So here's my rant about The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, which I wrote for SuperNaturalxxFreak, who is also my beta-reader. It kind of turned out as a review of the whole movie, so – because I'm curious by nature – I decided to upload it here so you all can see my honest opinions about the movie and maybe discuss your own opinions with me :)

For those who have not yet watched the movie, big time spoiler alert right here. If you don't want the movie spoiled for you, then I suggest you don't read this until after you've watched it.

So with that said, here we go~


The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

- Review (with spoilers) -

I'll start by saying that the amount of tear jerking scenes was insane. I don't think I've ever felt like crying at a movie more often than for this one, and that's probably one of the best compliments a movie can get.

And yes, Bard was definitely super hot. Although I expected a better scene with Smaug. It just seemed a bit rushed, just like Fili's death. It was like P.J. went all: "Eh, won't be needing the dragon and Fili anymore, so let's just cut them out."

The confrontation between Bard and Smaug had the potential to be super awesome, I expected a LOT more Smaugness from Smaug... or at least more Cumberbatchiness. He had I think 3-4 flat lines and then Bard shot him down. That was a pathetic and frankly embarrassing death for such a great character. Sure, I know Bard was supposed to shoot him down just like that, and Tolkien himself didn't develop that scene in the book any more than P.J. did in the movie, but still... I expected better from P.J. after he made such wonderful Middle Earth movies before.

In that regard, I'm way more satisfied with the scene I wrote in the fanfic, with the repeated confrontations between Bard and Smaug, because Smaug deserved more screen time in this movie than the amount he got. The second movie set him up to be a much more important character than a five-minute appearance. So that's one of the nitpicks I have about this movie.

Another one is, as so many people wonderfully pointed out, WAY TOO MUCH Alfrid!

He would have been much better off as a character, had he died in the city along with the Master. Even though in the book they both survive, they're nowhere near as important as P.J. made Alfrid in this movie. I'm seriously hoping this was something that P.J.'s bosses imposed on him, because I don't want to believe he would intentionally give so much screen time to an insignificant character, taking away from the important ones like Smaug.

There were so many moments in the movie where I kept thinking: "Dude, you should've gotten Joss Whedon to write your script." Then every insignificant character would've been relevant to the story in a way that didn't seem shoehorned in and didn't detract from the immersive element of the movie. After the first few scenes with Alfrid, which I enjoyed for the humor and whatnot, any time he appeared on screen I was like: "Come on, can we please get back to something else? Like Bard... or Gandalf... or Thranduil... or you know, the premise of this whole movie, which is Bilbo and Thorin. You know... the IMPORTANT people!" Heck, even more footage of Azog would've been more interesting and probably better received by the public, than Alfrid.

If at least P.J. would've changed the book storyline and had Alfrid redeem himself by becoming a better man or finding his courage or whatnot, then yes all that footage would've been relevant and interesting... but he was just the same wretched weasel till the very end. And while that kept in accordance with the book, it didn't work at all for the movie.

Now I have a reviewer on YouTube – called Jeremy Jahns – that I follow actively, because his reviews are not just insanely funny, but he and I also have pretty much the same taste in movies. And when he complained about Alfrid at first I thought: "Ah, he's joking, dude loved Lord of the Rings and he loved the first two Hobbit movies." But apparently he wasn't, and I honestly think that the dude who plays Alfrid is either a very close friend of P.J.'s, or he had someone pull some strings to give him that insane amount of screen time.

But yeah, enough of Alfrid... let's move on to the actual reason for this entire story, which is Bilbo and the Dwarves.

Now regarding them, I would've loved to have more Bilbo. He wasn't even the main character anymore in this last movie, which is sad. Because the entire book is about HIM and HIS journey and HIS adventures and the way HE discovers his courage and learns that he could do things he never thought possible. And here they just focused SO DAMN MUCH on Alfrid and the people of Lake-town that poor Bilbo didn't even matter anymore in the storyline. If at least they would've focused on Bard or on Thranduil more, then yeah I probably wouldn't have missed Bilbo so much, but they didn't.

Thorin got his ONE moment of glory when fighting Azog for about ten minutes (which is pretty lengthy for a one-on-one fight), while the rest of the Dwarves were almost non-existent. And the rest of that Battle of the Five Armies was Bolg vs. Kili, then Legolas vs. Bolg and that was about it. The Eagles and Beorn, who played such a pivotal role in the book, were reduced to just stress relief in this battle and so was Dain Ironfoot.

