The Hobbit : Battle of the five armies (December 2014)

david75

that view is a bit cynical..CGI offers endless possibilities..it's just strange this crew havent taken the same care with CGI that they did with LOTR...

or perhaps the CGI theyre usin is being shown up by the HFR?

Duggy747

This video from Peter Jackson's page really shows how much worse the newer films look compared to the LOTR trilogy, spit-shined to death CGI and bloom / vaseline rubbed on the lens effect.

johnny_ultimate

It's marginally better than its predecessors, if only because the shorter running time doesn't allow for quite so much filler. Not that there isn't filler - 'the star crossed lovers and Legalos too' subplot is still absolute nonsense, several characters could easily be excised completely, and there's a lot of relatively contrived building up before the titular battle kicks off. When it does, you know what you're getting really. There's one excellent setpiece before that kicks off, though, and the one time the blatant LotR links feel worthwhile (there's at least three or four other moments here that shout 'BY THE WAY, LORD OF THE RINGS HAPPENED NEXT' in amusingly unsubtle ways). The Smaug stuff should definitely have been over and done with last film, it's detrimental to the pacing and flow of this as everything just kicks off at full speed for a few minutes before slowing down into this film's self-contained arc. Strangely, it's the quieter scenes that often feel worst impacted by Jackson's CG overload, as it's very clearly characters standing in front of a green screen. It's more po-faced than either of the earlier films, but at least that means there's less lame attempts at comedy.

The whole trilogy over and done with, the fear from back in film one has been conclusively proven - it is simply too long. There's good stuff in the Hobbit trilogy, but it's lost among a whole lot of bad. It is also a series of films that have embraced technology in wholly the wrong way, and would have loved the team to more willingly stick with the effects mix that worked so well in the Lord of the Rings.

I saw the first two minutes of this in HFR in Cineworld, but there was a technical hitch and it restarted again in 24FPS - based on that two minutes of 48, I breathed a sigh of relief that I didn't have to put up with it for any longer :P

e_e

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdxJxiZYKsA

DoYouEvenLift

So they are or aren't showing it in HFR in cineworlds imax?

Sad Professor

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

So they are or aren't showing it in HFR in cineworlds imax?

They are.

BoJack Horseman

Just watched a clip of the battle scene shown on the Graham Norton show.

The CGI is startlingly poor..... its quite incredible how far weta have fallen.

Heroditas

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

Just watched a clip of the battle scene shown on the Graham Norton show.

The CGI is startlingly poor..... its quite incredible how far weta have fallen.

It looks like a big screen version of something like Rome: Total War or Medieval: Total War.
In fact, I could just power up Medieval: Total War with the Middle Earth mod and stick it up on the TV... dear oh dear.

billyhead

Would it be a big mistake it I went to see this without seeing the previous hobbit films which I believe were poor. I saw all of the LOTR trilogy.

FunLover18

billyhead wrote:

Would it be a big mistake it I went to see this without seeing the previous hobbit films which I believe were poor. I saw all of the LOTR trilogy.

why are you interested in seeing it then?

FunLover18

FunLover18 wrote: »

why are you interested in seeing it then?

Things go boom??

billyhead

FunLover18 wrote: »

why are you interested in seeing it then?

Well I enjoyed the LOTR trilogy but heard the 1st 2 of the recent movies were rubbish but this is supposed to be the best out of the 3 with a big battle scene thrown in

FunLover18

billyhead wrote:

Well I enjoyed the LOTR trilogy but heard the 1st 2 of the recent movies were rubbish but this is supposed to be the best out of the 3 with a big battle scene thrown in

from what I've read here The Battle scene looks ****. Might be better waiting for some reviews. saying it's the best in the series is just damming with faint praise imo

david75

Going to a midnight showing of this tonight in the lighthouse
I'm excited enough to go to a midnight showing but i've probably never been this prepared to be disappointed by a film involving a world and series of characters i've long cared about, ever..

i'll be back later, either ranting or raving..

Irish94

Are people going to be posting spoilers? Just wondering as I won't be able to see the film until next weekend. I know what happens from reading the books, but I would like to avoid hearing anything just in case!

.ak

billyhead wrote: »

Well I enjoyed the LOTR trilogy but heard the 1st 2 of the recent movies were rubbish but this is supposed to be the best out of the 3 with a big battle scene thrown in

Just go see them all. Nobody sees a movie like you do.

david75

Avoid the Tolkien FB groups....they dont even care i read a bunch of unmarked spoilers today...that boils my piss completely.

OwaynOTT

david75 wrote: »

Avoid the Tolkien FB groups....they dont even care i read a bunch of unmarked spoilers today...that boils my piss completely.

