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

 

[rainynight65]

I had a problem with this trilogy from the start. LoTR was epic enough for Jackson to have tons of material to fill three movies and then some. I love the LoTR movies, the extended editions were well worth the money, and I re-watch them at least once a year.

But The Hobbit was never that. When I heard that they were turning it into three movies, I wondered how they were going to do that. It just didn't seem to be enough material for that. Watching the first movie has kind of confirmed that opinion for me. It was overstuffed with visual effects, had a lot of fluff and was at least 45 minutes too long. After watching the second movie, I have actually lost any interest in watching the third one.

Peter Jackson's LoTR trilogy will always be up there for me as some of the finest filmmaking ever. But his Hobbit just doesn't fill those shoes.

 

[CraigJ ✅]

ayejay_nz[/url]":23uzsw3q]I think most young kids will probably enjoy the movie and most people who read the book when they were younger and are now in their 20's + probably won't.

Is the target audience of the film, as was the novel, young kids?

At the end of the day a $90.6m five-day opening at the US box office says "keep making them like this".

All that crap on E! is popular too. 'Nuff said.

 

[Wickwick]

kvndoom[/url]":1boigm2e]Much like Transformers 2, I left the movie theater quiet and with nothing to say. It was empty calories, not memorable at all, and not something I'd ever volunteer to watch again.

I didn't mind bringing back the LOTR alumni solely because I could see the value in watching this "prequel" directly before Return of the King (except for Legolas needing 60 years to find Aragorn, who didn't look quite that old in "Fellowship"). But wow, no closure at all after introducing so many important characters.

Long story short: Aragon isn't really human. He's part of the last bloodline of the Numenoreans - not quite immortal but close enough. They were a race so powerful they challenged the Valar (gods) themselves. Ok, so they lost and got banished to Middle Earth but you get the picture.

Though Legolas was not in The Hobbit he would not have needed to go looking for Strider/Aragorn in that time frame. Aragorn was well known amongst the elf folk. Only the men seem to have forgotten who the king of Gondor was.

 

[BigDragon]

I saw this movie on Friday. It easily is the worst movie I've seen all year. They should not have killed wyvern Smaug as part of the title sequence. 5 to 10 minutes in and the most dynamic character on the screen is wiped out in a completely unbelievable fashion. From then on it's 2-hours worth of "How to Kill an Orc" and watching completely flat characters do the same thing over and over again. Seriously, I'm surprised they found so many different ways to slice and smash those orcs up.

This is me being disappointed. The Hobbit had so much more potential than this. The characters could have been made deep, properly brought to life, and a timeless story could have been realized. Instead we got stuck with action sequences so forced and drawn out that people just started pulling out their phones in the middle of the movie and never looked back. Someone should post the movie's script online. I bet you could read through all the dialogue in 10 to 15 minutes if you ignore the [fighting], [some more fighting], and [even more fighting] sections. So much potential wasted.

 

[Fyrebaugh]

One of the big problems is that the Hobbit book was the shortest of the four books, at 95356 words.. The next book if going by word count is Return of the King at 137115 words, then The Two Towers at 156189 words, and finally Fellowship of the Ring at 187790 words.

So basically Peter Jackson took the shortest book of the set, and broke it into 3 movies, and the longest book was made into the shortest movie of the trilogy, with the movies having the following breakdown to movie length:

The Fellowship of the Ring: 178 minutes (theatrical), 208 minutes (Extended Edition)
The Two Towers: 179 minutes (theatrical), 223 minutes (Extended Edition)
The Return of the King: 200 minutes (theatrical), 251 minutes (Extended Edition)
TH; An Unexpected Journey: 169 minutes(theatrical), 182 minutes (Extended Edition)
TH; The Desolation of Smaug: 161 minutes(theatrical)
TH; Battle of the Five Armies: 144 minutes(theatrical)

If we do the math, The Hobbit movies add up to 474 minutes and if we add the three other movies together we get 557 minutes, (all theatrical movie times), so the shortest movie is 85% the length of the rest of the movies... While if you do the same with the word counts of the books, The Hobbit is almost 20%, (19.82%), the length of the other 3 books combined..