Beorn was the one who saved the mortally wounded Thorin from dying among Orcs and Goblins, and brought him back to the camp so he could die seeing Bilbo's face instead of the ugly mug of an Orc. And he was nowhere in this fight... they showed him arriving with Radagast (who, after dropping off Beorn on the battlefield, vanished probably in mushroom smoke) and changing into his bear form and that was the last we ever saw of him.

Did he die? Did the Orcs kill him and hung his skin on the walls in Goblin Town? Did he go all: "Eh, fuck the Dwarves." and ran away? I mean what the hell happened to him? What happened to Radagast? What happened to the Eagles after they arrived and dived into the Orc ranks? Did they end up roasted on spikes?

And again, they focused way too much on the people of Lake-town defending the ruins of Dale. That wasn't as important as P.J. wanted to make it look in the movie, instead it just felt like he was shoving it down our throats.

And, like a lot of other people, I too asked myself in the theater: "Where the hell is Thorin's funeral? Why didn't they show Bard placing the Arkenstone on his chest and Thranduil laying Orcrist at his side? Why didn't they show Fili and Kili getting buried with him?" I would've wanted to even see Tauriel crying over Kili's grave; even that would've been better than no burial.

They wasted way too much time on the whole Kili/Tauriel romance, which in all honesty fell utterly flat in this movie. And they wasted way too much time on Legolas vs. Bolg; that fight should NOT have taken as long as it did, with Legolas being the son of such a great warrior as Thranduil is. And as much as it pains me to say it, they wasted way too much time on the people of Lake-town, and even Bard had a couple of scenes where I was like: "This didn't really need to be in the movie." I'm referring in particular to the scenes with his children.

Why the hell did he even take ALL the people to Dale? Why couldn't they just stick to the book and have Thranduil arrive on the lakeside and then have Bard and JUST the healthy men follow the Elven army to Dale and Erebor? What was the point of having so many people slaughtered by Orcs, after they'd already had more than half of their own slaughtered by Smaug? I don't think Bard would've been any less courageous or any less valiant if his children were safe on the lakeside, than he was in the actual movie where his children were in mortal danger all the time.

That part just felt like P.J. was trying to redo the battle at Helm's Deep in this movie, except he failed because it didn't make any sense for all those people to be in Dale.

So the only redeeming hope for this movie would be if P.J. made an outstanding extended version for the DVD/Blu-ray. With the first movie a lot of people complained that they felt like he put the extended edition into the theaters, so I'm guessing he was trying to avoid that, if he heard of those comments. So here's to hoping that the extended edition will explain all those plot holes and make a much better movie than the theatrical release.

But yes, on to Thranduil and the Elves.

Now, I have a love-hate relationship with how Thranduil was portrayed in the movie. Lee Pace did an outstanding job playing him, and I honestly don't blame any negative points on him, but rather on the poor quality script he had to work with.

Now first off, Thranduil is NOT as sassy as they portrayed him. I didn't mind it that much in the second movie, because I hoped they would keep him true to the book in this third one. Sadly they didn't get him 100% right.

As I mentioned at the beginning of chapter 7, Thranduil is NOT obsessed with treasure and he is, in fact, the only one in the book – aside from Gandalf and Bilbo – who does NOT want to start a war over the treasure hoard in Erebor. Also he didn't have this serial killer mentality of: "Kill anything that moves on that mountain." That was completely unlike him, as far as I can think of. Sure, it makes for a good image considering he's a king and a warrior, but P.J. kind of forgot that Thranduil is an Elf as well. And it's not in the nature of Elves to mistreat or kill other living creatures. Heck, they even treated Gollum kindly all the years that he spent in Thranduil's dungeons.

Yes, Elves don't like Dwarves and I know the story about the ancient grudge they have between them. Long story short, the grudge started because the Dwarves were assholes and had to kill an Elf king for a stupid necklace. But even so, I felt like that grudge was exaggerated more than it should have been. Thranduil definitely would NOT have stood aside and watched the Dwarves charging by themselves into battle, until it was almost too late to help them. He was also NOT that rude to Bard when he brought food and water for the people of Lake-town.

Also when I was on YouTube watching the reviews Jeremy did for Lord of the Rings, he said in his review for Return of the King that he was curious to see in the third Hobbit movie what Bilbo did, that convinced the Elves to give him the honor of sailing with them to Valinor.

