tale in the first place.

This here. The battle of the five armies is not much more than a couple paragraphs in the novel. Tolkien, a survivor of the trenches of WWI would have no doubt been horrified to see what was done to his small children's tale by Jackson.

 

[zebostoneleigh]

You say it's the "end." Perhaps it can be the end of middle earth films in general.

 

[caldepen]

I bet not. They will make the Silmarillion Trilogy next...

 

[Wickwick]

zebostoneleigh[/url]":2urnw4a9]You say it's the "end." Perhaps it can be the end of middle earth films in general.

Well, unless they're just going to completely make up source material they've run out. Everything else from JRR and his son covers material earlier than Middle Earth.

 

[kranchammer]

Wickwick[/url]":nntmugnq]

zebostoneleigh[/url]":nntmugnq]You say it's the "end." Perhaps it can be the end of middle earth films in general.

Well, unless they're just going to completely make up source material they've run out. Everything else from JRR and his son covers material earlier than Middle Earth.

I have an ugly feeling we will be seeing an original The Adventures of Legolas and Young Aragorn next.

 

[exick]

caldepen[/url]":1vxaojjn]I bet not. They will make the Silmarillion Trilogy next...

Seems unlikely. I remember reading (wish I could remember where) that film rights were only ever granted for The Hobbit and LOTR and Christopher Tolkien doesn't really like the movies at all. Dollar signs obviously could change his mind, I suppose.

 

[bdp]

Wickwick[/url]":1ytvtjdn]

tombraun[/url]":1ytvtjdn]99% of the reviews of this film that I've seen, including this one, basically go in determined to dislike it because turning this book into three movies is, by geek consensus, a money-grubbing cash grab.

Well, maybe.

But that aside, I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. More than the second by far, and at least as much as the first. The conflict between Thranduil and Thorin actually IS at the heart of the last section of the book, so the fact that the movie focuses on it is quite accurate. And I thought the battle scenes were top notch for the most part (though I didn't care about the Laketown Master's cowardly sidekick - ugh). The climactic fight out on the ice was stunning.

I think this is a fine wrap-up to a trilogy that is not as good as LOTR but not as bad as people have made it out to be. YMMV.

My 13 year-old son (who's never read anything written by any of the Tolkiens) likes the three Hobbit movies as much as he loves the LotR movies. I think the clamor amongst us nerds is how little the movies share with the book beyond the name.

I don't care if a movie strays from the book on which it is based, as long as it's a good movie. The Hobbit movies are just long and boring, in defiance if how much action is packed on the screen at all times. After about an hour of Desolation of Smaug, both of my kids were asking if we could leave the theater and do something else, and they'll both stay involved with and pay attention to any of the extended LOTR movies until the end even with kid-length attention spans.

 

[bb-15]

From Andrew's review;

There's one big thing that doomed these movies from the outset—the fiscally smart but artistically bankrupt decision to make a single, shortish children's novel into three feature-length prequel films.

Well at least it is admitted that the Hobbit films are smart financially.

- As for a purist argument that a movie based on Tolkien's writings must perfectly match the written story, I don't accept it because Jackson's Lord of the Rings films (which are excellent) also had multiple changes compared with the book.

- My main problems with the Hobbit films was that certain characters did things which went out of the bounds of the Tolkien mythology (including The Silmarillion and the Appendices).
That would be Radagast having poop on his head and the elf Tauriel falling in love with a dwarf.

- But that is just my personal taste.
For the vast majority of the audience who have never read Tolkien, or don't care to compare his writings to these Hobbit movies, it does not matter.
These Jackson films based on Tolkien are all hugely popular and that's all that Hollywood cares about.

 

[friedzombie456]

Wickwick[/url]":1ycpb5f5]The LotR trilogy is really six books and in three movies with 9? hours of film they couldn't even work in Tom Bombadil.

The Hobbit, is a children's book with more deus ex machina scenes that I dared remember. And that was stretched into an equal number of hours.

And enough with the tie-ins between LotR and The Hobbit already! Elrond, Gandalf, Bilbo, and Gloin (father of Gimli) should have been enough.

Always been one of my major complaints about The Hobbit trilogy. The movie always reminded you that you were in middle-earth.

Boy was that other middle-earth movie really really good and this movie is good too but oh boy that movie was really really good. *insert young Gimli pictures here*

 

[solomonrex]

I've decided rather than considering the Hobbit trilogy as an overwrought adaptation of a Tolkien book, I'll consider it the finest D&D adaptation ever.

It was never going to be as good as LotR, and I accept that. I had no interest in them until I took a chance on the first movie this year.

