the hobbit

[sid6.7]

did anyone go see the hobbit: battle of the five armies?

the battle scenes were incredible!

[David Roomes]

Yes. I've seen it! I liked it a lot. The battle scenes were amazing. I loved the giant wearing the brick hat who dove into the wall as a living battering ram. I liked the walking catapults. I really liked the variety of orcs and giants and other things. In addition to orcs and goblins and giants, it seemed like they had all manner of crossbreeds and half breeds and hybrids. The action was spectacular. In particular, I really liked the one-on-one battle between Legolas and Bolg in the fallen tower which was crumbling apart around them. That's epic stuff.

My only complaint was that the movie didn't have very much humor. The Lord of the Rings trilogy had a lot of great jokes and humor in it, but this last movie had almost none. I could have used a bit more.

Overall, it was pretty good. Fairly faithful to the book. Yes, the whole bit with the girl and Kili romance and Legolas thing was a bit of a stretch, but other than that, I was pleasantly surprised at how respectful they were to the book. They stayed fairly faithful, more or less, to the spirit of it. And some stuff was actually improved. Thorin's battle with Azog, his final confrontation and final scenes were great. Again, a lot of that was a stretch, but I think this is one area where they actually improved upon the book.

[Delbareth]

Hi!
I've also seen it but will be slightly less positive than David.
Of course the film is quite good, will good battle scenes and for once diversity in the evil side (orcs, goblins, giants, hybrids...). I know that some parts were added to bring some color to the movie (love with the Tauriel-Kili story for instance).

But I didn't liked 2 things :
- the scene in Dol Guldur : the fight between Galadriel and Sauron, neither from an aestetic point of view, nor for its correctness/balance. It seems Galadriel (because of her ring or the Earendil's light) is far stronger than an Istari (and Sarouman is the best one). Plus the fight between the Nazgul and Elrond/Sarouman was in complete contradiction with their power in the Lord of the Ring movies. Never Aragorn would have win with such ninja-spectra.

- the fact that Middle Earth looks like a small village. You are in Dol Guldur but just need to ride a bit to join Erebor. Just walk from here and you reach Angmar (in the North???) and come back to Erebor the same day...

Eventually, I definively think that armies were far too small. If I remember it is written about horde of orcs, not just few thousands...

[David Roomes]

Actually, I noticed that too. Several times they seemed to fudge time and space. This was particularly bad when Legolas and Tauriel go off to the orc stronghold, Gundabad. Gundabad is a long, LONG way from the Lonely Mountain. If you look on the map, it would have taken weeks on foot to get there and several more weeks to get back. But the movie made it seem like Legolas and Tauriel were gone for a day. Not a huge deal, really. But clearly, the movie version of Middle Earth was making some big geographic changes. To make it worse, I don't think that little detour to Gundabad was even necessary.

Then again, the movie does make a lot of changes with regard to time and space. In the book, the dwarves were imprisoned by the forest elves for a very long time and Bilbo spent many weeks sneaking around in the dungeons. In the movie, they shrunk that down to about a day or two.

There were lots of other little things I didn't like. But, I have to admit, they were little things. For the most part, I enjoyed myself for 2 hours and am glad they concluded the trilogy with a bang. I also heard that this movie will have an additional 30 minutes in the director's cut. That's the most additional material of any Middle Earth movie. A whole extra half hour. I'm curious to see what they will add.