My opinion is that Peter Jackson wanted to milk the story for as long as possible. It had very little to do with telling the story that the books put forth, and more with having enough content / story to fill out 3 movies while not upsetting the fans too much...

 

[Wickwick]

BigDragon[/url]":16od4of8]I saw this movie on Friday. It easily is the worst movie I've seen all year. They should not have killed wyvern Smaug as part of the title sequence. 5 to 10 minutes in and the most dynamic character on the screen is wiped out in a completely unbelievable fashion. From then on it's 2-hours worth of "How to Kill an Orc" and watching completely flat characters do the same thing over and over again. Seriously, I'm surprised they found so many different ways to slice and smash those orcs up.

This is me being disappointed. The Hobbit had so much more potential than this. The characters could have been made deep, properly brought to life, and a timeless story could have been realized. Instead we got stuck with action sequences so forced and drawn out that people just started pulling out their phones in the middle of the movie and never looked back. Someone should post the movie's script online. I bet you could read through all the dialogue in 10 to 15 minutes if you ignore the [fighting], [some more fighting], and [even more fighting] sections. So much potential wasted.

Unfortunately, Smaug dies right about where he's supposed to - and just the way it was written in the book (ok, I don't recall any "black arrow" stuff - just a regular arrow that finds the soft belly where a scale had fallen off). Then again it was one book not a trilogy and the final battle was only a few pages.

The resolution of the characters AFTER the main events was big in The Hobbit and LotR. None of that made the Hobbit trilogy and very little made the LotR movies either.

 

[jozero]

Yup soulless.

Best scene in the entire movie was Gandalf and Bilbo walking in the forest, near the end.

No CG, no characters I could not care less about. Just some quiet quality time with two fantastic characters. Imagine that as the basis for the movie.

 

[bojesphob]

BigDragon[/url]":2yormcri]I saw this movie on Friday. It easily is the worst movie I've seen all year. They should not have killed wyvern Smaug as part of the title sequence. 5 to 10 minutes in and the most dynamic character on the screen is wiped out in a completely unbelievable fashion. From then on it's 2-hours worth of "How to Kill an Orc" and watching completely flat characters do the same thing over and over again. Seriously, I'm surprised they found so many different ways to slice and smash those orcs up.

This is me being disappointed. The Hobbit had so much more potential than this. The characters could have been made deep, properly brought to life, and a timeless story could have been realized. Instead we got stuck with action sequences so forced and drawn out that people just started pulling out their phones in the middle of the movie and never looked back. Someone should post the movie's script online. I bet you could read through all the dialogue in 10 to 15 minutes if you ignore the [fighting], [some more fighting], and [even more fighting] sections. So much potential wasted.

And what would they have made Smaug do? He already had his interaction with Bilbo, and he already left the Lonely Mountain to attack Laketown. At that point the only thing he had left to do was burn Laketown and die, which is exactly what the movie had him do. Actually, I had several conversations with friends after the second one and we all agreed that he would be resolved at the very beginning of the film. It was a movie about the battle of five armies, which encompassed a page in the book.... I'd rather have an actual battle and have it be most of the movie than one page of "well, the orcs attacked and they were defeated by the combined arms of men, dwarves, elves, and at the last minute eagles and changeling". I guess I saw a different movie, because even though I agree there were flaws, it struck all the chords that the book did (for me), just in a more roundabout way of doing it.

 

[tombraun]

arcite[/url]":234t244b]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.

Please. Tolkien had no problem writing plenty of war and battle in the LOTR trilogy. No matter who made The Hobbit or how many films it was the climactic battle was always going to be epic in scale.

 

[taswyn]

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.

Making any movie based on The Hobbit that's supposed to be in the LOTR univerise is a doomed effort from the start, because The Hobbit really isn't: it features some of the work that went on to create the Middle Earth found in the LOTR, the Silmarillion, etc, but it pre-dates much of it and is broadly inconsistent with it (even after the multiple revisions it went through to try to bring it more in line).

It's easy to see where Jackson was trying to take it: to broaden the world of Middle Earth while creating something that made sense with LOTR and actually felt like it fit in. There's no way that could have been done with a movie that didn't take liberties with the material in The Hobbit, because of how inconsistent that material itself was.

There are a number of things I love about Tolkien's work (and some others I am far less happy with) but The Hobbit has to be taken with a grain of salt for the context in which it was written in, especially in comparison to the later novels. It's not a bad thing, it's just not something you're going to turn around and make into a film that feels cohesive to the LOTR movies without some heavy changes. And there's quite a bit it glosses over which IS worth exploring.

Now, whether or not Jackson did that well is a completely different question. But I don't see how you could cover the material The Hobbit alludes to (but frequently glosses over) in less than two movies in a satisfactory fashion. And I also don't see how you could cover the Hobbit as a movie without either writing in the bits it casually left "off screen" without having people feel disappointed, especially with the LOTR movies as a comparison point.

Were the privileges taken good ones? Were they taken just to wow audiences, rather than better work in plot and narrative elements? Now, there is where you could talk about calling something artistically bankrupt. But The Hobbit was ALWAYS going to have to have privileges taken with it to present it as a feature film [series], and if anything there's an element of quite a bit of potential art there, not lack there-of. In this execution of that, if you want to argue that it all falls flat to you and sucks as said art, or was done for all the wrong reasons, that's fine. But I still say it had to be done to some degree, to stay consistent.

Bilbo's journey was never about the extraordinary. The ring was literally just a stupid magic vanishing ring that serves more as a deus ex machina. Bilbo's journey was about the arm-chair everyone mis-"adventurer" who mostly falls into a vortex of events around himself while coming through relatively unscathed, and maybe slightly more worldly for it. There is danger but the reader is well cushioned from it other than in some brief climactic moments where things are actually presented as maybe having reached a point of being truly dire: the same with the darkness. Even for the parts where he actually becomes significant, it all still carries that tone of removal from events, and more a focus on the wonder of the journey and the wholesome importance of someone unimportant and of things that largely seem insignificant (like games and riddles) next to dwarves with swords, and wizards, but are still found to be the true tilting points. It was never going to fly like that: the events occurring around Bilbo become too big and real and attention grabbing when presented on a screen.

 

[billycub]

"____ and Julia". Surely by this spring the Internet will grant your wish, and stitch these three gasbag stories into two movies with less filler.

 

[Tridus]

This sums up exactly how I feel about this trilogy. It should never have been a trilogy. The original plan was for two movies, and that would have worked far better. Instead, they had to find an extra 2.5 hours of filler material. It made the second movie barely tolerable, and it did the same here.

It's an annual christmas tradition at my house to watch the LotR trilogy every year, as we did in theatres when it came out. The Hobbit movies haven't joined in, and after this there is no chance of that happening. They're destined to be forgotten as just another cash grab film.

 

[fazalmajid]

Sandworms? Really?

Totally jumped the shark with this one.

 

[Jeff S]

Every time I see the phrase, "The Desolation of Smaug", I just think of China and their air quality problems. . .

 

[Beckerjr]

Ulf[/url]":1gt4qqy9]I loved the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, especially the extended editions and all the extra stuff they came with. Even bought every soundtrack I could get my hands on.

The moment I found out that they were "expanding" the Hobbit? I lost all interest, and from what reviews I've read I see I made the right choice.

This was my feeling too, although I'll admit I have seen the first two movies. Not in theaters but months later on VoD. I couldn't bring myself to go out and pay theater prices. I'll probably do the same eventually with this movie too one day when I'm bored enough to click the rent button.

 

[PRMan]

Hey, the Star Wars prequels may have been dumb, had bad acting and bad lines, but one thing they weren't is BORING. I like them more than the second Hobbit movie already (I fell asleep for 15 minutes during the dragon sequence and missed NOTHING).

 

[Mydrrin]

Quiet Desperation[/url]":1p8x62u7]

Duskalro[/url]":1p8x62u7]Horses for courses. I loved the trilogy and just enjoyed it for what it was, some dammed fine popcorn fantasy.

