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

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I didn't think that cutting away from the scene with Bilbo and Thorin diminished it in any way. I thought it was very complete, and very beautiful. I would add that I thought that Tauriel crying over Fili's body complemented it (though I doubt any of you want to hear that), though I wish they had left out (or at least improved) the dialogue between her and Thranduil

[Passdagas the Brown]

I have no problem believing that Tauriel and Kili love each other. It seems very genuine to me.

But it's a combination of how completely unrelated to the core narrative thrust of the Hobbit (Bilbo vs. Thorin) it is, the cringe-worthy dialogue and the incredible amount of screen time it receives, that I believe are responsible for people objecting to it. Just think how much time they could have spent fleshing out Bilbo's and Thorin's characters through showing us more interactions/ conversations between them two (and between them and the other dwarves) around fires, etc.

But like Voronwë, Thorin's OTT descent is my major disappointment with the film. It's better than Denethor's, but not by that much. Armitage, though, through the sheer force of his charisma and acting, saves it.

"Not one...sssssssiiiiiingle.....cooooin," is definitely the worst example. And I don't think it was Armitage's fault at all. Let him act! He's really good at it.

[eborr]

I have no problem believing that Tauriel and Kili love each other. It seems very genuine to me.

But it's a combination of how completely unrelated to the core narrative thrust of the Hobbit (Bilbo vs. Thorin) it is, the cringe-worthy dialogue and the incredible amount of screen time it receives, that I believe are responsible for people objecting to it. Just think how much time they could have spent fleshing out Bilbo's and Thorin's characters through showing us more interactions/ conversations between them two (and between them and the other dwarves) around fires, etc.

But like Voronwë, Thorin's OTT descent is my major disappointment with the film. It's better than Denethor's, but not by that much. Armitage, though, through the sheer force of his charisma and acting, saves it.

"Not one...sssssssiiiiiingle.....cooooin," is definitely the worst example. And I don't think it was Armitage's fault at all. Let him act! He's really good at it.

In the cold light of day this is very much my reaction, a core part element of the story which could have been handled far more effectively - and the gash dialogue doesn't help.

[yovargas]

I have no problem believing that Tauriel and Kili love each other. It seems very genuine to me.

I'm particularly surprised to hear you say this because you're more critical of "typical Hollywood" and "screenwriting 101" cliches than anyone round here and there might literally be nothing more Hollywood and cliche than the tacked on romantic subplot. If Our Hero(es) meets a Pretty Girl at just about any point in a movie, it's pretty much guaranteed they will fall passionately in love (or at least have sex) by the end. (If it's an action movie, it's also pretty much guaranteed that one will have to save the other's life at some point.)

[ArathornJax]

Something I have been reflecting on in the book vs movie is the notion of what Bilbo gained. On page 326 of the book, Gandalf looks at Bilbo after Bilbo has just quoted Roads go ever ever on, stating "My dear Bilbo!" he said. "Something is the matter with you! You are not the hobbit that you were." This implies an answer the narrator gives on page 4 saying "He may have lost the neighbors' respect, but he gained -- well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end."

So the question of the movie is does Bilbo grow and change when he finally return to Bag End at the end of the movie, or is he simply the same hobbit that hasn't changed? Martin Freeman does an outstanding job in his portrayal, and yes, in the first two films I would see we see Biblo change. IBOFA I think that change has ended and though courageous, I just felt like there was no room for much character growth here. We see him weep over Thorin, and I think there is a connection for sure, and for me it was the visual connection and dialogue between the two. I feel similar when I read the book but I have no trouble projecting an image of a scene from the text in my brain. So for me, in the first two movies you had Bilbo developing, gaining confidence and growing. IBOFA I just didn't get that. Not having Gandalf's permission is something I think he did because of what he did in the first two films. So for me, Bilbo was stagnet in the third film and that takes away for me, what the main purpose of The Hobbit is, Bilbo's growth. I did like the play on the ring between Bilbo and Gandalf where Bilbo outright lies about the ring, showing the growing influence of the ring. That though plays somewhat on the notion of what the ring becomes in the LOTR films.

So am I the only one that failed to really see the Bilbo's development, seemed to end in the third film? In the book I have no question what he gained. Here I think he gained a magical ring of power that Gandalf suspects is something more. Anyway, I would welcome comments or thoughts on the notion if Bilbo grew and what he gained in the movie over what he gained in the book.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Hi AJ! I think Bilbo's growth was very well handled in the films, if you take the trilogy as a whole.

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[Passdagas the Brown]

I have no problem believing that Tauriel and Kili love each other. It seems very genuine to me.

I'm particularly surprised to hear you say this because you're more critical of "typical Hollywood" and "screenwriting 101" cliches than anyone round here and there might literally be nothing more Hollywood and cliche than the tacked on romantic subplot. If Our Hero(es) meets a Pretty Girl at just about any point in a movie, it's pretty much guaranteed they will fall passionately in love (or at least have sex) by the end. (If it's an action movie, it's also pretty much guaranteed that one will have to save the other's life at some point.)

