The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

[klen7]

Sweet! That means we might get a sequel!!!!!

[Benjamin Haines]

[Henry88]

[daikaijusaurus]

[The Shadow]

[Benjamin Haines]

[jellydonut25]

This movie is so bad, I feel like I need to go to the doctor to be checked for an ulcer.

In the first five minutes, we see secret bookcase steps which exist for no real reason aside from Peter Jackson being an ass, some shaky flying shots of a dragon that had me thinking "Well, at least Toho isn't the only company that struggles with convincing flying monsters," a child being turned into the notch for a makeshift bow (yes, really), at least 2 separate eye-rolling action moments on-par with some of the barrel-sequence nonsense of the previous film, and an absolutely HILARIOUSLY over-dramatic death.

When Smaug is killed, he almost quite literally Shakespeare death's the crap out of it, "EGADS! I have been stabbethed in the heart. I am dying a death of deadness now. Blargh. <dramatic spin and fall>" It's hilarious.

The effects are hilariously terrible at times, or well, at least the composite shots and green-screening are just baldly obvious and awful. CGI characters who seem to float along the ground without ever actually touching it, characters "riding on animals" who look like they're either standing still or riding on a vehicle with wheels, and obvious "we are on a sound stage and the background is just CG" moments.

Really confusing spacial relations and timing. I never had a clear idea of WHERE anybody who wasn't at the mountain with the Dwarves was...and the one orc, he seemed capable of just appearing wherever the plot needed him to. The one with the metal in his face.This guy:


I swear he had to have teleported at one point.

Every once in a while, it remembers it's called The Hobbit, and shows us Bilbo standing in the background looking nervous...and every once in a VERY rare while, it gives him something to do.

It als takes a very long time to do nothing. Like, we blew through Smaug in five minutes for WHAT?!?! To sit around for the next hour posturing about treasure?
Thorin, who has never been terribly likable throughout THIS particular series, is flat-out despicable and awful here. It's impossible for me to understand why anyone (like the other Dwarves) would follow him at all. And then Bilbo gets all choked up talking about him..."He was...he was..." I just wanted him to finish, "...a complete dick".

Also, I can't BEGIN to tell you how much I LOATHE that they make it explicit that Sauron is back (and how much I HATE the way it's executed, holy crap. It's like a joke...). If Sauron is back and everyone KNOWS it, then waiting 60+ years between the end of The Hobbit and the start of the Lord of the Rings to DO ANYTHING about it is inexcusable.

And did anybody else LAUGH when the main orc, the white one, just sorta popped up from out of nowhere while everyone else was arguing and was like "HAHA! SURPRISE! Nyahaha! I'm here too! I used my teleporter to pop up on top of this giant tower! That's why nobody saw me come in! Muahaha!"

I also don't know what kind of funny math gets us to FIVE armies, but misleading titles are just a tradition of the Hobbit series, so that's all good.

Then there's just the general nonsense and garbage. A kid is about to get killed by an orc, but a tree pops into the frame out of nowhere and saves the day. This one elf kills hundreds of orcs by swinging his sword at the air around them but clearly not actually hitting him. One of the dwarves is completely CGI and it's distracting, especially in his beard, which just looks hilarious. There are flashbacks to the previous movie, which make it probably super slow, hilarious and awful if you watch the movies all at once as was probably "intended" considering it's just one story. Thirty thousand men/dwarves/elves are being pushed back to the point of near-extinction, but THIRTEEN DWARVES come running forward and suddenly the WHOLE TIDE OF THE BATTLE CHANGES!!!! Ha! Magical rams that run up 90-degree-angle slopes without breaking pace at all. LEGOLAS*. The Bear-Man jumps off an eagle and falls three-hundred feet down, transforming into a bear as he does and slaughters a bunch of orcs and then is never seen for the rest of the movie.

This is absolutely INSULTING coming from a film series that cost HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to make and has a perfectly good book upon which it COULD have based the bulk of its action, but didn't because they could milk more money from fanboys by committing this garbage to film.