Seriously. The geek hateorgy on these films is at pathological levels.This review reads like it came from a parallel universe. There's a doctoral thesis in psychology looking to be written here.

There is much disappointment. Where is my PhD?

 

[bdp]

Quiet Desperation[/url]":200irgtl]

Duskalro[/url]":200irgtl]Horses for courses. I loved the trilogy and just enjoyed it for what it was, some dammed fine popcorn fantasy.

Seriously. The geek hateorgy on these films is at pathological levels.This review reads like it came from a parallel universe. There's a doctoral thesis in psychology looking to be written here.

Dumb popcorn movies aren't for everyone. I was hoping for more from The Hobbit.

edit: To put it another way, just because most "popcorn movies" are dumb doesn't mean movies have to be dumb to be entertaining. Considering the quality of the source material, The Hobbit is quite disappointing to anyone looking for more than a dumb popcorn movie.

 

[Fatesrider]

Having read the books, in order, may a moon ago, and having enjoyed the LOTR movies immensely (though I also noticed the meme's that became popular about them when I was watching), I was rather shocked to hear that The Hobbit was going to be done in three movies.

The biggest question I had was, "How in the hell are they going to do that?"

It wasn't that long of a book. The trilogy was five times longer, which implied far more source material for for each movie. But "The HOBBIT"??

Look, I get it that this thing has its fans and that's great. But as a fan of the books and the first LOTR trilogy, the only one of these I saw was the second one, and I couldn't understand why so little looked familiar until I went back and re-read the book and realized they had put stuff in there that was never there before. It's one thing in MY book to make a movie based on a novel. It's quite another to write material into that movie that never existed in the novel strictly as a campaign to make more money and justify the expense.

I wasn't happy.

As a writer, I can understand why a production company would cut scenes from a book in order to fit the length. That's what usually happens (lord knows Harry Potter was trimmed, even if I loved both the books and, for the most part, the movies) and is what's expected. I can also understand certain adaptations to accommodate the limitations of the medium. But inventing new material is what the author does, and were I in charge of Tolkien's estate, I'd be seriously pissed over what was done with my ancestor's book. If I was the author of the book, I'd be livid and considering legal action.

Call me a purist, but that movie did not live up to my expectations by any stretch. It was ponderous, over-wrought and, sadly, reminded me more of Battlefield (Middle) Earth than the grand, but faster-paced story I had read before, and came to expect from Jackson from his earlier work.

Needless to say, I was not interested in seeing the third installment.

For the record, my wife disagrees with me. That's allowed. I'm not telling you what to see or not see. This is just my reaction to one of the movies, and I'm not going to make the mistake (like I did with Star Wars I-III) of seeing the rest hoping they got better. Your mileage may vary.

 

[demonbug]

Wickwick[/url]":2c58ell9]

BigDragon[/url]":2c58ell9]I saw this movie on Friday. It easily is the worst movie I've seen all year. They should not have killed wyvern Smaug as part of the title sequence. 5 to 10 minutes in and the most dynamic character on the screen is wiped out in a completely unbelievable fashion. From then on it's 2-hours worth of "How to Kill an Orc" and watching completely flat characters do the same thing over and over again. Seriously, I'm surprised they found so many different ways to slice and smash those orcs up.

This is me being disappointed. The Hobbit had so much more potential than this. The characters could have been made deep, properly brought to life, and a timeless story could have been realized. Instead we got stuck with action sequences so forced and drawn out that people just started pulling out their phones in the middle of the movie and never looked back. Someone should post the movie's script online. I bet you could read through all the dialogue in 10 to 15 minutes if you ignore the [fighting], [some more fighting], and [even more fighting] sections. So much potential wasted.

Unfortunately, Smaug dies right about where he's supposed to - and just the way it was written in the book (ok, I don't recall any "black arrow" stuff - just a regular arrow that finds the soft belly where a scale had fallen off).

