Review: The Hobbit The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

Me and Allie were texting each other this morning and I mentioned whether we had posted our review of The Hobbit.  Much to both of our surprise and shock, we hadn't even written it.  Our excuse is that we both saw it not long before Christmas and then the excitement of Christmas and presents took over.  We were both pretty amazed that we missed it though as we both loved it.  Lucky there is two of us to remind each other....

To think you reviewed The Fault in Our Stars twice before reviewing this once...shocking, I tell you, shocking! Technically, I wrote this one before the second Fault in our Stars review but was waiting on your verdict before I could publish ;-)

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is the third installment of The Hobbit trilogy and it picks up where the second one left off with Smaug heading to Laketown and causing destruction, until Bard steps up and saves the day (swoon!!).  This however, leave the mountain unprotected and soon word spreads that the gold is up for grabs, bringing five armies together for the ultimate battle.

Did we really need Bard as the title image for this?! Could we not have had my lovely elven king instead? Or Bilbo himself!? Sigh... Nope, I started it, I chose the title image...but you can have the second one....

Yay! Thanks :)

I think this was my favourite of all the Middle Earth films not just The Hobbit trilogy, I was engrossed throughout (unlike the second instalment where I fell as well until the giant spider scene) and I understood the story.  I still don't understand most of the LOTR story, making it quite hard to enjoy sometimes.  I did find the Smaug scenes at the beginning a little bit odd, they felt like they should have been at the end of the last one, however I think that would have made the second one the longest film ever and this one a bit short (in Middle Earth movie terms) so I guess that's why it was done.

After reading the book from being far too impatient to wait for the third installment, we really didn't need three parts. As much as I enjoyed The Battle of Five Armies, it was almost literally a giant battle scene made 100 times more dramatic than in the book. Which I do understand as the book is for children, but unnecessary regardless.

I still feel a bit sad that we will never know what happens to the characters between this movie and the LOTR movies, particularly Tauriel.  As soon as I got out of the cinema, I googled her to see why she wasn't with Legolas in the next lot of movies and it turns out she wasn't in it because she was made up.  She was never in the books, therefore was never considered in the LOTR's movies and was specifically made up for The Hobbit Trilogy.

Yeah, again, another reason why three parts just weren't needed. Every story needs a romance arc I guess? It was a nice touch though and I did really love Tauriel.

The ensemble cast were brilliant as always, a particular highlight for me being Richard Armitage his portrayal of Thorin as he begins to lose his mind is played out incredibly. 

There were a few character entries, that I think may have had more relevance in the book, Saruman for example in the short scene with Galadriel and Gandalf appeared unfitting to the rest of the film and a little redundant.  Maybe there is more explanation to this in the book? Any readers want to enlighten me?

Now I'll probably make myself sound like an idiot, and a much smarter fan will call me out on this as I've only read the Hobbit, but from what I heard the scenes with Saruman and Elrond and the others were put in to forge some kind of bridge between the end of the Hobbit films and the start of the Lord of the Rings ones. Thanks! (Not just a pretty face you know)

But yes! I loved the cast as much as I did in the other films. Richard Armitage was particularly brilliant as the good guy you wanted to shout at for being an ass!

Anyway, back to the review.  A great finale enough action to keep you entertained but not so much that can no longer tell who is fighting who and I actually understood the story which is a bonus... Now I need to do a marathon of all 6 films over a weekend, see if I can understand LOTR any better!!

WHYY can we not give half scores?! I don't want to open that can of worms but this is one of those scenarios I was on about before we even started this blog! It's a 7.5 from me...7 seems too harsh but I gave The Desolation of Smaug an 8 and I preferred that one to this... We are not getting into the half score debate again, you got 'out of 10' in stead of 5 so schtum! ;-) I'm trying to work out what 7.5 would work out to be if we used that system...3.77777/5?

My Hometown Blogathon

The lovely Caz at Let's Go To The Movies is hosting her first Blogathon right now, and she's come up with a brilliant idea. Everyone who takes part is going to put a film/TV/theatre orientated post about their hometown. It's going to be so interesting to read everyone's posts! I had very little knowledge about my own hometown on this subject before drafting this post, so it'll be insightful to read the others.

Jenna lives in Birmingham, and I live in a little town just outside it, although I've worked in the city centre for the last 5 years so I would say it counts! We may not have the likes of Brad Pitt roaming our streets on the weekend or the film crew for the next Transformers film closing our roads off for shooting, but we do have a few cool links.

Does the name Julie Walters ring any bells? She played Molly Weasley in the Harry Potter series. Julie was born in Birmingham in 1950, and got kicked out of grammar school for bad behavior! She went on to train as a nurse at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital before leaving to study English and Drama at what is now known as Manchester Metropolitan University. In 2009, Julie received a star in Birmingham's walk of stars on its famous 'Golden Mile', Broad Street.

I'm not sure how many of our BBC programmes are popular across the pond (apart from Sherlock and Dr Who!) so you may not have even heard of this before, but BBC's Peaky Blinders is set and filmed in Birmingham. It's a historical drama based on a criminal gang in the late 19th century. Apparently, they got their name, Peaky Blinders, from the disturbing fact that they sewed razor blades into their flat caps to use as a weapon.

If you haven't heard of the TV Show itself, you've probably heard of its main actor, Cillian Murphy. Tom Hardy has also recently joined the cast for Season 2. Since writing this I learnt that Season 1 aired on the US version of Netflix on 30th September 2014, and Season 2 will launch later in November.

I'd just like to give a mention to the Cineworld Broad Street cinema too. It's not my local but Jenna & I have seen a few films there together. It's also been home to a few premieres, namely Tom Hardy's fairly recent film, Locke, Peaky Blinders Season 2 and if I remember correctly, Dr Seuss' The Lorax.

This looked really interesting so I thought I would do a little research myself. 

The man who played R2D2, Kenny Baker was actually born in Birmingham in 1934.  Kenny is one of only 2 actors who have starred in ALL six Star Wars movies (so far!).

I personally live about 10 minutes walk from Sarehole Mill which after moving to Birmingham in 1896 was a haunt for JRR Tolkien and his brother.  Many of these areas including Moseley Bog were inspiration for The Shire and Hobbiton in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit - New Zealand pfft, they should have filmed in Hall Green, Birmingham!!

Lastly (but might be pushing it a little bit) Birmingham is in the Midlands and I found out that Superman IV, that was supposed to be set in New York was actually filmed in Milton Keynes which is also in the Midlands.  Apparently, due to budget constraints after the first 3 films they didn't have the spend to film in New York.  Supposedly, if you watch the film you never see the top of the buildings because Milton Keynes doesn't have skyscrapers.  The UN building that is used in the film is actually Milton Keynes train station.

I hope this is somewhat interesting to read, but it's certainly been interesting to research my own local area in terms of the film and TV business! Thanks again for hosting this blogathon Caz, we've loved taking part.