The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies #MyReview

Similar to Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, the film The Battle of Five Armies tried to tie in the two Middle-earth trilogies through the last installment of The Hobbit, the prelude to The Lord of the Rings. I felt that the screenwriters overemphasized certain points that would reemerge in The Lord of the Rings. They also obviously took some of the parts of the novel out of context.

For instance, the Master of Laketown does not die in town or by the dragon, according to J.R.R. Tolkien's book, after which the movie is based. The name of Radagast the Wizard never appeared in The Hobbit book, nor did that of Saruman, Galadriel, or Legolas. The Pale Orc and Bolg were very minor characters in the book, and the name Tauriel is totally nonexistent in any of Tolkien's mythological tales. A cousin once told me that a screen novelization based off a book will always be drastically different from the book and that the movie should be criticized in regards to whether or not it was a good film, not on how it represents the book.

So I guess The Battle of Five Armies was a fairly good film. However, in the extended edition of the film, which was rated R, I felt like the graphic artists were just generating gross images just for the sake of grossness itself, such as the sequence where Alfred is killed or where a number of trolls get decapitated all at once. It was starting to remind me of Jack the Giant Slayer. Also, the unavoidable ending is sort of depressing, like the last Lord of the Rings movie. Thorin, Fili, and Kili are killed. Since they died in the novel, it is only proper that they died in the film adaptation. But to me, the movie seemed as if it was missing something. It left me a bit unsatisfied and wanting.


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