Well, there is the matter of the rest of my post. But what I mean is that I don't find it unbelievable that two individuals in this world, and in this context, could fall in love so quickly. That's what I find genuine. The fact that it's tacked on, has little to do with the heart of the story, and is executed clumsily, leaves me to strongly dislike it.

PJ and co just don't know when to leave well enough alone. Tauriel and Kili had a very genuine (and Tolkien) moment in Thranduil's prison. It should have ended there. A brief connection between a child of Eru and a child of Aulë, and then on with the story.

[Elentári]

PJ and co just don't know when to leave well enough alone. Tauriel and Kili had a very genuine (and Tolkien) moment in Thranduil's prison. It should have ended there. A brief connection between a child of Eru and a child of Aulë, and then on with the story.

Very much agree with this. That one moment of connection was beautifully handled. but from then on in every interaction between the two is all one-sided to my mind, with Kili constantly trying to convince Tauriel that she must feel something for him. We are given the strong impression that she would have walked away in Lake-town if Bofur hadn't arrived with the one thing that could save the injured dwarf, and she was prepared to leave without further interaction on the shore of the Long Lake if Kili hadn't declared his feelings and given her the rune stone.

As for the stand-off with Thranduil, well, even if we ignore the "you have no love" part of it, (which is strange since Legolas just told her about his mother,) Dragonrnbw on TORn sums it up pretty well:

Where was her sense of duty to HER king, people, and guards? Is she not the Captain? She cares so little about them that she would have every single one of them die for her dwarf?? She has no regard for them? Might I point out Killi didn’t stick around for her did he? He left to go to ‘his people’. She seems to values ‘his people’ more than her own. She may fight well but she has no character. For her to turn her back on her people so fast..doesn’t show girls a strong character. It says..abandon all who have stood by you for someone you JUST met! Oh…wait…does Bella come to mind? She will lose her family and all her friends..for a guy. Twilight Hobbit style!

It’s also not like her dwarf has honorable intentions? Is he ridding Middle Earth of evil? HECK NO!! He is going after a mountain of gold. It is his people who wake up a dragon that kills hundreds! Tauriel acts like he is on some rightness mission!

[Elentári]

BTW, has anyone listened to this EMPIRE podcast with Philippa Boyens, yet? Some very "interesting" comments regarding scripting decisions - such as why they felt Galadriel should be diminished in FotR...

[yovargas]

Where was her sense of duty to HER king, people, and guards? Is she not the Captain? She cares so little about them that she would have every single one of them die for her dwarf?? She has no regard for them? Might I point out Killi didn’t stick around for her did he? He left to go to ‘his people’. She seems to values ‘his people’ more than her own. She may fight well but she has no character. For her to turn her back on her people so fast..doesn’t show girls a strong character. It says..abandon all who have stood by you for someone you JUST met! Oh…wait…does Bella come to mind? She will lose her family and all her friends..for a guy. Twilight Hobbit style!

It’s also not like her dwarf has honorable intentions? Is he ridding Middle Earth of evil? HECK NO!! He is going after a mountain of gold. It is his people who wake up a dragon that kills hundreds! Tauriel acts like he is on some rightness mission!

Yup yup yup yup. All those thoughts ran through my head when I watched DoS. I particularly recall her giving some noble sounding speech about doing the right thing to Lego where my thoughts were "Disobeying your king and abandoning your people to go chase a cute guy you just met? Sounds more like a petulant teen girl mad that her daddy grounded her than any kind of noble and righteous heroics."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Elen, is that the same Empire podcast with PB that had been posted earlier, or a new one? I had listened to the earlier one and I know they said there was going to be another one with RA, but I don't recall ever seeing a link to that. Is this a different one?

Regarding the early rumor that we had heard that Thorin commits suicide, I noticed on each of my now three viewings that Thorin purposefully allows Azog to stab him with the mortal blow, in order that he can get his own final killing sword thrust.

I went last night with a friend who has read Tolkien, but is not a fanatic like we are (but is a very intelligent and sensitive person). He said he found the interaction with Tauriel to be quite moving, and thought that cutting from Bilbo's grief to her grief emphasized it rather than diminished it, which I thought was quite perceptive (since it is exactly what I thought).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Returning a moment to AJ's question about Bilbo's journey, I thought that the scene at the end when Bilbo enters Bag End after the auction and finds his nice cozy hobbit hole completely trashed to be a nice visual sign post for the completion of his journey. Yes he makes it home in one piece, and of course we know that Bag End is eventually restored, but he is not the same hobbit that he was; he is changed both by discovering depths to his Tookish personality that he did not know existed, and by grief and loss. It is the latter that is more emphasized in the film than in the book, since his relationship with Thorin is more developed. At the same time, the handkerchief shows that he is also returning to the same hobbity self that he left behind. That's some nice cinematic storytelling, in a brief scene.

Also, watching closely this time, I am convinced that Thranduil does give the order for the Elves to charge first.

