The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Mum, Naomi, Rebecca, Tom, Cassie, Jordan, Amberly, Tamara, Gemma

And with that I guess the cinematic Middle Earth saga is over. Not surprisingly, it's the shortest film of the 6, as it's only really covering one chapter of the book. All the story points wrap up pretty quickly in the first 15 minutes and then... BATTLE.

I did not know that Billy Connolly had been cast in this film. Amusement.

The battle scenes here are, understandably, not as grand in scope as Return of the King. They do keep things interesting with multiple one on one fights in various terrains and the thematic reasoning for all these invented characters and subplots get payoffs, to varying degrees. I did like Thorin and Azog's final showdown. Boss Level.

And seeing the old guard kick some butt at the beginning was great fun too. That set up a bunch of other plot elements, that tied into Lord of the Rings, but I was kinda hoping we'd see more in this film after the battle. It appears the didn't want to multiple ending syndrome that Return of the King was criticised for and though there's a few jumps in time, it wraps up pretty swiftly.

I think this is a film that'll work better in a marathon, I'm glad I had recently seen Desolation of Smaug and everything was fresh because the film picks up right where we left and hits the ground running.

48fps 3D again. And once again after a few minutes, you're used to it. It's a very different look. I don't mind it so much for these films with their constant kinetic camera pans, it does help smooth them out. But for purists you've always got the option to see it normally, which is great.

It's strange because it feels a little lacklustre compared to return of the king, but really the scale is not meant to be anywhere near as big as that, and if you watched them in order, it'd progress well. It could also just be the CG battle action fatigue.