The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

I reviewed Part 1 of The Hobbit in July this year, in which I said the following:

Although I recalled the general plot outline of The Hobbit well enough most of the details were fuzzy, so you needn't expect a nerdish analysis of how faithful the film is to the book. The production is superb and the film of high quality throughout, which is no more than I expected from Peter Jackson. Martin Freeman is excellent in the title role of the comfortable, middle-aged hobbit reluctantly persuaded into go on a dangerous adventure with a wizard and a bunch of pugnacious dwarves. The film is a visual feast and has a great deal to enjoy. I liked the restraint shown in building up the suspense concerning the dragon Smaug, only shown partly, in brief glimpses.

Unlike LOTR, in which 1,000 pages of novel were crammed into nine hours of filming, The Hobbit is a simple tale of well under 300 pages yet is stretched over a similar running time. One of the consequences is that some of the scenes are too extended. By the end, I did get tired of the endless running battles with Orcs and Wargs, and feel that the film would have been better for some judicious editing to reduce its length. However, I am still looking forward to the next episode.

Rather to my surprise, I enjoyed the second film more than the first. I usually find that middle films of trilogies suffer through having no proper beginning or ending, but didn't find that a problem here. There is less emphasis on scene-setting, and I did not get the same impression of scenes being over-extended; the story rattles along at a good pace and with a fair amount of variety. The dragon, seen in all its glory, is a marvellous creation, fully living up to expectations. Martin Freeman consolidates his solid performance as the reluctant hero and there are also notable performances from Richard Armitage as Thorin and Evangeline Lilly as the elf Tauriel (a character who isn't in the book, but I'm certainly not complaining). Orlando Bloom reprises his LOTR role of Legolas the elf, and Ian McKellen makes an impressive Gandalf. The film finishes on a note of high drama as Smaug flies to Laketown, setting up the final episode.

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Now that I've located a nearby IMAX that's convenient to drive to, I travelled to see the final episode in all its 3D glory. It continues immediately from where the second film ended, with Smaug's attack on Laketown, then spends most of the rest of the time on the Battle of the Five Armies, as the title suggests. It is not, however, all about fighting. There is a strong focus on the growing madness of Thorin, more also on the rather unlikely added romantic sub-plot featuring the elf Tauriel and the dwarf Kili (but again, no complaints; Tauriel is definitely the girl you want by your side should you happen to encounter any stray bands of orcs in your neighbourhood), and perhaps not enough of the humorous scenes involving the down-to-earth Bilbo Baggins. Cate Blanchett is magnificent – she was born to play Galadriel – and it was good to see Christopher Lee as Saruman.

Having said that, the battle is very dramatic and varied, with some intriguing monsters on show, although I had a problem in reconciling the serried ranks of drilled elvish warriors with the magical display of agility in combat by the principal elves – the two didn't seem to belong to the same culture. The 3D is really good in this film; it is subtle enough not to be obvious, without things leaping out of the screen at you, but adds a depth to the view which is definitely worthwhile.

One oddity caught my attention concerning pronunciation. For more than half a century I have assumed that Smaug was pronounced "smorg" and Sauron was "sore-ron", but in the film these are "smowg" and sow-ron" respectively.

To summarise the series, while purists will grumble that the film is merely "based on" the book and adds quite a few plot elements, it is close enough to what I remembered and adheres to the spirit of Tolkien's story. Definitely one which fantasy fans should not miss, unless you are allergic to Middle Earth. Now I must watch The Lord of the Rings again, for the first time since that series was released.

(An extract from my SFF blog: http://sciencefictionfantasy.blogspot.co.uk/)

Anthony G Williams said:

adheres to the spirit of Tolkien's story

Click to expand...

Not the one I read. The 2nd film was more like Disney than Tolkien.

I liked Thorin even when went off the edge.

Smaug is smorg obviously,with you all the way,they might have just called him Smowgli and given him a Beatles hair cut otherwise...

A good review. It is decades since I read the book and therefore not too attached to the source material on this trilogy of movies. It seemed stretched at times, however I thought the third movie was the tightest of the lot.

My review of the last movie and the whole enterprise is here: http://bookmavenmary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/losing-plot-what-peter-jackson-did-to.html

I will watch this a few hours from now... the 5 Armies one, and will be back with scathing remarks. Actually, Hobbit-action is probably preferable to accuracy, after all this time. Someone said it was Disney-like so I am all glassy-eyed and ready to be taken to a magical world, far far away over the hills and just a wonderful battlefield of mystical beings. Kinda thing.

Sword-fighting, dramatic death scenes, giants, monsters. Great sets. Couple shots of the rabbit-sled, my fave vehicle ever.
Smaug (Smog) meets his match. Best scene may be Legolas legging it up the falling bridge rubble.

I went to see The Battle of Five Armies today with my husband and my two grandsons. The grandsons were a large part of my reason for going -- I thought it would be nice to have an outing together -- because I was extremely disappointed by Desolation and of two minds whether I wanted to see this one, and needed some motivation to go. But I said to myself, with my expectations so low how can I be disappointed, and it leaves some room for pleasant surprises.

As it turns out, all the parts I would have particularly hated I had been warned about well in advance, so I was, in a sense, inoculated against those. I didn't actively dislike it and in fact found it rather riveting but I cannot understand what they are supposed to have gained by padding the story to such an extent that they were left with little else but death and destruction for the third movie and so had to stretch and stretch and stretch the battle sequences.

