The side-plot wastes time and distracts from the action in the second movie, and the payoff in this film does little to justify the entire sequence.Īnd then there's Tauriel, an elf played by Evangeline Lilly who was created specifically for the movie. The movie could have used much less time to fit this in-in the book, the entire story is relayed to Bilbo in just a few paragraphs-but instead it just feels like an empty excuse to get Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett, and Christopher Lee on-screen again. Inventing stuff is fine-the first movie suffered in part because it followed the events of the book too closely even when they made for poor viewing-but so much of what happened in the second movie is cast aside in the third movie that one wonders why the diversions were made in the first place. Gandalf's journey to the fortress of Dol Guldur to face down Sauron eats up a lot of screen time in the second movie, but he's quickly freed in the third movie in a weird, trippy action sequence. It invented several characters and showed situations that either didn't exist in the book or happened "off-screen" and were explained later. The Desolation of Smaug, the second of the three movies, was probably the one that strayed farthest afield from the source material. Other than Freeman's wonderful, quiet little scenes and a bare handful of others, Battle of the Five Armies is one big two-hour-and-24-minute-long argument against splitting the book up into three films. Martin Freeman has established himself as a quietly great actor with serious dramatic and comedic chops, and his scenes in these movies have consistently been the best thing about the films. Bilbo Baggins is the only character capable of eliciting genuine reactions from the audience, which is what Peter Jackson's bloated Hobbit trilogy needed more than anything-Bilbo's scenes form the kernel of what could have been a smaller, quieter, but ultimately more narratively successful series of films, one where Bilbo's personal journey isn't swallowed whole by loud Lord of the Rings-style battle sequences. It's a damn shame that the three Hobbit films feature so little of the titular hobbit. Further Reading A Tolkien nerd’s thoughts on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
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