The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
By Michael Pitts
I am not the biggest Lord of the Rings fan-boy, but I love the original movies so naturally I went to the theater to see the concluding chapter of the prequel series: The Hobbit. I was pretty impressed by Peter Jackson's(director) last addition to the franchise, but it's easy to be impressed when you're not expecting much isn't it?
The beginning of the movie does in an incredible job in immersing the viewer. There is no prologue or "what happened last time" introduction, it's just the audience and the dragon. The downside of this is that if you haven't seen the first two installations of the series, then you may start off a little confused watching this one, but this is expected. It is clear at the beginning of the movie that there is no messing around in the special effects department. Smaug the dragon looks elegant and menacing as ever and the scenes including him had the audience on the edge of their chairs.
As for the special effects, I feel that this movie really nailed it. People began to become skeptical of the newer "Hobbit" movies because things started to look different. However I feel that this movie had the perfect combination of actual actors with make-up, and computer generated graphics. Although the "boss" Orcs, or "bad guys" were mostly done with CGI, the armies on screen were actually groups of actors! This is a refreshing flashback to the way things were in the early 2000's when the original movies were made.
A little more time into the movie and things start to "slow down" (everything is relative; the middle scenes of the movie would't seem so slow if the movie didn't open with a fight against a flying, fire-breathing dragon!!). The story is thick with character development and exciting connections between the original LOTR movies and the plot of the Hobbit. As the movie continues the action kicks right back in and all of the plot developments and twists work there way into the flashy battle scenes.
Overall, this movie was very entertaining and did feel like sufficient closure to the Lord of the Rings Saga. The beautiful thing about "The Hobbit" is that the small prequel book left much room for Peter Jackson to impress his vision of the story. Although there were no plot disagreements between the movie and the original text, Jackson felt free to add in all sorts of cameos and connections to his original movie trilogy. The event labelled "The Battle of the Five Armies" used to seem so low-stakes compared to Frodo Baggins' journey through Middle earth in LOTR, but somehow, I was just as excited watching this movie as I was "Return of the King". Jackson once again proved himself to be a brilliant directer and creator in this film. He demonstrated his deep knowledge of "Middle-earth" and the characters that compose it. The only complaint I had about the movie was a usual one of Peter Jackson's films. It seemed at times that the special effects in the action scenes where a little over-the-top. Everything looked great, but it seemed sometimes that minor battle scenes had way too much screen time. I think that if Jackson had prioritized the events in this movie better, then the pacing would have improved much more. However this final chapter summarizes the series and brings a clean intro to "Fellowship of the Ring", Jackson's first LOTR movie from 2001.
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