The Hobbit: Orcs Ruin Everything!
My subtitle for the last installment in this franchise was, "The Hobbit: Everything's Coming Up Arrows!" and after careful reflection, I came up with a few more for this final chapter:
The Hobbit: Everyone Has an Ironic Steed!
The Hobbit: Women and Children First!
The Hobbit: Orcs are the WORST. (Also up for consideration: the title above, and Orcs are the jerkiest jerks ever.)
The Hobbit: Wait 'till HR hears about this!
The Hobbit: No, seriously, let's catch the express bus to Gundebad, we can hitch a ride back afterwards.
The Hobbit: Not without my mommy-/daddy-issues! (Close second: Family is sooooo embarrassing.)
I don't mean any of these in a mean-spirited way; I really did enjoy the film, and there are so many beautiful elements in it that I'm willing to ignore a lot of weirdo plot contrivances (most notably that the map of Middle Earth that I thought I had pretty clearly in mind was *completely* wrong.)
Let's start with the good stuff: design/set dressing! Battles! A war pig! ZOMG Scenic vistas! I have to say that I have loved LotR and the Hobbit films for the gorgeous visuals they're stuffed of, and this installment was no exception. The elves' battle armor is just so gosh-darn beautiful and otherworldly looking and seeing it makes me want to fly over to New Zealand and talk to the costumers, armorers, and concept artists for hours and hours. Seriously--everything looks SO GOOD.
I also really liked Bilbo's progression as a character in this film, particularly his aversion to war and fighting not being written off as cowardice or a moral failing. Bilbo is not a violent person (except where the ring is concerned) and his genuine consternation over what to do to help his friend* is well played (and it helps that Martin Freeman has such an honest, open face.) It was nice to see Richard Armitage get to do some real acting, and I liked the recurring motif of dragon sickness as quite literally serpentine. But the film always comes back to Bilbo, and the best scene with him in the entire film was his entrance into the ransacked Bag End, and the lovely scene where he re-hangs his family portraits. After a story in which family was nothing but a responsibility/hinderance to all things good, it was a pleasure to see someone looking to his family for a sense of healthy identity and peace and quiet.
Speaking of family: OMG, Thranduil... you magnificent bastard. I mean, seriously, that's his entire plot arc, as far as I can tell. Not that Lee Pace is bad, or anything, in fact, he's tremendous at an ice-cold stare of disdain at 100 paces. (Thranduil vs. Severus Snape in loathing-off, film at 11!) Anyway, he was such a bastard that Legolas became much more sympathetic in comparison, and I couldn't stay mocking at him after he leapt off a cliff to grab a bat's feet. Seriously, that was such a move of stupid-crazy that I felt like I was at a tabletop D&D where someone rolled a natural 20, and everyone at said table was yelling and screaming and carrying on while the PC did something completely crazy but awesome at the same time.
Tauriel was still made of awesome throughout, although I found the violence towards her very sexualized, in a way that seemed almost out of character for the film itself. We've been presented with a universe where women (at least, the few that there are) aren't presented as overly sexualized; they're as competent and, in some cases, more powerful than the male characters they're surrounded by. So it's weird to all of a sudden to see them in a more typical action movie pose of "oh noes! I am sexually menaced!" It wasn't overplayed or gross, it was just strange, and it undercut the genuine conflict of the love triangle she was involved in.
Also, just for the record, if I was a bear shapeshifter, that is ABSOLUTELY the entrance I'd make into a battle against orcs. SUPER BADASS FALLING BEAR FTW!!!
Weird/Bad stuff: Wow, those sand worms... wormy things showed up once and then never came back. What were they doing in the meantime? ("Hey, orcs, I chipped a tooth on that last dramatic entrance, gotta go see the worm dentist. Can someone clock out for me?")
It's awesome that the townspeople were willing to fight, but I just as glad we didn't see more of what would surely have been a wholesale slaughter. :{
As I mentioned before, the geography in this film was very confusing. Middle Earth apparently has an expressway or something. *shrugs*
So now there's a whole mountain full of cursed gold... I feel like this is a setup for a horror movie franchise, somehow.
* This was one of the slashiest movies I've seen since Star Trek Into Darkness. I'm sure a plethora of Bilbo/Thorin fic is due any moment now, and I would happily accept some recs for well-written, not too histrionic or OOC pieces. For the record, though, I just shipped everyone/everyone, except the orcs, who are such unrelenting levels of awful that I just started rolling my eyes whenever they showed up on-screen.
In summary: Lots of fun all around. I've read some pretty negative reviews of this film, and I'm not sure what the reviewers went into the film wanting. It's called "The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies," not "The Hobbit: Peter Jackson sat down and asked YOU what you wanted out of a Hobbit movie," for gosh-sakes. There are five armies, there is a mountain of cursed dragon gold, and there are more than a few heroes. What did everyone expect, Citizen Hobbit? The Maltese Dragon? I don't know. Anyway, I thought it was fun and diverting, and that's exactly what I wanted when I went in, so that was perfect.