The reason that the first two were better was plainly spectacle and Tolkien's odd plotting habits. First, the dwarf kingdom sequence and Bilbo's tea party were phenomenally well done and charming. Second movie, the spiders and the Smaug sequence, again, were absolutely captivating and amazing cinema. Don't be too jaded to recognize craftsmanship like those scenes!

The third movie was saddled with Tolkien's odd habit of letting plots fizzle out, Peter's Jacksons' worst tendencie as Dungeon Master for silly action and little reason for dialogue. It was easy to miss John Cleese, for instance, because there was no proper dialogue once the (TWO HOUR) battle started.

I maintain that the trilogy is underrated just a bit - it's no travesty. And I also agree that a child-friendly 2 hours abridged version would be more keeping in the JRRT spirit and be a better product.

This was Jackson at his hubristic best, it was bigger than King Kong and it was no disaster like, say, the Star Wars prequels. It didn't go out with a bang, but at least we got a nice whimsical hobbit town sequence in the end.

While we all joke about the Silmarillion trilogy, I do think Jackson could do some other proper fantasy work after some time has passed. Earlier generations had spaghetti westerns and detective pulps, I would watch any decent fantasy movie Jackson releases, even if I complain afterwards that it doesn't match LotR.

Jackson can't help making his best work early in life, LotR was a unique property and there probably isn't another one like that out there.

 

[azazel1024]

Wickwick[/url]":2b5wf4pl]

Alienfreak[/url]":2b5wf4pl]Did anyone notice that they completely edited out a scene out of the trailer? You saw the elven army shoot arrows at somewhere where the dwarven one was. But in the movie the whole elven army didnt fire a single arrow. They were busy jumping over some defensive lines, I guess.

Also it breaks the whole LOTR plot by them knowing it was Sauron that has returned. You didn't even mention that in your review!

Seriously! It made the council at Elrond's kind of pointless if they knew Sauron had returned.

Agree completely. There would have been many ways if PJ wanted the Necromancer to be a scene instead of a paragraph or two, to have done that without the good guys knowing it was Sauron. Heck, ways to do it too that allowed the audience to easily figure out it was Sauron, but showing that the good guys are obviously still kept in the dark (rimshot, pun intended).

Also, yeah, a glut of slow motion action scenes. I haven't seen the final movie yet to comment, but just in the two earlier ones, so much of what is in there could still be kept, but if they just cut the slow motion action down to a minimum, I think they'd both actually ENHANCE audience emotional participation and adrenaline as well as probably cutting a good 10-15 minutes off both movies.

I think in general you get more emotional buy in when things are quick. Watching the slow motion slicing of a character, their ineffectual parry and then slowly crumbling in death just leaves me flat. Seeing a whicked fast slash and the character just falling dead...that gets more of an emotional response from me.

Also I cannot emphasis how much Thorin is a one-D character or how little effectual light heartedness was in the first two movies. Seriously, this could have been EASILY avoided. You could have sitll made 3 movies (granted, they might have only been a pair of 2 hour movies and a 100 minute movie) and reaped much profit and done the source material and the actors a bit more justice.

The only way I am willing to forgive this is if PJ can get the cast together again and shoot a special super extended edition of the LotR trilogy to add in the scenes of Tom Bombidil and his wife and then splice it in to the original movies and package it up in a deluxe collectors box set.

 

[mpat]

The issue is that Tolkien sold - not licensed - the movie rights to LOTR back in the sixties some time, and the estate didn't really want these movies made. Peter Jackson got the rights to Hobbit some other way, not sure of how, but it was not from the Tolkien estate. They could conceivably make one based on the LOTR appendices, like the Shadws of Mordor game is, but that is about it. I think that this is why these movies became as long as they did - it was the last, final chance to do anything LOTR.

 

[oomu]

That article summarizes a lot of my feelings about that trilogy.

-
I love a lot of things : Gollum, Bilbo, Smaug, some of the dwarves. But I still think it's a shame its tone is so different of the book.

It should have been a beautiful movie for kids. Children could have a wonderful adventure, a beginning before to go in Lord of the Rings.

Now, it's tone deaf. emotional empty. (in fact, I was quite amazed how emotional Gardians of the galaxy was, and not that hobbit trilogy)

-
of course, it's an impressive and professional spectacle.

 

[solomonrex]

arcite[/url]":1rov4r8x]

Taesong[/url]":1rov4r8x]The Hobbit worked as a story because it was a small tale about a small person (literally) taking on big things. It hinted there were even greater things going on, but because it focused on a likeable and relatable main character we were drawn into the story along with Bilbo on his journey. Bilbo is told that what happened to him is part of a much greater whole, but it is also clear that that greater whole is made up of many little stories just like Bilbo's.

I get where Jackson is trying to show the things going on behind Bilbo's adventure and what is happening fits with what we suspect would have been going on. However it drastically changes the narrative of the story, now everyone's story and fate is overshadowed by "epic events" and the "big picture". The attempt to make an epic out of a tale undermines the whole point of the tale in the first place.