Haven't seen the film (thought the first was poor, the second downright bad, not planning to go to this one - though I may be dragged to see it), but the black arrow is very definitely in the book - Bard goes on about how it came from his own father, who got it from his father, etc. Of course, it is more or less a normal arrow by the description - certainly doesn't do anything special (besides kill Smaug). And he does exhort it to fly true or some such as he fires it, so if that is in the movie, it is at least accurate in that respect.

 

[2stepbay]

3rd episode was woefully fragmented with little hope of ever coming back to itself. And whoever approved or created the unimaginative design of the Arkenstone ought to be tied to a chair and force to watch a continuous running of the 3 Hobbit movies for a week.

Still pissed off Tom Bombadil was not in the LOTR!

 

[CraigJ ✅]

Wickwick[/url]":1llzp8cy]

BigDragon[/url]":1llzp8cy]I saw this movie on Friday. It easily is the worst movie I've seen all year. They should not have killed wyvern Smaug as part of the title sequence. 5 to 10 minutes in and the most dynamic character on the screen is wiped out in a completely unbelievable fashion. From then on it's 2-hours worth of "How to Kill an Orc" and watching completely flat characters do the same thing over and over again. Seriously, I'm surprised they found so many different ways to slice and smash those orcs up.

This is me being disappointed. The Hobbit had so much more potential than this. The characters could have been made deep, properly brought to life, and a timeless story could have been realized. Instead we got stuck with action sequences so forced and drawn out that people just started pulling out their phones in the middle of the movie and never looked back. Someone should post the movie's script online. I bet you could read through all the dialogue in 10 to 15 minutes if you ignore the [fighting], [some more fighting], and [even more fighting] sections. So much potential wasted.

Unfortunately, Smaug dies right about where he's supposed to - and just the way it was written in the book (ok, I don't recall any "black arrow" stuff - just a regular arrow that finds the soft belly where a scale had fallen off). Then again it was one book not a trilogy and the final battle was only a few pages.

The resolution of the characters AFTER the main events was big in The Hobbit and LotR. None of that made the Hobbit trilogy and very little made the LotR movies either.

The black arrow was a possible magical arrow from the lonely mountain, and was passed down through generations. It was Bard's best and always recovered. Named for the black fletching I think. He saved it to use as the last arrow to fell Smaug.

"Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!"

To me this is a much better story that the stupid metal arrow fired the way it was in the movie...

 

[eljefeloco]

I enjoyed the flick as a popcorn movie to be consumed and forgotten. It was alright: nothing too great, nothing too bad, merely serviceable. As others have said, and was posted in a Cracked photoplasty last year, I can't wait for the Hobbit Edition of the Hobbit. Cut it down to two hours and purge everything that had nothing to do with the book.

So yeah, it was about on par with 2012 or any other Devlin/Emerich movie for me: big talent mired in a shitty script and bad direction, glazed over with big budget CGI.

 

[Goofazoid]

I think that my favorite scene of the 3 movies is in the 1st one, and not very far in: The "Chip the Glasses, Crack the plates" scene was, IMO perfect.
I was really disappointed in the 2nd one when there was not "Lazy lob, Attercop!" scene...

 

[eric123]

it wasn't the Hobbit.

you'll have a better time watching it as onscreen fan fiction.

 

[Quiet Desperation]

Mydrrin[/url]":2w4qhk9r]

Quiet Desperation[/url]":2w4qhk9r]

Duskalro[/url]":2w4qhk9r]Horses for courses. I loved the trilogy and just enjoyed it for what it was, some dammed fine popcorn fantasy.

Seriously. The geek hateorgy on these films is at pathological levels.This review reads like it came from a parallel universe. There's a doctoral thesis in psychology looking to be written here.

There is much disappointment. Where is my PhD?

No, no, you have to be super long winded like the haters and go into excruciating details in a wall of text, preferably on Tumblr.

 

[Quiet Desperation]

bdp[/url]":37ohot50]

Quiet Desperation[/url]":37ohot50]

Duskalro[/url]":37ohot50]Horses for courses. I loved the trilogy and just enjoyed it for what it was, some dammed fine popcorn fantasy.

