After 13 years of Lord of the Rings it all (most likely at least) comes to a close with The Hobbit: The Battle of the 5 Armies. Well, it was much better than the 2nd film in the trilogy at least. Honestly though, there was something missing about the whole film. I enjoyed it, but it seemed like something was lacking from the narrative. First of all, visually it was stunning; Peter Jackson remains superior in his ability to film cinematography that is stunning, and create such a visual feast. Areas he seems to be improving upon are his action sequences; they're becoming much more dynamic and interesting, but he still does over the top things that come off a little ridiculous at times. This the 3rd Hobbit film came across to me as one very large, and expansive action sequence, much like the final Harry Potter film. All of the performances were excellent, though the ones that stood out of course were Martin Freeman as Bilbo and Richard Armitage as Thorin; they were of course the best characters to watch interact with others, and more importantly with each other, although Lee Pace as Thranduil was pretty awesome to watch (I really enjoyed his character). I could have done without Luke Evans as Bard and everyone else from Laketown; if all of them would have been eliminated from the film I would have loved it more (I thought it took away from the main narrative, and the people were just so boring, obnoxious and just not interesting). Cate Blanchet, Christopher Lee, and Hugo Weaving all had a nice part in the film, which was part of one my most favorite scenes (see preview below). The writing/screenplay was better this time around than opposed to the 2nd film, but still not as good as the first film, and the same goes for Howard Shore's score which was good, but the music from the 1st film in my mind was far more superior. There can be no complaints about the special effects which were amazing, but the 3-D could have been much better; not a lot of things popped out of the screen, there was mostly just depth to the scenes in general. As for accuracy to the book....it's been a while since I've read the book, so I'm not entirely certain, but it seems relatively accurate save for the liberties they took with some characters and the timeline. All in all, it was a very entertaining film and I think I would watch it again, possibly even own it, but was it amazing and breathtaking......no. I left the theater thinking "eh, that was nice." It should be interesting to see what Peter Jackson does now with his time and energy. I would personally like to see him direct a historical epic and give Ridley Scott a run for his money, or the same idea but do science fiction. Winter begins today apparently, and there are only ten days left of 2014, and four days until Christmas. Have fun celebrating the rest of the year, until 2015 begins. And think about this, only 85 years more until 2100.Documentary Overview on The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings
The Hobbit clip
