So Long, PJ, And Thank You For the Visuals...

[perelleth]

...but please, please, do stay away from The Silmarillion.

So I went to see The Battle of the Five Armies on Christmas Day.. The she-balrgogling loved it. Me, I almost fell asleep in places.

Comments

[clodia_metelli]

I just got back from this! Agree on all counts, and I rather fear the way my sister and I howled with laughter at the back may have undercut some moments that were probably meant to be serious. I will add a couple of things:

* I thought Thranduil's sparkly-stone-motivation was going to be the Arkenstone-slash-Silmaril. But then it was just... sparkly stones? I hope he got them, but I am confused. Also not very keen on whatever PJ thinks he's doing with the Arkenstone, which is all just a bit odd and confused.

* I like Tauriel. She's lovely. I think her weird whateveritwas with Dwarf #?? was completely unnecessary and in an ideal world would never have happened. I mean, they had, what, two conversations? I personally would be all "Uh... you're cute, but you're being creepy-stalker-guy here..." And then she gets to spend way too much of the final battle being knocked out so two male characters can be heroic on her behalf? So exceedingly unimpressed. She can stay: the romantic subplot can burn in all the dragonfire available.

* The high definition is way too high if I can see makeup. All the skin was weirdly powdery, especially the elves. And a lot of it did not look real at all. I kept looking for steaming breath, with all that snow around, and only saw it once.

* The elves jumped OVER a dwarven SHIELD WALL!!!! (?!) They should have been CREAMED. I would call it a classic hammer and anvil tactic, except usually you have to do some work to set those up (your infantry = the anvil, your cavalry sneaks round behind to provide the hammer). Why didn't the elves sit safely behind the shield wall and use those bows and arrows they're all carrying? You have a perfectly good army here! Heavy infantry + artillery! Why aren't you using it like that??? Tactics! How do they work?

* I sighed a deep sigh for Principal Antagonist Orc, who put a lot of hard work and thought and planning into his war and really deserved to win, not least because his opponents were such a disorganised shower. The sad message here is that forethought and discipline and strategy and literally years of planning will get you to the very point of victory... but not victory itself, because something something "good guys" "important character development" "lessons learned" something. Boooo.

ED. I mean, I enjoyed it! But... maybe not for entirely the right reasons. p.s. sorry about multiple edits, it's getting late.

[elliska]

The elves jumped OVER a dwarven SHIELD WALL!!!! (?!)

My husband lost it when they did that. He almost left the theater. PJ definitely didn't hire a military consultant and thank God he never fought in a war himself.

And I agree about the HD too. The makeup really was bad for that. Especially on Legolas.

[clodia_metelli]

I am glad someone else felt strongly about the shield wall. For a supposed "battle of five armies", it was really just a disappointing brawl. Particularly disappointing from the elves, who seemed so well trained and disciplined when they first showed up. Did you notice how Principal Orc Antagonist directed his side from his command post, showing a grasp of generalship and tactics that was totally missing on the other side? I thought he deserved to win for the semaphore system alone. (Though his battle-orcs were very badly designed. How on earth does it help to replace all four limbs with maces? Especially when you're not fighting and they need constant help with basically everything?)

I thought Tauriel's makeup was distractingly obvious too. And I always notice when the roots of the hair aren't the same colour as the rest. (Come to that, some of the dwarven beards looked a little carpety, and I'm not sure about all the blonds with thick black eyebrows.)

[perelleth]

lolol. Yes. There are many things I didn't even mention... and that's one of them. So ridiculous, it got us laughing so helplessly someone made us shut up!

[perelleth]

the high definition/frame rate was really annoying.
I too quite liked Tauriel's character though not really sure what she added, except points for having females. Not only being kicked around but causing dwarf's death by distraction was a bit of the low, then having the king condescendingly catalogue her feelings "not love" then "oh well it hurts, then yes, true love" It was all so ridiculous that made me laugh as well.
To me it was a guilty pleasure, but I was more bored more time than I expected. Sigh.

[perelleth]

Ninja Thranduil was good, I agree.
Also was puzzled about those jewels. I was hoping it would be part of BIlbo's parting gift, but hey, what do I know? The editing was really choppy work, storywise.