Seriously. The geek hateorgy on these films is at pathological levels.This review reads like it came from a parallel universe. There's a doctoral thesis in psychology looking to be written here.

Dumb popcorn movies aren't for everyone. I was hoping for more from The Hobbit.

edit: To put it another way, just because most "popcorn movies" are dumb doesn't mean movies have to be dumb to be entertaining. Considering the quality of the source material, The Hobbit is quite disappointing to anyone looking for more than a dumb popcorn movie.

Kinda figured people had it figured out by now that they're high fantasy popcorn flicks. It's the sixth film in the overall series.

Different tastes, yes, but geeks sitting around wailing Worst Movie Ever with zero self awareness that they are Comic Book Guy is pretty sad.

 

[ETbyrne]

Pokrface[/url]":1ddlwj06]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.

I saw them all, and none were worth paying to see. Holy cow though, that barrels scene had to have been one of the worst parts of the series. Then again, some of the scenes in the third hobbit film were pretty awful to...

And I still love the original series!

 

[arazil]

My thoughts on The Hobbit...

An Unexpected Journey (AUJ): I really wanted to like this one. However, the movie stalled for me once it left the Shire. To paraphrase Bilbo from Fellowship of the Ring: "It felt like butter scrapped over too much bread." As the movie went on, it became apparent that the writers/producers were throwing everything they could into the script to make a short film into a feature film. The editors likewise followed a "no scene left behind" mantra as they put the film together. As a result, the final product lacked the tight editing and pacing that makes a good movie into a great one. In this case, the lack of editorial discretion turned a good film into a mediocre one. I would give it a C+.

Desolation of Smaug (DOS): I went into this one with lower expectations after being severely disappointed by AUJ. This film seemed to have a bit tighter editing and more action than AUJ. However, the movie still suffered from a lack of editorial discretion. Overall, it was a better film than AUJ but still had its flaws. I would give it a B.

On to Battle Of The Five Armies (FKA There And Back Again) (B5A/TABA)...

I have not been able to see this film yet. I saw the first two films in a one screen art house theater on opening day. The movie theater did not get the opportunity to show B5A/TABA. Given the forced change of venue and my growing indifference towards the series, I decided to take my time with seeing B5A/TABA.

Final thoughts...

I hope that the crew responsible for The Hobbit can put together a shorter 3 hour version that combines the best parts of all three films. I think that a longer combined film with judicious editing would do much better in terms of pacing than the three feature length releases. That improvement may turn this average film trilogy into a good or great feature film.

 

[FreneticPonies]

Duskalro[/url]":2wx3j4fa]Horses for courses. I loved the trilogy and just enjoyed it for what it was, some dammed fine popcorn fantasy.

Why on earth are you downvoted so much? The Hobbit is my favorite book of all time and I agree. It wasn't the translation to film I might have wished for, but that doesn't mean I couldn't enjoy it.

It was fun, and watching Legolas video game the shit out of that last battle was fun. He does full Kratos, the only thing missing would be him ripping his boss fights head off to finish him, but then that would be rated R.

People honestly seem to enjoy setting themselves up for disappointment when it comes to movie translations of novels. Of course its going to be different and probably not as good and not what you pictured in your head! If you go in expecting that then your spending 2+ hours and $11 just so you can bitterly complain about your expectations not being met later.

 

[Solomon Black]

To those wondering why the Hobbit is three movies the answer is unsurprisingly... money.

Not just greedy cash-grab milk it for all you can money, but as in "wait you spent how much!?" money. Thanks to choices like shooting in 3D and using 48 fps filming or such is the story.

If you don't appreciate how this is risky next to their box office returns consider that studios only take home about 50% of the actual box office gross after splitting with theaters domestically and while overseas grosses are generally bigger they return even less of that.

