Well it it has been a month since my last, which is a bit rubbish. Lovely sunny weather, long hard days at work and being a terrible procrastinator have contributed to that.
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| I am sure I am meant to do some work....sometime... |
Well, let us get started..
This is the last of the trilogy, and of the LOTR series. At the beginning of the film Sir Pete has a wee short with cast and crew talking about their experiences and how wonderful New Zealand is. That was nice.
Some mild spoilers follow.
The Battle of the Five Armies is the strongest and best film of the trilogy. With regards to pacing and time, Jackson finally gets it right. There was no point in the film where I was bored with "too much" Hobbit.
The action and fight choreography was at the level you now expect from the franchise; entertaining and dazzling fights, battles and heroes. There were some Legolas sequences that seemed noticeably CGI, and surprisingly a Shai Hulud moment? I wondered what sort of weapons the Orcs would bring out of the deep desert? Would they start using Bilbo's name as a killing word?
They (thankfully) didn't, but they did have weird, mutilated and tortured trolls, some missing eyes, and limbs. Given the more child friendly films Jackson seemed to be making with the previous two movies, these creatures seemed an odd choice? But all in all the action sequences were cool.
Given that this part of the trilogy is the climatic battle of The Hobbit, the story was possibly the best written of the three. I really liked the love story between Kili and Tauriel. While some purists might loathe this addition, I thought it added well needed depth to the film. The madness of Thorin was also well done. For a moment I thought the scene was going down some sort of sixties mind warp, but it ended at just the right time before we entered the realm of 2001, A Space Odyssey.
Two complaints I do have about the story though; Afrid, and the lack of character development of the Dwarves. The whole story arc with Alfrid seemed stupid and pointless. Yes Bard is good, yes his children are good, you do not need to expound on this by consistently comparing them to a sniveling coward. It seemed an unnecessary addition. I imagine that in the director's edition there may be more that makes this aspect make sense.
The other thing that irritated me was the lack of character development and interaction with the other Dwarves. I don't mean add another 20 minutes, but a few moments or lines here or there wouldn't hurt surely. Some viewers who have not read the book would be forgiven for wondering who they are and why the hell are they there?
I think we could have gotten away with less focus on the others if there had been more in the previous two films? I mean there was plenty they could have culled from the first and second movies. But it is probably just me.
The acting and direction were fine, and the scenery wonderful. Watch out for Hugo Weaving and Cate Blanchett kicking arse!
Over all it was a fun film, not spectacular but a fine ending to the series.
Seven hobbits from me.
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