This here. The battle of the five armies is not much more than a couple paragraphs in the novel. Tolkien, a survivor of the trenches of WWI would have no doubt been horrified to see what was done to his small children's tale by Jackson.

That's just not realistic. Peter Jackson is not making a movie without a big battle scene in the end, and normal people wouldn't sit through even a 2 hour movie if the screen blacks out during the action. Literature isn't cinema and cinema isn't literature. PJ made many mistakes, but that wasn't one of them. Tolkien did have battle scenes in his other work, it's not completely foreign, either.

 

[jeblis]

Unfortunately the only this Jackson kept for the Lord of the Rings trilogy was the effects. The original hobbit book was muddled, but the core story could have made for a nice simple two hour movie.

 

[Faramir]

Wickwick[/url]":2ypin8ua]

Hesster56[/url]":2ypin8ua]

Wickwick[/url]":2ypin8ua]

Hesster56[/url]":2ypin8ua]I don't mind having this discussion, but it could be a bit off topic.

Bombadil doesn't work in the movies.

There's nowhere between A Shortcut to Mushrooms and The Sign of the Prancing Pony to drop "and then our characters spend a long weekend having brunch with God."

He's only as much God as Gandalf. He reigns supreme over his garden but not (necessarily) outside of it. At least the Ents did ask about Entwives in the movies. That's about all we get in reference to Bombadil. Oh, and the Barrow Wights swords just happen to show up in Strider's hands.

Or Gandalf said "Aragorn, you'll be meeting between two and five Hobbits at the inn. Please have some sort of weapon for them; they need to learn how to defend themselves."

And Bombadil has been referenced as "older" than the the rings, which puts him as outside of the effects of the Ring's powers and the world around him.

The 5 are also older than the ring (Gandalf, Radagast, Saruman and two unnamed) . They're direct agents of the Valar to oppose Melkor/Morgoth.

There are plenty older than the ring. It was forged at the very end of the second age. Many notable elves are older than that, and all the maiar.

 

[bigstrat2003]

Pokrface[/url]":3j2i0m9y]I watched the first Hobbit movie in a great theater with my wife. We came away disappointed in the soulless spectacle.

I watched most of the second Hobbit movie on an airplane and I quit paying attention after the barrels.

Won't be watching the third one. Life's too short for that crap.

Same. The LotR movies, as much as I might have been disappointed with their divergence from the source material at times, were at least great movies in their own right. The Hobbit movies can't even manage that. The first is all right, but the second is just terrible - not terrible as an adaptation (though it is that), but just a bad movie even when taken on its own merits. I'm not about to waste time and money watching the third one.

 

[caldepen]

I think the timing may be right to roll in the Dragonlance... Please no more Tolkien... Lots of material out there just have to choose it and then market it properly.

 

[michaelahlers]

Did the words “George” and “Lucas” appear together, in that order, anywhere in the credits roll?

(Ahem, well, uh, I wrote this before I hit the end of the review.)

 

[ElectricBlue]

solomonrex[/url]":3htcvi2c]

arcite[/url]":3htcvi2c]

Taesong[/url]":3htcvi2c]The Hobbit worked as a story because it was a small tale about a small person (literally) taking on big things. It hinted there were even greater things going on, but because it focused on a likeable and relatable main character we were drawn into the story along with Bilbo on his journey. Bilbo is told that what happened to him is part of a much greater whole, but it is also clear that that greater whole is made up of many little stories just like Bilbo's.

I get where Jackson is trying to show the things going on behind Bilbo's adventure and what is happening fits with what we suspect would have been going on. However it drastically changes the narrative of the story, now everyone's story and fate is overshadowed by "epic events" and the "big picture". The attempt to make an epic out of a tale undermines the whole point of the tale in the first place.

This here. The battle of the five armies is not much more than a couple paragraphs in the novel. Tolkien, a survivor of the trenches of WWI would have no doubt been horrified to see what was done to his small children's tale by Jackson.

That's just not realistic. Peter Jackson is not making a movie without a big battle scene in the end, and normal people wouldn't sit through even a 2 hour movie if the screen blacks out during the action. Literature isn't cinema and cinema isn't literature. PJ made many mistakes, but that wasn't one of them. Tolkien did have battle scenes in his other work, it's not completely foreign, either.

Nonsense. It is completely foreign to the nature of the work PJ is adapting. There's a condensed version of the Hobbit that could've made an okay movie. The book is not terribly exciting but it has plenty of suspense that would've transferred well to a movie but instead they removed any sense of danger the movie could've had with over the top effects and what's left? a soulless boring trilogy even the most die hard LOTR fans don't want to see.