Movie review: The Hobbit - Battle of the Five Armies
It was a good ending to the series. I’d like to see all of the movies in a marathon now, but I doubt the full, director’s cut, DVDs will be available until next year. By then, my attention will probably have wandered. Honestly, I feel kind of unfulfilled, even though the movie delivered on everything the series promised. There was a huge battle, tens of thousands of orcs died, a few dwarves did, too, along with a few score nameless humans and elves - no one too important among those last two groups. There was some character growth among a few characters, some drama, and interesting changes in relationships. That was good.
It was only barely enough to make me stop rolling my eyes at how over the top the fights were, or the mystical powers of the elves (to defy gravity) and dwarves (who were way stronger than they should have been), or the orcs (who were too stupid to live). Everyone lived way too long, surviving mortal blow after mortal blow. The only people who seemed to really suffer from being bashed around were the women - both Tauriel and Galadriel looked genuinely hurt after they were hit/smashed against rocks/thrown around/blasted. For the male characters, that sort of thing was no big deal. They even played it for laughs with one of the dwarves named Dain - he lost his helmet, but kept lethally head-butting armored orcs without losing a beat. I guess that’s part of my problem - how the taking of life was played for laughs. Even if it’s orc life, it cheapened the whole thing.
Anyway, if you enjoyed the first two movies, you won’t be disappointed here. There’s good graphics, good performances by the actors, decent dialogue, great costumes and music, terrific fight sequences (like 80% of the movie is fighting). There’s even a few non-white characters this time around, with a couple black people visible in the background and an Asian-looking female tending the wounded at one point. We also get to see the women take up weapons and head out to assist the men in fighting, which was a relief after all the stupid ‘protect the wommyns and chillins!’ that was being coughed out. The orcs didn’t seem to be too much of a danger anyway - they died so easily it was dumb. As my boyfriend observed, “Their heads didn’t seem to be firmly attached.”
So enjoy if you can. For my part, I’m glad I watched it for closure’s sake and I don’t *quite* feel I wasted my time, but … it’s close.