Review of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) by Sergeantsoz — 17 Dec 2014

I was a fan of Lord of the Rings since the Fellowship. Needless to say these Hobbit movies take a huge dump on the first three movies just like the new Star Wars movies did.

PROS.

I honestly can't think of much. If you liked World of Warcraft, this will be a movie you might like.

CONS.

I can say this was the worst of the three Hobbit movies. How can the guy who gave us Lord of the Rings, which featured battle scenes so epic, they sent chills down my spine, sink to this level. The entire movie was underwhelming. They brought in too many characters that didn't need to be there and established subplots with characters I still don't know the names of. I couldn't feel any empathy for anyone, even when they died. They were just there. Everything is drawn out way too long. The beginning of the movie honestly would have made a better ending to Desolation of Smaug. I was against the Hobbit being made into 3 movies before and I stand by that. The biggest killer is that the movie relies way too heavily on CGI. It looks fake and destroys everything. The Lord of the Rings only used CGI when it was needed. Massive hordes of orcs I understand, but when you do close ups of these characters and they're animated, it just doesn't feel the same as makeup and costume. Another thing to point out, Jackson needs to cool it on the panoramic shots. The camera never sits still, its always soaring through the air. It gets annoying. The movie was just "meh". I didn't totally hate it. I've seen worse, but the whole Hobbit trilogy has been a letdown. They brought in characters like Legolas and make references to Aragorn and Gimli to satisfy our nostalgia for Lord of the Rings, but ultimately it just gets in the way. I LOVE Smaug. The one highlight in this whole trilogy is whenever Smaug is on camera. For everything else, it wasn't done the right way.