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The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies


The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian Mckellen, Richard Armitage
Directed by: Peter Jackson




The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is the last chapter in the Hobbit series, and it was something that I had lots of anticipation for. After watching two average and kind of disappointing ones I was hoping the last one would be interesting and nicely complete the series. However it failed to deliver what I expected leaving me exit the theater in a bad mood. Let's see what went wrong.

The main problem is that this movie is... well a battle of five armies, That's all. The title and story is very self-explanatory to the point where it became its biggest fault. Most of the film is fighting after fighting, armies after armies. These big scale battles made it bit more entertaining than the last two, but it drags and drags on and ends up becoming sort of a worn out rag at the end.

Return of the King actually has more fighting scenes and battles, but its way more entertaining, having amazing camera work and spectacular sequences mixed in with plenty of emotions we can relate to. The battles in this film are stuffed with not beautiful landscapes and set- but stuffed with green screens and computer generated almost 'video game' movement. The action is not creative with everyone doing nothing but hack and slash. In Lord of the Kings series the battles are beautiful and powerful, in the Hobbit series the battles are fake and heartless.

About the emotion and character, yes there is plenty, but we can't relate it. Could you relate and get into characters that fight over some fictional stone? I cried a bit at the scene where Sam and Frodo long their home near the fiery entrance of Mount Doom. Such tears were extinct and even retracted during this new Middle-Earth adventure. The lack of dialogue involving character development is a huge bonus problem as the almost the entire production was focused on the battle of the armies.

A single LOTR book is thrice the length of the Hobbit book, made into three films. The Hobbit series is three films from a book that is... yeah you see the problem here? In the book the battle of the five armies only takes up 20 to 30 pages, which is a serious lack of source material. Peter Jackson tries to throw in goblins, necromancers, trolls... practically everything that can go into war at you but it doesn't work that much as the series was pretty much set for doomsville the moment Jackson decided it was going to be a trilogy.

Conclusion: The film isn't boring, that's not a problem at all. As I said before, the fun in this movie is empty and soulless which is the fault in what could have been an amazing conclusion. Your eyes will receive tons of candy and your mind will excited throughout the film, On the contrary, your heart will certainly not be moved.

Verdict: