So I just saw The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies and it was...good...
Everything was more or less well made on a technical level, and to the movie's credit, this one didn't seem as long as it actually is.
But unsurprisingly, the film had a lot of pacing issues.
Who would have thought that trying to turn the third act in a book into an entire movie might not flow so well?
Now, I haven't seen The Desolation of Smaug since theaters last year,
so when the opening a movie is the climax of an action scene from the previous movie, I found myself being not all that sucked into it.
They were trying to sell me all this action, but there was no build up to it.
Like, not even five minutes ago I was watching some shitty trailers for movies I don't care about.
I think we can all pretty much agree that The Hobbit should not have been three movies.
One or two movies would have made sense; not only would it cut out a lot of the filler,
but it would have allowed the cuts in between films to be a lot more appropriate.
Now was it just me, or was Billy Connolly's face completely computer generated?
If you don't know who that is, it was the dude riding a pig that sounded like Shrek.
Every time it showed him it was like some Beowulf shit; characters next to him would look completely normal,
but his face, for whatever reason, looked computer-generated.
Also, I get that Legolas is supposed to do some crazy bad-ass shit pretty much every movie, but this one felt a little too over the top.
I mean, usually when Legolas has unrealistic ninja skills, I'm pretty okay with that,
but in this one it was less of Legolas having ninja skills, and more of convenient physics just happening to play out in his favor.
It was no longer a showcase of the character skill level, it was just "Oh, didn't that just happened to work out for you?"
Yes there have been elements of convenient physics throughout the Lord of the Rings films before but this one pushed it a little too far.
It was a little weird how a small boat was able to tear off the wall of a prison.
It was also a little weird how many opportunities the main Ork dude had to kill Thorin, but he just didn't take them.
Like, every time he swung that stone attached to a chain at him, Thorin would fall over and have to regroup himself,
but instead of taking the opportunity to finish him off with his sword arm, he's like,
"Well, guess I gotta reel in this stone, so I can swing it at him again."
Also, what was up with those giant worms that cleared a tunnel to the battle but never actually fought in the battle?
Like, they showed up, and they were super intimidating, and probably could have kicked some serious ass,
but they kind of just left and I don't understand why.
Like, I've never read the source material, so maybe that explains it,
but why even turn a book into a movie if you have to read the book to understand the movie?
All right, I'm gonna start spoiler talk, so if you want to avoid spoilers just skip to this part in the video; you can click on it if you're on YouTube.
Eh... 3, 2, 1!
All right, so this might not actually be a spoiler, but am I the only person that didn't expect Smaug to die in the first 10 minutes?
Like, I knew he wasn't gonna be in the movie forever, but I expected him to be at least a significant part of it,
and as someone that didn't read the book, I don't think my expectations were that unreasonable.
When you have an entire ad campaign that features Smaug being interviewed on Stephen Colbert,
it kinda implies that he'll be a significant character in the film.
So when he dies at the very beginning of the movie, all it does is just show how poorly a place they decided to separate the second and third films.
I'm sure even Peter Jackson would agree that the pacing would have worked better if they ended the second movie after Smaug dies.
But unfortunately, their decisions are less about the movies and more about the money.
If they ended the second film after Smaug dies, then they wouldn't have had a cliffhanger of "Oh, don't you wanna see this dragon battle?"
You're consciously using the dragon as a selling point for the third film, despite the fact that he dies as soon as the film starts.
Man, don't you wish we could go back to the days when our media was a bit more consumer-friendly?
"It's okay if the movies are worse, as long as we make more money. Isn't that the whole point of making a movie in the first place?"
Anyway, despite these gripes with this film, I didn't consider it to be bad.
It's just sad to think of how this source material could have been used to make something a lot better.
Out of all three in the films, I would say that the second one is probably my favorite,
so if I ever watch any of them again that will be it.
As for this one, it was all right, but I can't ever imagine a time where I'll feel like watching it again.
And I'm giving this one a 6 out of 10.
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Subtitles by JorWat