(An enlightening article on how movies make less then you probably think, though still LOTS of money when successful of course)

 

[Wickwick]

demonbug[/url]":1dt17uym]

Wickwick[/url]":1dt17uym]

BigDragon[/url]":1dt17uym]I saw this movie on Friday. It easily is the worst movie I've seen all year. They should not have killed wyvern Smaug as part of the title sequence. 5 to 10 minutes in and the most dynamic character on the screen is wiped out in a completely unbelievable fashion. From then on it's 2-hours worth of "How to Kill an Orc" and watching completely flat characters do the same thing over and over again. Seriously, I'm surprised they found so many different ways to slice and smash those orcs up.

This is me being disappointed. The Hobbit had so much more potential than this. The characters could have been made deep, properly brought to life, and a timeless story could have been realized. Instead we got stuck with action sequences so forced and drawn out that people just started pulling out their phones in the middle of the movie and never looked back. Someone should post the movie's script online. I bet you could read through all the dialogue in 10 to 15 minutes if you ignore the [fighting], [some more fighting], and [even more fighting] sections. So much potential wasted.

Unfortunately, Smaug dies right about where he's supposed to - and just the way it was written in the book (ok, I don't recall any "black arrow" stuff - just a regular arrow that finds the soft belly where a scale had fallen off).

Haven't seen the film (thought the first was poor, the second downright bad, not planning to go to this one - though I may be dragged to see it), but the black arrow is very definitely in the book - Bard goes on about how it came from his own father, who got it from his father, etc. Of course, it is more or less a normal arrow by the description - certainly doesn't do anything special (besides kill Smaug). And he does exhort it to fly true or some such as he fires it, so if that is in the movie, it is at least accurate in that respect.

Thanks. For as many times as I've read the LotR trilogy I never felt the need to reread The Hobbit after 7th grade (that was a long time ago...). I couldn't recall anything particularly "different" about the arrow. It was shot from a bow like any other (not some dwarvish windlass thingy).

 

[drexal13]

Well, at least its not another comic book movie... I guess.

 

[the lidless eye]

As someone else said, if you are a "I read this book as a child, and then I saw the animated version, gosh its perfect" type person, you will never like this edition. Now for the record, I didn't "love" this edition either. It is not very good in parts. However I believe that what they attempted to make is basically impossible. The Hobbit is a generic fantasy story, which was adapted into Tolkien's universe. I believe that if Tolkien was given another 50 years on this earth and the energy of a young man he could have written a different edition of The Hobbit for those that had read the rest of his works. It would have had a very different feel to it, similar in ways to these movies.

Couple other notes from what I remember from the thread:

1) No one knows who Tom Bombadil truly was from a lore perspective, nor do they know why he could hold the ring and do what he could with it. Remember he could make the ring disappear. Popular theories are that he represents the unknown, that he is the spirit of the english countryside, and one essay online thinks that he is Aule the Smith. The only thing we know is that he is not Eru Illuvatar.

2) The white council knowing Sauron is "back" does not make the council of elrond useless. Saruman while wrong was also somewhat correct. Without the ring being found we don't know what Sauron would have done. Besides, there are things like armies, Barad-dur etc.

3) The problem/point is what a lot of us are experiencing. We read The Hobbit first, and once we read it, we never really read it again. Its supposed to be read first, ideally. I occasionally re-read LOTR and the Silmarillion , but I'd never re-read The Hobbit, not even know. (Although for the record, I'm still on a ban from reading the books, I'm waiting until the movies are far out of my system)

 

[Doc Spector]

One of the complaints about the first set of films was just how much had to be left out because there were only about 10 hours of screen time.

The Hobbit was a simpler book, both in scope and in execution... so they enhanced details that Tolkien (or his editors) thought we could do without. Like a lot of people, I reacted to the news with some surprise... ("Really? THREE movies???") but I don't think this is the main problem at work here.

The real problem is that Mr. Jackson gave us again exactly what we liked so much the first time around, and we're not impressed this time like we were when it was new. Giant, CGI armies were impressive the first time around. Not so much the second. The incredible, panoramic landscapes of "Middle-Earth" were fabulous the first time around, but now... seen it. Elaborately staged sword-and-archery battle? Yawn.

