Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Movie Review The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies ----- by Evgeny Smirnov

The Hobbit: the Battle of the Five Armies
The Hobbit: the Battle of the Five Armies is a 2014 fantasy adventure movie, directed and written by Peter Jackson, produced by New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and WingNut Films, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. This is the last movie of the Hobbit trilogy, which was based on the novel The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, following An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Desolation of Smaug (2013). It is also the last movie adaptation of Tolkien’s work. The movie was released on 17 December 2014 in the United States.
The plot involves Bilbo (Martin Freeman), Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) and the Company of Dwarves who have reclaimed their homeland – the Lonely Mountain and have to defend its treasures from evil forces. Most of the film’s action is taken by the big battle between the Gnomes and Elves versus the Orcs.
            When the movie begins, it literally picks up right after the end of the second part of the trilogy, there is no prologue or anything, so if you haven’t seen the first two parts then this movie is definitely not for you.
            While the whole film is about the big battle Bilbo Baggins is supposed to be the main character, but we see so little of him. Throughout the movie there is not enough of him, his first line in the movie comes almost thirty minutes after the start of the movie. Same thing can be said about character development, the movie does not really develop any character from where they were at the end of the previous film. The most interesting is Thorin Oakenshild, because in the movie he has “dragon sickness”, which means that he is driven mad by gold, like his grandfather. *Spoiler Alert, next sentence contains a small spoiler* eventually, he gets over it and that is the only character development that we see in the movie. All the other Dwarfs had their own stories in the previous movies, but in the film they do not have that much screen time like before, it seems like they all became just one character instead of many.
            In this film, Peter Jackson tried to give a good end for the trilogy of The Hobbit, much like he did in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (which was a masterpiece). However, he did not do well on it,The Return of the King was better because it was a great end to a great trilogy and it worked perfect as its own story. Nevertheless, The Battle of the Five Armies does not do that. It is the last part of the trilogy and it fails to do what it is supposed to do. The movie is just a two-hour long action with nothing behind it. It has many jaw-dropping moments but they cancel each other out because they happen so often and there is no emotional meaning. It seem like the battle should be just thirty minutes instead of two hours, but still it is a very beautiful and exiting film that feels empty.

            Overall, the movie is controversial. Peter Jackson devote a decade of his life to adapting Tolkien’s work into movies and he did a great a job. I enjoyed The Hobbit trilogy and I think the first part is the best. The last part of The Hobbit isn’t as good as the last part of The Lord of the Rings, but I guess they should not be really compared since Peter Jackson had only a few chapters instead of a whole book to make the last part. Generally, I did not like nor disliked The Battle of the Five Armies, but I think that if you saw the first and the second parts then you should see the third one too. Anyway, I give it a 5.5 out of 10.  

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