At this point, I'm just convinced that Peter Jackson has been taken over by an alien bug like D'Onofrio in Men in Black, and there's now an alien walking around inside his dead flesh, sort of mimicking his life and actions, but doing a TERRIBLE job of it.

So bad. SO SO SO SO SO BAD. I've seen some execrable piles of awful lately (Foxcatcher, Halo Nightfall, Dumb and Dumber To, Ouija, Annabelle, Lucy) but this THING was just a monstrosity.


*Things Legolas does:
He uses one of the bats to fly, the bat never notices or tries to shake him off, then he shoots an arrow through the bat's head so it lands exactly where he wants, then he jumps off a tower, onto some troll with no legs so he can stab it in the brain and use his sword like a joystick to move it around in order to crash it into a building that falls down to create a bridge, which he then fights an epic battle on as its collapsing, then he throws his sword perfectly into another monster's chest from far away, then runs UP falling debris to stab the monster in the head and do a backflip to safety.

[Dr Kain]

For once, I agree with you Jelly.

BTW, did you anyone else hear in their heads the Mario music playing when Legalos started running up the falling rocks?

[Henry88]

$954,916,285
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=hobbit3.htm

[jellydonut25]

[XvGojira]

[Rodanex]

I remember the eagles being the fifth army from the animated movie.

[Ultra T-Rex]

The whole "who are the five armies" thing is something not even Tolkien himself was completely sure of. But anyway, in the movies the five armies are: 1. Men, 2. Elves, 3. Dwarves, 4. Orcs from Dol Guldur (led by Azog) and 5. Orcs from Gundabad (led by Bolg). The Wargs are counted as a separate army in the book but not in the film since they're completely different; in the book they're smart, have their own language and everything while the movie versions are just "dumb" beasts.

[jellydonut25]

The men never feel like an army to me at all.

[Reaper G]

I always thought the Eagles were the fifth army.

Anyway, I finally saw the movie this weekend, and I did find it to be visually well done, I had no problem with Thorin's dragon sickness or the Dol Guldur stuff, but Legolas should not have been such a major character (he wasn't mentioned in the book, but you have to guess he was at his father's side all along), and Azog, Tauriel, and Alfrid were totally unnecessary. Leave them out, and you could have had two great movies instead of three good but overblown ones.

Now if I had to include a flashback, I would have started this movie with a look at the fall of Gondolin, with Sauron and Smaug leading the attack against Elrond and Thranduil. That would have tied Bilbo's story to the origins of Middle Earth quite nicely, IMO.

[Gwangi]

It really does seem that the law of physics do not exist in a Peter Jackson movie, even if it is a fantasy flick. Case in point, the scene of Legolas stepping up that falling bridge ! Douglas Fairbanks doing scenes like that in the 1920s, were and still are a lot more enjoyable to watch!

Was not in love with the first two movies, but they were passable. This one however, was a definite downward turn.

** stars.

[Dr Kain]

[jellydonut25]

TMNT 2014 + Transformers 1 + Divergent triple feature vs. The Hobbit trilogy triple feature.

That would be a legitimately difficult decision for me. Hobbit 1 and 2 are insanely boring and the LENGTH is just ridiculous.
Hobbit 3 has loads of unintentional hilarity (Trees saving people, teleporting orcs, everything Legolas does), but again...LENGTH.

I'd probably suffer through TMNT 2014 and Divergent to at least watch Transformers 1.

[jellydonut25]

So, apparently the Hobbit EE is going to be rated R.

How is it that nerd-dom imploded on itself when some guy made a satirical hardcore Power Rangers SHORT, but everyone is okay with Peter Jackson turning a CHILDREN'S fantasy novel into a lengthy monstrosity that's rated R?

[Ultra T-Rex]

[jellydonut25]

I mean, the easiest jab is actually that the movies are bad and Peter Jackson and everyone involved should be embarrassed.

But this is just another turd to throw onto the mountain of feces.

[Ultra T-Rex]

So much hate.

[jellydonut25]

[MekaGojira3k]

[jellydonut25]

The Barrel sequence of Smaug alone should be enough to get Peter Jackson banned from making another movie ever again.

Not to mention the desecration of Smaug himself and the whole awful action sequence in the cave.