[axordil]

In regards to Tauriel abandoning her position: if it were just her, and just for the dwarf, it would be one thing. But Legolas more or less tells Thranduil to take a long walk on a short flet too, for his own reasons, which makes any comparison to Twilight fundamentally absurd. If Thranduil were a more moral king, the discussion would be different, but he's on the petty and vengeful side (though the exact proportions vary between book and movie, the character is unattractive in both cases). Turning on him isn't at all the same as turning on the Elves of Mirkwood.

[yovargas]

In regards to Tauriel abandoning her position: if it were just her, and just for the dwarf, it would be one thing. But Legolas more or less tells Thranduil to take a long walk on a short flet too, for his own reasons, which makes any comparison to Twilight fundamentally absurd. If Thranduil were a more moral king, the discussion would be different, but he's on the petty and vengeful side (though the exact proportions vary between book and movie, the character is unattractive in both cases). Turning on him isn't at all the same as turning on the Elves of Mirkwood.

Thranduil isn't being very nice by not helping the dwarves but his general stance of focusing on protecting his own kingdom against the growing menaces strikes me as entirely reasonable. IMO Tauriel and Legolas should be back home protecting the home borders they both stated were increasingly under attack. It's not like either of them accomplishes anything of note on their trip away from home anyway.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Spoken like a true isolationist libertarian.

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[axordil]

For someone bent on protecting his kingdom first and foremost, Thranduil's pretty quick out of the gate with his army when Smaug is gone. His isolationism is extremely situational and self-serving, as is its sudden end.

[yovargas]

Spoken like a true isolationist libertarian.

Ay, guilty as charged, I suppose......though I hope that doesn't paint me as a petty jerk, too!

For someone bent on protecting his kingdom first and foremost, Thranduil's pretty quick out of the gate with his army when Smaug is gone. His isolationism is extremely situational and self-serving, as is its sudden end.

Sure, but my point still stands - the order she disobeys is not unreasonable and she's not breaking it in order to do anything of particular significance (even if you give her the benefit of the doubt and believe she's not doing it just cuz she has a crush on Kili).

[axordil]

Sure, but my point still stands - the order she disobeys is not unreasonable

I believe the order is less reasonable than you, or rather, I think the character Tauriel believes the order less reasonable. Whether sufficient justification exists for that belief in the script is a matter of screenwriting skill or lack thereof: we are clearly meant to sympathize with her. It's a problem with (again) execution, not concept.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I agree with Ax, but would add that I have no problem with the execution on that point (as opposed to the bad "the love is real" dialogue, as it is made abundantly clear through both Gandalf and Legolas that the issue is an existential threat to the free peoples (in contrast to the book, in which it is not). Thranduil's choice, which is opposed by both Tauriel and

Mike Drout had indicated that he felt that Thranduil was based more on the sons of Fëanor, particularly Curfin or Celegorm, than Thingol. I would point to a different example, however: Turgon. Like Turgon, Film-Thranduil is isolationist to a fault, except when he chooses not to be, and like Turgon he is emotional scarred by the long-ago loss of his mate, the mother of his one child.

Honestly, I find most of the criticisms of Tauriel that I have seen to be meritless. The idea that the romance is a typical Hollywood romance doesn't make sense to me, particularly since no one ends up happy, with one party of the "triangle" dead and the other two heartbroken and/or disillusioned. The argument that her criticism of Thranduil is unfounded is already addressed. As for the point that PtB made that the time spent on that storyline distracts from the time that could be spent on the relationship between Bilbo and Thorin and the other dwarves, I would agree with that if I thought the latter was deficient, but I do not. I think the relationships between Bilbo and Thorin and Balin is wonderfully done, and in the case of that with Thorin, even improved from the book (something I don't say lightly), so I do not agree with that criticism. The only criticism that I really think has any validity is that the dialog, between Tauriel and Thranduil, is clumsily written. And even there, I would not remotely put it in the category of Lucas's SW prequel scripts.

[yovargas]

The idea that the romance is a typical Hollywood romance doesn't make sense to me, particularly since no one ends up happy, with one party of the "triangle" dead and the other two heartbroken and/or disillusioned.

What's "typical Hollywood" is adding a pretty girl in and then having her fall in love with the hero with lightning speed based on almost nothing except that they both apparently find each other hot. The "typical-ness" of this is strongly enforced by conspicuousness of Kili not looking like a dwarf but like a young handsome human - he's so obviously being set up as the token love interest it's almost comical - and by the fact that - surprise, surprise - Tauriel has to try and save Kili's life (twice!) before the end but barely interacts with anybody else at all. That "the hero" and "the girl" are a bit unusual in this case doesn't really change the basic "insert pretty girl to add shallow romance" nature of it. She's still the pretty girl who exists in our story almost entirely just so that we can say there movie has a little romance in it. (And tragic endings happen all the time in love stories. They remind me a tiny bit of a really shallow version of the Titanic love story.)

And neither you or Ax have made any argument as to why Thranduil's "isolationist" order is all that unreasonable, much less so unreasonable that Tauriel should be willing to abandon her entire people to help a dwarf she just met.