Spoilers are abroad tonight and recently. On the radio, in reviews and on forums. It's the hobbit most all ready know how it's goes. The major beats anyway.

david75

I dont have anything whatsoever to say in an at least constructive manner, about this film.

apart from never see it. ever.

it was awful.

I will have to vent my spleen tomorrow.

Royce McCutcheon

Having watched the second one just before this one, there is no comparison, I was extremly disappointed in the 3rd one, several moments in serious parts of the film where everyone started laughing in the theatre higlighted the amount of rdiculous things that happened 5/10

david75

You were there too?
twice the audience laughed out loud at the shambolic setups they were watching. I hid behind my hands..
it was embarrassingly bad..

Greenmachine

Can't wait.

Roar

Well I'm glad that's over with.

It's not terrible, but it's also not very good. And I was incredibly bored throughout the battle. Seems to last longer than the rest of the movies combined.

It should never have been split into three movies.

Dan_Solo

Irish94 wrote: »

Are people going to be posting spoilers? Just wondering as I won't be able to see the film until next weekend. I know what happens from reading the books, but I would like to avoid hearing anything just in case!

How can you have any idea at all what will happen in Peter Jackson's New Adventures in Middle Earth just because you've read the books?

Dan_Solo

Dan_Solo wrote: »

How can you have any idea at all what will happen in Peter Jackson's New Adventures in Middle Earth just because you've read the books?

Because the main story pretty much follows and the rest is an amalgamation of appendices

Dan_Solo

Deleted User wrote: »

Because the main story pretty much follows and the rest is an amalgamation of appendices

The orcs and elves fighting on a bridge to Laketown beg to differ!

Dan_Solo

Dan_Solo wrote: »

The orcs and elves fighting on a bridge to Laketown beg to differ!

Not seen the recent but that's not a huge deal

Dan_Solo

Deleted User wrote: »

Not seen the recent but that's not a huge deal

Er, that happened in the second movie?
Try to find that in the book...

Dan_Solo

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Er, that happened in the second movie?
Try to find that in the book...

It's still a nothing and just fleshing out the elves.

david75

expecting at least a few posts shortly about their experience watching this tonight

OwaynOTT

david75 wrote: »

expecting at least a few posts shortly about their experience watching this tonight

The 3 hobbit movies have been a massive missed opportunity but they still have some good bits in them.
The CGI is bad in places but not watching it in 3D and 48fps really helps it out. Azog looked excellent in the latest one and I actually liked him, the only Orc with a bit of personality.

This movie wasn't bad but shouldn't have existed. Massive editing of the three movies and cutting them down to two and we would of had an excellent addition to middle earth.


They should have started the movies with the battle where they got rid of the Witch King of Angmar and introduced the threat of Sauron that way and left the White Council attack until the climax of the last movie. Also here Legolas's mother dies creating the tension between him and his father and his father and the white council. With the threat growing throughout the movies, with Gandalf distracted by quest to the mountain/Smaug. Gandalf would have left for his confrontation at the start of the 2nd movie after meeting Ragashast, leaving the others to go onto Laketown to wait for him. Thorn gets impatient - the greed already getting to him - convinces them to go in and they unleash Smaug. Gandalf gets defeated and the white council rescue and banish Suaron at the same time as the battle of the five armies and death of Smaug. Gandalf calls the eagles, so he can get to the battle at Dale and helps save the day. Cut out the dwarf elf romance, increase the part with the spiders and the wood in the first movie and remove some of the superfluous crap.

davidrowe

I have to say I came away fairly disappointed (after watching earlier tonight). I'm a massive Tolkien fan, and I enjoyed Jackson's LOTR films, but alarm bells started ringing for me ever when The Hobbit was split into two parts, never mind 3 parts. It's simply not a story of the same scale as LOTR, and I think that Jackson set expectations too high (particularly for those who haven't read any Tolkien) by splitting The Hobbit into 3 parts. Overall, it's probably about as disappointing as I expected from the outset. And I do acknowledge that content from the Appendices was featured. That was probably my favourite part of the film. I won't say any more for fear of spoiling ;-)

davidrowe

I have to say I came away fairly disappointed (after watching earlier tonight). I'm a massive Tolkien fan, and I enjoyed Jackson's LOTR films, but alarm bells started ringing for me back when The Hobbit was split into two parts, never mind 3 parts. It's simply not a story of the same scale as LOTR, and I think that Jackson set expectations too high (particularly for those who haven't read any Tolkien) by splitting The Hobbit into 3 parts. Overall, it's probably about as disappointing as I expected from the outset. And I do acknowledge that content from the Appendices was featured. That was probably my favourite part of the film. I won't say any more for fear of spoiling ;-)

Heat_Wave

5/10.