But they didn't show that scene; it was the scene in the book where Bilbo and Gandalf – on their way back to the Shire – arrive in Mirkwood with Thranduil and his army. And at parting from him, Bilbo gives him a necklace of white gems saying he was giving the Elvenking that gift as apology for all the wine and bread he stole in the days he spent hidden in Mirkwood, waiting for a good moment to rescue Thorin and the others. And Thranduil, for that gesture and for his courage and the help he provided by giving them the Arkenstone to use as leverage and avoid a bloody battle with Thorin and the others, names him "Elf friend and blessed"... and THAT is what Bilbo did, that earned him the honor of going to Valinor where only Elves went.

But they cut that out entirely. Then again, they did make Thranduil so different from the book, that having that scene at the end would've probably made him seem so unlike how he was until that point, that people would have been shocked. And it's sad, it really is, because Thranduil is such a great character with many layers and a great amount of depth to him, and I expected something a lot better for him in the movie.

That is to say, he did have some good points as well. Particularly two scenes at the end: one where he's walking among the dead in Dale and you can see his eyes are glazed over and it kind of looks like he's getting tears in his eyes. That – and his decision to end the battle right then and there and return to Mirkwood before he caused the death of any more of his people – was one of the redeeming scenes in this movie for him. The second one was when they show him walking through that outpost up on the mountain, looking for Legolas, and in that scene you can just see the father in him. That was such an emotional scene (or at least I was so emotionally invested in it) that I actually had tears sliding down my cheeks.

But yeah, I expected a lot better for him. As for Tauriel... to be honest I was hoping P.J. would kill her in the movie. It seems so weird to have her just sort of vanish into nothingness, considering she's NOT in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It felt like she had no conclusion as a character, and it just left me with a really weird unaccomplished sensation.

And Legolas... well I have to admit he was really badass in this movie, much more so than I expected. He honestly made me rethink my teen crush on him, that I had back when Lord of the Rings came out. If he'd been like this in Lord of the Rings, those movies would've been even MORE epic.

And before I forget, let me touch a bit on the insane use of CGI in this movie.

The problem, I feel, is that P.J. didn't do what he did for Lord of the Rings, which was to make an army with 1.000 people dressed up as Orcs and have the rest, up to 10.000, as CGI. Here, he used probably 50-100 people and the rest was animated, which just doesn't give it the same realistic feeling.

Also the backgrounds were often jarring enough to pull you out of the illusion the movie was supposed to immerse your brain into. In Lord of the Rings P.J. had a LOT more shots of real places – forests, plains, mountains, rivers – than he did in The Hobbit movies. I think more than 2/3 of the nature we see in the background in this trilogy is CGI, which just doesn't feel as good as the real shots in Lord of the Rings felt. You could tell so often that the characters were running or walking on a green screen, rather than in an actual forest/plain/valley.

To be honest, in the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy the ONLY scene where I could tell it was CGI, was the scene with Legolas taking down the Oliphant in front of Minas Tirith. That was the ONLY scene where I could tell that Legolas swinging along the elephant's body was CGI; nothing else stood out for me enough to snap my brain out of the illusion that it was real.

Which just goes to show that spending a bit more money, and getting more actual people/nature shots than computer images, makes for better movies.

But yes to conclude my rant, I really had much higher expectations from this movie. The conclusion of a trilogy should NOT leave me with any questions on the way home. This didn't feel like the end of a trilogy, like Return of the King did. There are way too many loose ends and way too many plot holes that were never filled.

And I hated that they took away Fili and Kili's honor in a way, because in the book they died fighting to save Thorin's life, they died defending him on the battlefield which was a very heroic death. Here Fili died a bitch's death, getting taken out in five seconds like a little kid even though he was a very skilled warrior, and Kili died fighting for vengeance to avenge his brother.

So aside from those two scenes with Thranduil, the only redeeming qualities of this movie were Luke's exceptional portrayal of Bard, Lee's exceptional portrayal of Thranduil (despite the crappy script he was given), Legolas being a super hot badass, poor Bilbo being his usual funny self in the tiny amount of screen time he got and the fact that I love Tolkien's works so much that I can NOT hate this movie, despite everything I complained about.


So there you have it, lovelies; my completely honest opinion on how this last Middle Earth movie did. I am really looking forward to the extended edition coming out on DVD, because I still have hope that this movie CAN be better than the theatrical release.

So toss me a review or a PM and let me know what you thought of it. I don't mind if you disagree with my points of view; people are nothing if not opinionated and everyone has a different way of seeing the same thing.

So let me know how you felt when watching the movie and if you loved it, or hated it, or if you're somewhere in between. I would love to discuss this with you, darlings :D