EVERY series that runs on too long starts to have this problem...and many, if not most, ultimately fail. Sticking with giant, $200 million blockbusters, look at how the Matrix trailed off. Pirates of the Caribbean. Indiana Jones. The Batman films that followed Burton. Sometimes, they falter and gain their footing again... The X-Men films, the Bond films (Moonraker? SERIOUSLY?)

 

[Demani]

Dilbert[/url]":2vgu71og]Hobbit should have been made into one movie. Could have been awesome that way. But noooo they tried to milk it by making three. You know there isn't enough story for three movies when they turn the Bilbo/Gollum riddle scene into a drawn out scene that lasted good 15-20 minutes, or solid 10 minutes of dwarfs running for their lives with the rocks crumbling down on them. So stupid.

I haven't seen this (the first one convinced me not to bother with the following two), but what you are describing sounds like it suffers from exactly the same issue that King Kong did. Over wrought, over long, and not enough characterization to make me care.

In other words: they were GREAT tech demos.

 

[SomeRandomGuy]

It reminded me of '94's Frankenstein with DeNiro, another movie based on a beloved book that devoted most of its screen time to bits either not in the book or merely alluded to.

An anecdote: During one of the series of increasingly surprising feats of heroic acrobatics, I looked over at one of my daughters. She had raised the eyebrows of teenage skepticism. At that point, Jackson had completely someone who should've been his target audience: nerdy teenagers.

 

[Ithilien Ranger]

For me, the most irritating thing about this trilogy has been that the decision to make it three movies rather than two was obviously motivated solely by greed (New Line execs: "Hmmm, we can either make two big piles of money or three big piles of money. Which should we do?") rather than the story, which is (among other things) about the evil of greed and the corrupting power of wealth. The Hobbit trilogy itself stands as a witness to the "dragon sickness" which it warns about.

The first movie I thought was all right: it had plenty of flaws, but it did recapture some of the magic of the first trilogy as well as some of the playfulness of the book. It was also the only movie of the three which was really about Bilbo, so we got to enjoy Freeman's performance and see Bilbo grow as a character.

The second movie was terrible. Actually, if you changed all the proper names to take it out of Middle-earth and just be a generic fantasy action movie, it wasn't too bad, but it was absolutely NOT Tolkien. All of the wonder, the depth, the character, and the virtue of Tolkien's world and characters was sucked out in place of CGI effects and dopey love triangles and endless, pointless violence.

Since I wasn't expecting the third movie to be any better than the last, it had a very low bar to clear, but it managed to. I found the third movie OK. It had all the faults of the second, but its saving graces were Bilbo's scenes (of which there were far too few) and the final scene. Thorin's redemption was too drawn-out, but I am glad they gave him Tolkien's quote about "if more of us valued friends more than gold, the world would be a merrier place" before he died. Finally, I was pleasantly surprised that Bilbo's return to Bag End and the tie-in back to FOTR was done gracefully and not stretched out too long (like the beginning of the first Hobbit movie was), and the song over the credits was beautiful and just the right note to end the franchise on.

But there were a lot of other loose threads which the movie did not tie up: Did the men, elves, and dwarves resolve the distribution of the treasure? Did Alfred suffer any consequences for his cowardice? Why the hell is Legolas going off to find Aragorn? Guess we'll have to wait for the Extended Edition to find out!

 

[AaronSullivan]

Yeah, I liked it all just fine. Thought the conclusion was great. Too much time for Alfred? Yep. Could it all have been more tight from the first to the last? Definitely. Still, there were arcs for the characters and I find the summary of problems in this article more like an irrational rant than a real dissection of what went wrong. I though the characters resolved just fine. Tauriel was a more fleshed out character than Kili by a long shot, for instance and her struggle had something to say for Thranduil as well. Anyway, my problems were more with the fascination with brutally killing these films took. It felt more natural and in the heat of war in the third movie, but the others just delighted in humanoid skewering and dismemberment.

Certainly could have been better, but I got much more enjoyment of it than this author. Oh, and Bilbo was integral to the entire story from beginning to end and only missing from the center when Gandalf was off on his own... even then Gandalf always had his mind on Bilbo and company. Not sure what that rant was about.