It's sad. It's sad that this was the last ever visit to Middle Earth. There will no longer be any more movies based on the books by J. R. R. Tolkien... unless they reboot the whole thing, which won't be anytime soon. I'm not sure if I would want that anyway.
Yes, The Battle Of The Five Armies was epic. Five armies converge at one point to do battle. However, The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King was so much more than this one.
Don't get me wrong, this was a fine addition to the trilogy and also a worthy finale; but it was a still disappointing in the sense that, coming from the very same director who made The Return Of The King what it was back in the day, this should have had so much more.
For one, the action sequences in this, though surpassed what was achieved in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, I thought it wasn't as good as the barrel escape sequence in The Desolation Of Smaug. There weren't a lot of "wow" moments in this one; and even when there was, it wasn't as fantastic.
But there's no wonder why I love the elves, they are the ones that can instill awe in the audience with their agility and grace. That's why Peter Jackson brought Orlando Bloom back. Otherwise there would be even less "wow" moments.
What was great here were the performances by Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage, and to a certain extent, Lee Pace and Luke Evans. Freeman was the heart of this movie while Armitage was the soul. Thought here were some choices that I didn't like from Jackson, but the acting was never at fault.
The pacing by Jackson was quite tight, I wasn't bored at all throughout the long running time. Coupled with Howard Shore's music, they movie progression was very well done.
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To go into some of the negatives would be delving into SPOILERS. So be warned.
Evangeline Lilly's Tauriel was at a disadvantage, having being created for this trilogy only, there wasn't any conclusion to the character. I'm wondering if Jackson purposely left her with an open ending so that a spin-off could happen. I would watch it.
And maybe this is also why Jackson chose the less sensible route here, which was to not kill her off, instead he killed off Aidan Turner's Kili. What would have made more sense here and in order to fit in to the continuation through the next trilogy, would be to have Tauriel killed off while saving Kili; causing Legolas to have that inner disdain and hatred for the dwarves as seen in The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring.
I didn't care much for the love story once again. This was one of those subplots that didn't really fit into the whole story. And not to mention that slow-motion crap when Kili died.
I also didn't like how rams suddenly became available to Armitage's Thorin just when he needed it towards the end to chase after Manu Bennett's Azog. And those rams just ran over the enemies like they were bowling pins. Now why couldn't they do that earlier?
And I would have preferred Thorin to come out of his trance in a better way than getting swallowed by a ground made of gold. I thought that could have been written better, or with more reason and significance.
But I did like how Jackson brought back Christopher Lee, Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving for one battle. That was a nice touch.
Also, Smaug probably didn't last more than the first 15 minutes, and only had very little lines; but those lines were powerful from the mouth of Benedict Cumberbatch.
But Stephen Fry was written off too quickly, as were the characters Radagast and Beorn who only appeared for a split second. They may come in more in the extended Blu ray version though.
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The biggest negative, however, for me, has to be how even after 3 movies, I am still unfamiliar with most of the other dwarves. It's almost as if they had no personality, and this has been the case since the first movie. I'm not sure if there's any way of fixing this, or maybe it's just me because I was never interested in the dwarven mythology.
But having said that, Thorin by the end of this movie has kind of redeemed the dwarves for me. Just like after the second movie, I had more respect for the race after seeing what they can do.
This was a fun movie with some character-driven plots, but overall, didn't do better than the second installment. I would have loved to see this on the IMAX though, but too bad.
One ridiculous, jarring moment was at the end of the movie when the credit started running, Billy Boyd's beautiful and apt song was suddenly substituted by a hip hop song with lyrics talking about a girl in a club. I thought we were getting punked in the cinema. That was very weird.
P.S. Who was that Asian looking person that suddenly popped up on screen out of nowhere?? That was very random! Was it that diverse in Middle Earth??
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