The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Movie Review (2014)

adventure, fantasy, movie review,

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This is the final installment in The Hobbit trilogy where you get to see everything come to a head and a gigantic battle, tons of characters flying all over the place, people are getting sliced and decapitated, there’s swords, there’s rings, there’s Arkenstone, there’s dragon shooting stuff, it’s all pretty freaking cool. I’m a big Lord of The Ring’s fan, I love the original trilogy, I love the books by J.R.R. Tolkien himself, I grew up with The Hobbit cartoon from the 70’s.
What I love about the movie is you’re just in it. It’s just like ‘Boom, you’re in this world’, there’s not much set up. If you haven’t watch The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), there’s some catching up to do, but you can tell that is really perfect for a marathon doing because not only is tied very well in the last two films, but it ties very nicely with the beginning of The Lord of The Rings.
All in all, I really enjoy this movie. It is the shortest hobbit’s film so far. It’s actually normal epic movie length. It’s like 2 hours and 24 minutes, and it’s funny actually cause when it’s ended, I was like ‘Okay, it’s over. It’s kind of short’.
I saw the movie in 3D but not in high frame rate and I’m glad I didn't because I wasn't really a fan of it when I saw the first film in high frame rate. To me it’s just look better, the special effect are not as noticeable as they were when I saw in 48 fps. They’re really stood out in that, look like a cartoon.

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There is a ton of actions in this movie, it does feel like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) at times where bodies just flying everywhere, heads are rolling all over the place, it’s long and epic and Peter Jackson is excellent at directing actions. But the thing that stand out to me the most in this movie are the tiny nuances that Jackson so effortlessly put in some of his characters. Most noteworthy is the relationship between Bilbo and Thorin. These guys are very complicated. Bilbo has the Arkenstone, he’s hiding it. Thorin really wants it and it’s starting to drive him mad, almost like Gollum towards the ring and Bilbo watching this and some of the conversations create some of the most interesting moments in the movie and those things are what I really like about this movie. It is not just a big epic action movie, some of the smaller moments with the characters are really well done.
So, as a Lord of The Ring’s fan, I like Peter Jackson’s vision of this movie. I love the epic action. I love seeing Gandalf and Legolas back even though Legolas isn’t in The Hobbit’s book. But the romance just like in the Smaug, is very stilted and unnecessary. Some of the attempts at higher drama falls flat completely.
What this movie success is amazing battle sequences, really awesome characters, a very cool opening scene and some really well done smaller moments between characters like Bilbo and Thorin. Luke Evans is also really good in this movie, I like him a lot as his character. Ian McKellen as Gandalf, for goodness sake, you’re going to know his awesomeness.
Talking about purists, people who really love the book are going to be disappointed about a lot of things. That’s because so much in this movie is not like the book at all and most people knew that going in. There’s a lot of added characters, there’s just a whole bunch of expended stuff to really stretch one book into three movies and you’re going to have to deal with that. For me, what I think is when a filmmaker adapt a comic book or a novel or any other source material, he should capture the tone and feel of that source material. Not that you meticulously recreate every small minute details of said source material.
And I think that Peter Jackson’s vision of middle earth is as good as the vision of middle earth we will ever see. It’s actually feels like a place that we actually could go to, and that’s a big praise for the filmmaker. So Bilbo and Thorin are fantastic, the action sequences are mind blowing, it’s a very fast paced. Although there’s a slight rushed feeling, when it ends you’re kind of like, “Oh, okay. Well, it’s over”.

Director: Peter Jackson
Writers: Fran Walsh (screenplay), Philippa Boyens (screenplay)
Stars: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Orlando Bloom, Cate Blanchett, Luke Evans, Benedict Cumberbatch, Lee Pace
Duration: 144 min