The Morning After: Dec. 22, 2014

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December 22, 2014

Wesley Lovell

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Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Peter Jackson brings to a close his magnificent trilogy in grand style with this epic adventure pitting armies of elves, men, orcs, dwarves and a mysterious fifth group against one another. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies more than lives up to its name with rousing heroics and sorrowful pitfalls aplenty.

The prior film left off as the dragon Smaug took flight from his hoard to destroy the village of Lake Town, unleashed in an angry fit over the deception of a little hobbit with a magic ring. Here, we start off with the massive serpent laying siege to the town while horrified residents attempt to flee. This opening sequence starts the final film off with high tension, noble men and the crumbling psyche of the dwarves.

Jackson is easily one of cinema’s greatest battle sequence directors. There are glorious dynamics, clever constructions and sweeping overhead battle shots that make the film feel both epic and dire. While the paranoid dwarf king Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) desperately searches for his people’s birthright, a fearful Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) sneaks off in the night to attempt to stave off war and deliver into the hands of Thorin’s perceived enemies, that which he holds most dear, the Arkenstone.

To date, the franchise has had trouble avoiding the tendency to over-explain every event that’s taking place. Sometimes subtlety and visual explanations do more than mere words. That’s one of the reason The Hobbit works better than its predecessors. Jackson does a fair bit of over-sharing, but he relies heavily on POV shots and long glances to create tension and narrative without uttering a word. This film marks a high water mark for his current franchise, though The Lord of the Rings trilogy is still quite a bit better.

Comments

3 responses to “The Morning After: Dec. 22, 2014”

Almasy

December 23, 2014

I see. Thanks.

My problems with these films are its length (The first two at least). They seem like extended editions. Especially the first one, it wasn’t necessary 40 minutes of “an unexpected party” or the radagast introduction. The action scenes are very cool but seem to drag on, and they all remind me of the monsters chase in King Kong where the party ran and ran and ran, and the battle of kong with the dinosaur as they fell and fell and fell. Also there’s too much cgi, LOTR feels more real.

The desolation of smaug is a bit better, but I hated they way they met Beorn, too much tension, in the book they way they meet him is very funny and joyful. Jackson has forgotten that he must make us laugh every once in a while like in LOTR.

I loved Tauriel and accept the romance theme but why are they overusing Legolas? He fights with the orc with a sword? what the hell was that?, he never uses a sword in LOTR.

Actually I liked the ending with Smaug saying: I am death and then the song of ed sheeran.

I have a good hopes for the 3rd one, especially because is the shortest one. We’ll see

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Almasy

December 22, 2014

I don’t remember your review on the desolation of smaug but clearly you are fan of this new trilogy

I’m not.

I loved the original trilogy but this one, I don’t go as far as to hate it, but some of its flaws are difficult to forgive. I have yet to see this one.

My question for you is this Wesley: Which of the three hobbit films is the best for you and why. And which is the worst and also why.

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1. Wesley Lovell
  
  December 22, 2014
  
  I think this is the best of the bunch. Mainly because it has some very subtle reaction shots that tell stories that conventional dialogue doesn’t. I like when a filmmaker tries to use a simple glance, a longing stare or other facial expression to convey what’s going on in the character’s soul. This film, better than the others, does that. It’s also a very subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) condemnation of systemic greed and the value of family and friends over material possessions.
  
  I rated all three equally, so I can’t really say any is the worst, but I think my issue with the middle chapter was that the beginning of this third film should have come at the end of that one, with the people fleeing the remnants of Lake Town as the final shots of the film. I understand its dramatic importance in this film, but it feels tacked-on rather than organically part of this chapter.
  
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