I saw it yesterday at a Hobbit Marathon (all three movies back to back). I will not disclose any spoilers and will tell you that there are several deviations from the book. If you suspend the need to follow the book, it flows as a well put together movie. It attempts to explain some “gaps” and does well to close most of them.
I saw it in IMAX 3D was pleased with the overall look and feel of the movie. Lots of action, but it did seem to have a bit of a “jumpy” or “disjointed” feel to it by running between multiple plot threads at the same time.
Some movie time was wasted on the development of third level characters. It did not have the whimsical feel that the 2nd movie suffered from.
Is it true that there is a 45 minute battle scene in CGI?
I give it two and an half stars out of four. I saw the movie in 3D/HFR format/extreme screen.
“The Battle of the Five Armies” is the last chapter in the Hobbit film saga and Peter Jackson’s relationship with the Tolkien Estate, assuming the Silmarilion is never made and Jackson is not involved. Overall the series has been good. I think the things that Jackson has been really good at is when Jackson has stuck with the novel, almost verbatim. The best sequence in the series was definitely the “Riddles in the Dark” sequence in the first one. Anything with Smaug has been good. I think Richard Armitage has been great as Thorin and Martin Freeman as Bilbo. Howard Shore has continued his excellent soundtracks for The Lord of Rings.
There is some good and bad in this movie, mostly good. Jackson gets high marks for putting the event of the Battle and the conflict with Thorin in the movie. People may complain about the CGI, but I am not sure how one would effectively film a battle sequences, the battling mountains in the first one, the Trolls, and of course, Smaug the Magnificent.
The attack by Smaug on Laketown was classic and appeared straight from the novel. The final battle is long but never boring. The final conflict, not in the Tolkien story, among Thorin and Azog; Bolg and Legolas is not bad per se, but the ninja fighting scenes got old and it went on too long. The rescue of Gandalf the Grey from Dol Guldor was almost a tribute to Jackson himself. It really wasn’t bad, it just seemed almost out of place.
Jackson has taken advantage of the Appendices that the Tolkien Estate sold when it sold the rights to the Lord of the Rings. Also, Jackson has managed to incorporate material from “The Unfinished Tales”. There is a storyline in BOFA that implies Jackson may have borrowed from the Simarillion. This storyline to me was part of the ‘bad’ – it did not really add anything and it introduced something that can never be fully explored.
The relationship between Tauriel and Fili grows, but it is not really a central point of the movie. I am not really sure why the controversy. Tauriel is really not much different from Eoywen from the “Lord of the Rings”. I wonder how people who have reacted if W.H. Auden had been alive and sent Peter Jackson letter complaining of the relationship between the two.
The politics of this movie is non-existent, but it seems to endorse limited government. Laketown is run by a Statist who has impoverished his own people to benefit of himself and his cronies. The government spies on its own people and has a bureaucracy that would not even allow a man to bring in fish without a permit. It also shows the dangers of absolute monarchs.
There were two scenes left out of the movie I expected to see, maybe they will be put in the director’s cut. One of the scenes involves Thorin and I thought in the novel it was touching, but it also demonstrated one of the themes of the Hobbit novel. The other scene would have tied in one of the best known characters of the series, making it truly a prequel. Given that the movie starts and finishes strong, with some issue in between, I recommend people see it in the theatre on the large screen.