December 18th in St. Charles, MO. To be honest, I was neither hot nor cold on the 3rd installment of this trilogy and I only saw it to bring closure to the series. After the success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the public wanted more of Middle Earth. Whether Jackson wanted to or not, he obliged by giving us the first installment of The Hobbit in 2012. Now The Hobbit is one book where the Lord of the Rings is three books. Just how (and why) was book stretched into 3 films? Greed (I saw all three pictures so I'm part of the problem). Since the filmmakers had to stretch the story out to 3 films, we got a Legolas backstory (that no one asked for) and a Legolas interest, Evangeline's character does not appear in the novels (someone probably felt that an elvish babe was needed a la Liv Tyler was crucial). There's all kinds of other discrepancies that to me are minor but Legolas is the biggest. It's as if the filmmakers or studios felt he had to be in there in order for box office appeal (there's no denying his ass-kicking abilities).
The plot is pretty straightforward. Smaug is killed after destroying Laketown and the survivors seek refuge in Dale. Thorin is becoming consumed dragon sickness as her searches for the Arkenstone. The survivors of Laketown team up with Thranduil's elves and his army digs in for an assault on the castle. Bilbo ends up with the Arkenstone and decides to give it to Bard and Thranduil to avoid bloodshed. Meanwhile in Dol Guldur, Gandolf gets rescued from the Necromancer and his minions (they're Ringwraiths) by the combined forces of Galadriel, Sauruman and Elrond (another Jackson creation). Legolas and Tauriel find out that there's an orc army led by Bolg heading for Erebor.
Things come to a head at Erebor. Thranduil is ready to storm the castle and Thorin is about to give in to the demands when his cousin Dain shows up with a dwarf army. With reinforcements Thorin tells Thranduil to shove it and the three armies get set to face off against each other. The three armies are the dwarves, the elves and the refugees of Laketown (who are refugees not a military force). Then Azog shows up and sends his orcs into Dale (army number 4) with Bolg's encroaching army rounding out the five armies.
The battle is joined and eventually Thorin decides to stop being a douche and enter the fray when the dwarf army is about to crumble. Legolas and Tauriel show up just ahead of Bolg and there is carnage all over the place. Legolas kills Bolg, Thorin kills Azog but is mortally wounded. Thorin and Bilbo make peace. Gandalf showed up too and killed some orcs as well. Thorin dies, without the Arkenstone and without restoring his kingdom. Legolas is sad because he defied his father Thandruil and no longer wants to go back. Tauriel is said because Kili was killed, which also saddens Legolas because Tauriel had a thing for Kili (love stinks). Gandalf and Bilbo head back to the Shire and the film ends into the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring (complete with Ian Holm reprising his Bilbo role).
This trilogy did a lot of things wrong. It didn't have the same feel as the LOTR. There was the painstaking detail of the production and there were actors portraying orcs. That's not the case here. It suffers from a lot of the same problems (in my opinion anyway) as George Lucas did when he came of with the Phantom Menace, too much reliance on technology. There's also very little chemistry between Bilbo and the dwarves or any chemistry at all compared to the characters from LOTR. One thing I did notice is how heavily armored people can go into a medieval battle with swords and large war hammers, kill hundreds of orcs and not get tired nor very bloody. Given that elves are bad ass when it comes to combat but dwarves and men are going to tire. With all the up close and personal killing, people (dwarves, men, elves and orc alike) are going to get really bloody. The ground will be soaked with blood and there will be body parts and entrails strewn about as well.
Five Armies is not a bad film, it's probably the best of the three but it cannot compare to Return of the King from the LOTR series. It will do well at the box office but I don't believe it will have the staying power as Return of the King did back in 2003. The acting is good overall and Martin Freeman is a good Bilbo. Richard Armitage (Thorin) also does well but he spends a lot of time brooding, monologuing and giving looks to the camera as if he were in a YA vampire film. I kind of felt that Ian Mckellan was going through the motions as Gandalf. His role did seem smaller in the Hobbit films than LOTR but he seemed bored. Legolas doesn't say much which only seems to strengthen the arguments that Orlando Bloom can't act. Luke Evans (Bard) did a nice job but I think his character wasn't developed at all.
All in all the film wasn't that great. It seemed to me that Jackson just got tired of all the work and cut corners. When he made the LOTR films, he was so consumed by its production that he lost a lot of weight. With the Hobbit trilogy, he let CGI take the forefront and phoned it in. The LOTR films were all great films culminating with Return of the King. The Hobbit films were ok at best and seemed more like a cash grab.
No comments:
Post a Comment