The Hobbit: Everyone Has an Ironic Steed!
The Hobbit: Women and Children First!
The Hobbit: Orcs are the WORST. (Also up for consideration: the title above, and Orcs are the jerkiest jerks ever.)
The Hobbit: Wait 'till HR hears about this!
The Hobbit: No, seriously, let's catch the express bus to Gundebad, we can hitch a ride back afterwards.
The Hobbit: Not without my mommy-/daddy-issues! (Close second: Family is sooooo embarrassing.)
I don't mean any of these in a mean-spirited way; I really did enjoy the film, and there are so many beautiful elements in it that I'm willing to ignore a lot of weirdo plot contrivances (most notably that the map of Middle Earth that I thought I had pretty clearly in mind was *completely* wrong.)
Let's start with the good stuff: design/set dressing! Battles! A war pig! ZOMG Scenic vistas! I have to say that I have loved LotR and the Hobbit films for the gorgeous visuals they're stuffed of, and this installment was no exception. The elves' battle armor is just so gosh-darn beautiful and otherworldly looking and seeing it makes me want to fly over to New Zealand and talk to the costumers, armorers, and concept artists for hours and hours. Seriously--everything looks SO GOOD.
I also really liked Bilbo's progression as a character in this film, particularly his aversion to war and fighting not being written off as cowardice or a moral failing. Bilbo is not a violent person (except where the ring is concerned) and his genuine consternation over what to do to help his friend* is well played (and it helps that Martin Freeman has such an honest, open face.) It was nice to see Richard Armitage get to do some real acting, and I liked the recurring motif of dragon sickness as quite literally serpentine. But the film always comes back to Bilbo, and the best scene with him in the entire film was his entrance into the ransacked Bag End, and the lovely scene where he re-hangs his family portraits. After a story in which family was nothing but a responsibility/hinderance to all things good, it was a pleasure to see someone looking to his family for a sense of healthy identity and peace and quiet.
Speaking of family: OMG, Thranduil... you magnificent bastard. I mean, seriously, that's his entire plot arc, as far as I can tell. Not that Lee Pace is bad, or anything, in fact, he's tremendous at an ice-cold stare of disdain at 100 paces. (Thranduil vs. Severus Snape in loathing-off, film at 11!) Anyway, he was such a bastard that Legolas became much more sympathetic in comparison, and I couldn't stay mocking at him after he leapt off a cliff to grab a bat's feet. Seriously, that was such a move of stupid-crazy that I felt like I was at a tabletop D&D where someone rolled a natural 20, and everyone at said table was yelling and screaming and carrying on while the PC did something completely crazy but awesome at the same time.
Tauriel was still made of awesome throughout, although I found the violence towards her very sexualized, in a way that seemed almost out of character for the film itself. We've been presented with a universe where women (at least, the few that there are) aren't presented as overly sexualized; they're as competent and, in some cases, more powerful than the male characters they're surrounded by. So it's weird to all of a sudden to see them in a more typical action movie pose of "oh noes! I am sexually menaced!" It wasn't overplayed or gross, it was just strange, and it undercut the genuine conflict of the love triangle she was involved in.
Also, just for the record, if I was a bear shapeshifter, that is ABSOLUTELY the entrance I'd make into a battle against orcs. SUPER BADASS FALLING BEAR FTW!!!
Weird/Bad stuff: Wow, those sand worms... wormy things showed up once and then never came back. What were they doing in the meantime? ("Hey, orcs, I chipped a tooth on that last dramatic entrance, gotta go see the worm dentist. Can someone clock out for me?")
It's awesome that the townspeople were willing to fight, but I just as glad we didn't see more of what would surely have been a wholesale slaughter. :{
As I mentioned before, the geography in this film was very confusing. Middle Earth apparently has an expressway or something. *shrugs*
So now there's a whole mountain full of cursed gold... I feel like this is a setup for a horror movie franchise, somehow.
* This was one of the slashiest movies I've seen since Star Trek Into Darkness. I'm sure a plethora of Bilbo/Thorin fic is due any moment now, and I would happily accept some recs for well-written, not too histrionic or OOC pieces. For the record, though, I just shipped everyone/everyone, except the orcs, who are such unrelenting levels of awful that I just started rolling my eyes whenever they showed up on-screen.
In summary: Lots of fun all around. I've read some pretty negative reviews of this film, and I'm not sure what the reviewers went into the film wanting. It's called "The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies," not "The Hobbit: Peter Jackson sat down and asked YOU what you wanted out of a Hobbit movie," for gosh-sakes. There are five armies, there is a mountain of cursed dragon gold, and there are more than a few heroes. What did everyone expect, Citizen Hobbit? The Maltese Dragon? I don't know. Anyway, I thought it was fun and diverting, and that's exactly what I wanted when I went in, so that was perfect.