Very poor movie.

Far too many laugh out loud moments for this movie to be taken seriously. The special effects were too ridiculous. Whoever said it was more like a video game was bang on.

Would not watch again.

then why 5/10?????

Cookie_Monster

terrible turd of a film.

Was saying to a friend just before it started that it'll date way worse than the first trilogy. Then up pops a 5 min long 'thanks NZ for 20 years' bit and the clips from LOTR looks great, the new ones look terrible. Everything looks CG.

Aside from that it just dragged and continuity was non existent, weapons, goat etc all appearing out of nowhere.
Azog has magically had the old blade impailed on his arm removed and another inserted in the same place just cos.
Scenes with

sauron & galadriele and thorin on the gold lake were jarring and actually annoying, almost painful to watch

Also

**** you eagles, always ****ing late, always. never mind the thousands that died cos you never turn up to anything on time.

:pac:

jaykhunter

Hey can people giving their review of Hobbit 3, can you give your rating for Hobbit 1 & 2 aswell, so we see where you're coming from? Cheers.

Royce McCutcheon

Hobbit 1- 7/10
Hobbit 2-8/10
Hobbit 3-5/10

cloud493

Would I be able to enjoy this without having seen the first two?

funnights74

Hobbit 1 - 7/10
Hobbit 2 - 6/10
Hobbit 3 - 7/10

Frankie5Angels

I'm torn. I'm gonna watch it again to make up my mind (mainly because I snuck in to watch it on my own, she wasn't available :pac:).

There were a couple of moments for me where I facepalmed, though, namely

the rescue of Gandalf, where two quotes were ridiculous "do you need help milady" and "you should have stayed dead by Elrond

. The whole Tauriel/Dwarf thing was a bit crap too.

loveisdivine

I enjoyed it. There were a few things that irked me a little but didn't stop me enjoying the film as a whole. I'll spoiler the bits I didn't like

Why did they make Billy Connollys character entirely CGI? Thought that was really rubbish. It really did make it look like a video game. Too much CGI in general but that bit was particularly bad.

I don't know if this bit happens in the books but at the end when Thranduil told Legolas to go and find Stryder just for the sake of it, annoyed me too. It seems like it was just a way to mention Stryder. Felt out of place to me anyway.

Roar

loveisdivine wrote: »

I don't know if this bit happens in the books but at the end when Thranduil told Legolas to go and find Stryder just for the sake of it, annoyed me too. It seems like it was just a way to mention Stryder. Felt out of place to me anyway.

I groaned when that happened, and two people next to me just laughed. Terrible sh!t altogether.

As regards

Billy Connolly being completely CG

, it took me right out of the movie. It looked like something out of Polar Express.

Son0vagun

Absolutely loved it. Fantastic movie. As a Tolkien fan it was everything I wanted. With all the character building done in the first two films this film was all about the action. The battle was beyond awesome. Magical sequence after sequence. And when it got tender it got tender, I shed many a tear during it. Only gripe would be that Radagast and Beorn where not in it enough.

It's my favorite of all the six Middle Earth movies. Can't wait to see it again, going tomorrow.

.E_C_K_S.

Son0vagun wrote: »

Absolutely loved it. Fantastic movie. As a Tolkien fan it was everything I wanted. With all the character building done in the first two films this film was all about the action. The battle was beyond awesome. Magical sequence after sequence. And when it got tender it got tender, I shed many a tear during it. Only gripe would be that Radagast and Beorn where not in it enough.

It's my favorite of all the six Middle Earth movies. Can't wait to see it again, going tomorrow.

Not sure if you are joking or not. I actually have the complete opposite view to yours strangely enough.

I don't know where to begin. It was just horrendous for the most part, very little I enjoyed about it.

I'm unable to convey here what I didn't like about it which is weird!

Hobbit 1: 7.5/10
Hobbit 2: 7/10
Hobbit 3: 4.5/10

yankdotcom

went to see it last night and was disappointed by it
its a 30 minute story stretched out over 2 and a half hours, the ending of the film felt very rushed,i know the events have to lead up to the first lord of the rings movie but i would have liked to see some better conclusions towards the characters stories in the movie.
there was also a great chance to show the audience the corruption of saruman which never materialised,


to answer loveisdivines question about the scene with legolas :he doesnt even appear in the hobbit book at all,why he was in the movie i will never know

BlitzKrieg

I've been holding off seriously judging these movies til I saw all 3.

I was very nervous going in because I felt where they ended 2 was a very poor point and made me nervous that 3 was going to have a case of whiplash.