But I don't go out to the movies much, I'm not jaded, and I don't need such things to keep my blood pumping, as, apparently, so many movie-goers do. I would have liked far better a quieter, gentler movie -- with some death, some heartache, sure, but beauty and songs and humor as well -- you know, like the BOOK. And the added parts with the White Council, which, before the first movie came out, I was quite excited to see, I thought were boring and uninspired. Now there is a place where there could have been amazing action, an epic battle between tremendously powerful beings, grandeur, terror ... well, the wraiths looked sort of cool, I suppose that's something. It felt tacked on and more like an afterthought to me.

So, I didn't hate it. Couldn't think of any reason to like it, either.

I liked the LOTR movies. I know they weren't all accurate and missed some bits out (including the most important part in the Scourging) but I understood why they did what they did (well maybe apart from Faramir) and that to make a commercially successful movie you have to take some liberties with the original text.

However with the three Hobbit movies this isn't the case. They are over-long, take much of the credit away from Bilbo and instead focus on action rather than story telling. The original story is fantastic; it didn't need embellishing to the extent that Jackson has done. I've just watched the extended editions of the first two movies, and have to say that I struggled with watching either in one sitting, they were simply that dull; all because of the padding.

Jackson seems to have wanted to recreate the LOTR trilogy , but the problem is that there simply insn't enough material in the book to make it into a three part movie. It seems to have been simply a case of trying to make as much money as possible, and it's a shame because I'm not sure when there will ever be an opportunity for the wonderful book to be done proper justice.

I wasn't disappointed in the Hobbit films. Overall I found them to be very entertaining.

I thought they were so good I bought them on my apple tv. But then again, I'm a total sucker for awesome special effects

I finally got round to watching this last week and was deeply disappointed. The first movie was OK, the second bearable, but the third put me to sleep in my armchair.

My respect for Peter Jackson has taken a dive. I'm not saying there weren't good bits in the movie. Martin Freeman struggled bravely with a heavy and uninspiring role, almost buried under the CGI action scenes. Those were, in my opinion, far worse quality than the CGI in LOTR, despite the advances in technology.

I might not live long enough to see a good film adaptation of one of my favourite books now. It will be decades before another film company touches the poisoned chalice left behind by this over - blown, grossly-inflated trilogy.

I have yet to get round to watching "5 Armies....." And it may be quite a while before I finally find the enthusiasm to do so based on the tedious "Desolation...".

"Unexpected Journey", was pretty decent, but even that lacked the "must rewatch that again soon!" feeling. But "Desolation.... " I would liken to a trip to the dentist - full of pain, drowsiness, more pain, followed by a sense of emptiness both in one's soul and wallet!

It was a bad mistake by PJ to go the trilogy route with this 300 page book. Although I suspect the studios no doubt forced his hand into this, and as a consequence we have a cake that is overbaked, tastless for the most part, with plenty leftovers going cold & stale.

Perhaps a two-fillm setup would have been more appropriate; but I guess given the huge success (both critical & financial) of LOTR, it was just too much to hope that The Hobbit would be downsized rather than given the three-film upgrade for a story that doesn't warrant it.

Moreover, The Hobbit (in terms of the book) was more aimed at a far younger, less demanding demograph, with perhaps a shorter, less critical attention span. And thus the 300 page book was just enough to capture their imagination, and subsequent demand for something more challenging - and hence the LOTR books were born. But there is simply no way, The Hobbit films deserve the Three Volume treatment, when it would barely stretch to two!

So I have watched the first two Hobbit films, but as yet have no compunction to watch the third. Whereas, I remember destinctly rewatching FOTR as soon as the end-credits rolled, so engrossed I was with PJ's imagery and respect to Tolkien.

Seems that bloatware, doesn't just appear in computer programs.....

I physically HATE the Hobbitt films. Just thinking about them makes me start to earth with rage. Before Jackson got his sweaty money grabbing hands on it, that book delighted and inspired millions; how dare he take it from us and turn it into such a vapid, vacuous and contrived pile of steaming ####!

I don't hate Hobbit films mostly because I can't work myself up to hate most things, but at many parts they bored me and I felt like they kept going on and on and on with some parts that were just a brewing of what-the-hell-ery and unnecessary additions (Yes, I'm looking at you Tauriel. I'm looking directly at you though you aren't the only sinner in that department.). My dad and brother are huge fans of LoTR movies and even they didn't really enjoy Hobbit. To my knowledge, they've yet to watch The Battle of Five Armies beginning to end.

I finally saw the 3rd in the Hobbit trilogy last night when it came on TV. I was pleasantly surprised at this final installment. I was most impressed with Thorin's character development and with seeing Bilbo back in center stage as a main character.

The 2nd of the Hobbit movies is what put me off on seeing this one for so long. It was so bloated with added characters and scenes that the original fun adventure story was lost. One of my favorite book scenes is the dwarves' escape from the Mirkwood dungeons, but the movie couldn't even pull that off without adding Elves and Orcs. Bilbo was no longer a main character - in fact he was pushed to the sidelines so much he wasn't even featured on the movie cover or ad posters.

Although none of the 3 in the Hobbit trilogy are the great storytelling they should have been, I do believe the 3rd movie pulled it back around again to the story which needed to be told.