The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies fan reviews... SPOILERS

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yes.

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[Pearly Di]

Oh, I quite liked 'You should have stayed dead'! :p

It's not much different from 'They have a cave troll!' or 'Let's hunt some Orc', and it IS better than the truly dire drivel poor Tauriel and Thranduil were made to spout about love hurting and feeling 'real' - this was some of the cringingly worst dialogue I've ever heard in PJ's Middle-earth.

Since I don't have the desire to analyse PJ's Hobbit the way I did his LotR - none of the Hobbit films have impacted on me the same way, although I'm very far from hating them - I don't have any big problems with the Dol Guldur sequence. Indeed, I liked it a lot ... even though the Nazgûl lined up in front of the vanquished Sauron reminded me somehow of a scene that could have been in Doctor Who.

(Happy new year, everyone!)

[Elentári]

I too thought Dol Guldur was poorly conceived, especially on my second viewing.
And for pretty much the same reasons V states. Especially Galadriel going all damsel in distress in front of the Nazgûl to wonderwoman against Sauron. And what exactly happened with the Nazgûl? so after all they were acting the game when Saruman and Elrond stabbed them? since they did reappear in full state later.

Once again, in complete agreement, Sidd

Elrond 's line however is far from bring the cringe-worthiest thing in the sextet. I mean, seriously, that is worse than "I could have anything down my trousers" or "why does it hurt SO MUCH?" or "drink their blood"???

Yes.

Whilst I agree it's up there in the same category, for me the trousers line and the "parasites in his tubes" are the outright winners!

[OT] Happy New Year one and all! [O/T]

[Smaug's voice]

I remember laughing out loud at the parasites remark so I don't regret that line. But that's mostly due to MF's expert delivery of the line.

Happy new year all!

[Sunsilver]

P.S. Just had to add (after seeing S.V.'s avatar) that Cumberbach did a magnificent job as Smaug! And the CGI for Smaug was great, too!

[JewelSong]

I thought the Dol Goldur scene was pretty stupid. It really seemed to come out of nowhere, as I said before. So the "You should have stayed dead" line didn't affect me, because the whole scene seemed ridiculous to me, anyway.

Tauriel aka Bella...now THAT affected me. *blech*. (Didn't there used to be a "puke" emoticon?)

Lots of things others seem to really dislike, I liked.


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[Túrin Turambar]

I thought the Dol Guldur scene was visually interesting but, like the entire movie, kind of silly. Re-using the plot device of Gandalf's imprisonment was an odd choice, and I have no idea why Saruman, Galadriel and Elrond would be there alone. I would gladly have taken the Elves from Helm's Deep and put them there.

[Frelga]

... I have no idea why Saruman, Galadriel and Elrond would be there alone. I would gladly have taken the Elves from Helm's Deep and put them there.

Well, that part actually makes sense - they are the White Counsel, they are supposed to be dealing with it. Gandalf's imprisonment... I got nothing.

[kzer_za]

I'll finally see it tonight. Will probably have my thoughts up tomorrow!

[kzer_za]

Quick take, will post more later: For the first two acts, I thought this was the best Hobbit movie. A few issues, but plenty of good stuff.

Unfortunately, Ravenhill is an absolute catastrophe and by the far the worst long sequence in all six Middle-earth movies. It's everything I hate about contemporary action movies and just about ruins the film. Even the deaths don't have the emotional weight that they should.

The ending is good, including some dialogue that shows PJ can really get Tolkien when he wants to, but all too brief.

[Frelga]

Saw it on Christmas Day (and then went out for Chinese because I'm a traditionalist). In a nutshell, it was what you get when you have a world-class special effects team at your disposal, cast superb actors, and then pick up a couple guys in the Home Depot parking lot to write dialogue.

It was fun, though.

[Padme]

Well, I'm back, to give my review. Saw it Christmas Day, with my daughter and her boyfriend, in Phoenix. Nice special effects. I could relate to Tauriel when she is mourning over Kili, and as sappy as the scene was I was in tears (seems that one and a half years can melt away sometimes). However I did not think this was the best written movie and can see Fregla's point, home depot writing. Anyway I will go and see it again with friends later this week, off to see Unbroken today. Have a great 2015 everyone.

[kzer_za]

Liked or loved:
- Pretty much everything in Erebor.
- The acorn scene.
- Thorin's dragon sickness completely works for me, including the dream-y good pool sequence.
- Bard.
- Bilbo.
- Balin and Dwalin.
- Thranduil. Maybe they dialed up his badness from the novel a bit too much, but Pace plays him so well and he's a good portrait of how bad elves can go.
- Just about all of the ending - Gandalf and Bilbo's conversation, the gorgeous landscapes, the auction scene.
- And especially the conversation with Balin at the end ("So Thorin passes into legend." "He wasn't that to me, he was...") That scene captures a very important aspect of Tolkien's work, that the Hobbits are the modern everyman's window into a mythic world.
- The dwarf army and their shield formation (though it would have been nice to actually see them fight in formation).
- The early stages of the battle.
- Laketown and Smaug were excellent. I thought Bain's involvement with the Black Arrow sounded really silly on paper, but I was surprised by how well it actually worked.
- The music
- Lots of great outdoor scenery.
- Thorin and co. charging out.
- Most of the visuals.

Didn't like:
- The movie basically forgets about the battle once Ravenhill starts. The way it plays out in the book is really much more interesting. This goes under Ravenhill, really.
- Not enough resolution to the future of Erebor and other geopolitical things at the end.
- The frame story ending (which I disliked in AUJ too).
- Thorin dying far away from everyone else, though the conversation with Bilbo is good at least.
- They shouldn't have killed The Master off so early. I was looking forward to seeing the scene after Smaug's death where he rallies the people against the dwarves ("For what fault am I to be deposed? Who aroused the dragon from his slumber?") Would have been great on screen.
- Dol Guldur, though it did have some nice visuals.
- Trying to shoehorn Angmar in at the last minute.
- So much CG Dain, why?
- I feel like the trilogy split has tarnished Smaug somewhat, both in the unnecessary additions to the end of DoS and in the way he's wrapped up so quickly in this one.

Hated:
- Almost everything in Ravenhill. It's okay at the beginning when they're just scouting, but once Bolg and Azog shows up it nearly kills the movie. It totally falls victim to the Hollywood trend of "let's do this fancy CG action setpiece just because we can and drag it out forever." I found myself thinking "please just let someone die so it can be over" like I often do with superhero movies! It really did feel like a video game.
- On a related note, Kili and Fili's deaths. I feel they would have had a lot more impact if they occurred in the middle of the actual battle defending Thorin, to say nothing of Tauriel's role.
- The romance.
- Alfrid. Killing the Master and sparing him was a really bad idea. I liked him in DoS because corrupt politicians should have henchmen, but he adds nothing to BoFA.

Overally, I need to see it again, but right now I think this is the worst of the six. The romance and Alfrid and other things I can put up with; the LotR movies have their cringey parts too. But this movie has a huge structural flaw. Ravenhill just made me angry, especially since so much of the movie was quite good up until then. If PJ had handled the mid-late stages of the battle better, it probably would have been the best Hobbit movie.

[Dave_LF]

Yes. I think it is utterly ridiculous that Galadriel goes from trembling in fear at the Nazgûl to more powerful than Sauron himself in a blink of an eye.

I'm not sure that's what happened. It's unclear (to me) exactly how much Gandalf has managed to communicate to the rest of the group--Galadriel presumably knows that Sauron is back and strong enough to imprison a ring-bearing Istari, but not much more than that. She certainly doesn't know that the Nazgûl have been revived, because not even Gandalf is aware of that yet (though the events in AUJ should have led them to suspect at least one was around). So she's learning that not only has Sauron returned, but that he's already brought all nine Nazgûl back in (semi) corporal form. And that might mean that he's already much stronger than she expected, and perhaps stronger than she'll be able to resist. It turns out that's not quite true, but even that isn't the end of the story because in the movie-verse, exerting her full power evidently puts Galadriel at risk of going over to the dark side herself, even when she's using it in the cause of good (I interpreted Gandalf's "come with me" as being for her benefit, not his). So, IMO, it was reasonable for her to be both taken aback and frightened.

As for the argument that fighting the Nazgûl was pointless because they're right back with Sauron a minute later--isn't that 100% Tolkien? You can destroy their (nascent) physical forms, but as long as their rings endure, their spirits will just return powerless to Sauron. For what it's worth, it seems that even decades later in LotR time, they still hadn't fully recovered the amount of physicality they had here.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That certainly is a kind interpretation.

[yovargas]

I didn't recall thinking that she was ever "trembling in fear" but couldn't quite recall the details so I just went and found a clip and yeah, I disagree with that assessment (surprise!). I think she was deeply shocked and distressed to see the Nine, to see that things had gotten that far. When the others show up she pauses, both to protect Gandalf and to gather her strength. When she's ready, she unleashes her badassery on Sauron.

[Dave_LF]

She certainly doesn't know that the Nazgûl have been revived, because not even Gandalf is aware of that yet (though the events in AUJ should have led them to suspect at least one was around).

Oops; Gandalf was aware the nine had been revived, because he saw nine empty tombs on the fells. But I'm not sure he knew what kind of condition they were in, or if he'd been able to fill Galadriel in on the details. There are two separate scenes that suggest some sort of telepathy is going on (one between Gandalf and Galadriel at the edge of Mirkwood, another between Gandalf and Radagast while he hangs in the cage), but both are ambiguous.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I don't think that the scene at the edge of Mirkwood is telepathy; I think Gandalf is simply remembering the conversation that he had with Galadriel in Rivendell. She seems to be presented as knowing more about what is going on than anyone, and while she may not know for sure that the nine had arisen (which seems to mean a different thing in the films than in the books, as in the films they apparently actually died and were revived by Sauron, rather than being living men who because Ringwraiths as a result of possessing and being possessed by their rings, or at least so I understand), but it certainly seems like she should not be surprised to learn that it is true, based on how she is presented.

I recognize that different people react differently to what they see, and that my interpretation is no more valid than anyone else's, but I am still gobsmacked that anyone can watch that scene and not think that she is trembling in fear at the Nazgûl.

[yovargas]

I just don't think the reaction is just about the Nazgûl so much as it is about the whole situation and how far it's progressed and what it all means. I don't see why she shouldn't be deeply disturbed, yes maybe even afraid, at the far-reaching implications of the raising of the Nine.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Fair enough. I'll try to look at that way the next time I see it (which probably won't be until the DVD/Bluray/digital release).