I found my fears were founded but not for the reasons I expected.

overall it's the weakest of the 3 hobbit films, I'll say 2 was the strongest, 1 was the most problematic and this one is just weak, mostly by mistakes made in 1 and 2.

So to sum up

1. I felt dragged on too long while working with so little of the source material, its opening is like return of the king in reverse, the film takes forever just to begin. And while the moments with Gollum and other character centric pieces were nice, it started the trend of these odd action setpieces that will haunt this entire trilogy. (in the first one it was particularly the goblin cave escape sequence. I also found the Orc villain initially very bland and uninteresting and the film felt it was struggling to tell the story of the hobbit but tie it much more firmly to the lord of the rings trilogy.

2. Continued being haunted by those weird action set pieces, this time with the barrels on the river, buuuut, the elves scenes were good, I really like the laketown scenes and smaug was fantastic. Also the orc villain got fleshed out a bit better. Course the major issue with Desolation of Smaug was where they ended the film. They built up and up and up Smaug and they have this action setpiece again the movies are haunted by these and as far as I can remember does not exist in the original book where the dwarves fight smaug and then it ends on this massive cliffhanger where Smaug is going to destroy laketown with his "I am Death" speech.

3. Which falls so flatly on its face if anyone has read the book cause they know that he dies bloody quickly and the story shifts to focus on the people fighting over the mountain and Torin's fall into madness. Which causes the third film *despite* being 1 film too many for this book feeling very rushed and cramped. Everything happens far too quickly, these is little sense of time or build up. And everything is collapsing on top of each other, the battle got a bit ridiculous, I really wanted to cut in these lines from the bad deep rising movie at the arrival of each army

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRUy1mJdymE

cause they all arrived on the battlefield one after the other so bloody quickly. Course the action set pieces raise their ugly heads again. CGI billy Connolly was terrifying. Torins madness didnt have time to actually brew and most damningly of all, the lord of the rings tie in plot points that led to there being 3 films and the overlong first film went bloody nowhere, particularily elements like the corruption of saruman, the capture of gollum etc would have been a nice endcap to a plot thread that in the films went nowhere. It wasnt all bad. Martin Freeman was enjoyable, and I will say the

Bit where Torin throws the rock back to the orc leader on the ice

was among the most badass boss moments I've seen this year. I genuinely cheered at that. On the villains, I grew to like the main orc boss, his bit in the battle overwatching was interesting, it's a shame the film didnt step back more for that to show the five armies moving around but his second in command was like him in the first film, a blank slate that we were meant to fear or something but he was dull and took waaaaay too long to die off.

Essentially it felt like 3 was rushed and a lot of what was built on primarily by 2 was either wasted because where it was cut (smaug's threats to Bard at the beginning of 3 have little effect when its right at the beginning of a film, but if that was at the end of 2 it would have been a great climax) or it went nowhere (the elf/dwarf love interest, the necromancer plotline) the vfx were ropey at places (that golden floor sequence)


I'd imagine watching back to back this one would improve running straight off 2 but the core problem of this whole part of the book felt very rushed in the film with little sense of time.

TheSheriff

^^^^

Completely agree with all this. I left the cinema last night feeling let down and tired. It was too drawn out and yet none of the arcs I wanted to see were fleshed out.

This should have been a lead in to the original trilogy - Saurmans corruption was something I particularly wanted to see.

CGI everywhere - it was like an animated adventure.

Also Smaug at the beginning? He lasted all of three minutes.

Disappointing.

micks_address

TheSheriff wrote: »

^^^^

Completely agree with all this. I left the cinema last night feeling let down and tired. It was too drawn out and yet none of the arcs I wanted to see were fleshed out.

This should have been a lead in to the original trilogy - Saurmans corruption was something I particularly wanted to see.

CGI everywhere - it was like an animated adventure.

Also Smaug at the beginning? He lasted all of three minutes.

Disappointing.

Seen today at the imax actually fell asleep in middle for few minutes and didn't feel like I missed anything... Couple of key sequences in all three films that put together would have made two very good films.. Maybe a fan edit some day? I liked the ending tied to very nicely to the fellowship.. But my standout moment from all three was probably golllum

Smartly Dressed

Someone said that in the original Star Wars films, George Lucas used special effects to tell a story, but in the prequels, he used a "story" to tell special effects.

Although the Hobbit films aren't nearly as bad, I still got that sense in some parts, which really took me out of the experience.

There's a segment in one of the vlogs where Peter Jackson requires a CGI shot of goblins moving something along the walkways. A stopwatch appears and the SFX team hammer out the shot in just a few minutes, and they seem terribly proud of themselves. I think they should've taken a bit longer with it. Or better yet, just avoid CGI as much as possible.

One last edit: did they blow the budget on Smaug?