The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies

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Celestialhost's avatar
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I went to the cinema to see the new Hobbit film yesterday. I was very much looking forward to it and indeed enjoyed it immensely. I went with my parents who had not seen the previous parts of the trilogy. They also enjoyed it.

The secret to enjoying the Hobbit movies is to keep in mind that it is not the same story as the book. The book Hobbit is a children's fairytale, the films are an adult epic consciously created to follow in the tone and genre of the LOTR films. If you go to the cinema expecting to see a faithful adaptation of the book, you will be unable to enjoy them.

Given the fundamental differences between the book and the film, The Battle of Five Armies is the easiest to enjoy for somebody who loves the book. The first two films make much greater use of the book's narrative and so the differences are manifested more starkly. In contrast, most of the material in the third film is entirely original, or else derived from other Tolkien sources. One does not have to bother trying to correlate book and film.

My favorite part of the film was Galdriel's confrontation with Sauron. Galdriel is my favorite Middle Earth character and it was great to see her in action. I liked the fact that she goes into battle wearing only a dress and barefoot. She is a goddess-like character, and goddesses don't need armour or shoes. Of course it was disappointing that she did not tear down Dol-Guldur as she does in Tolkien's supplementary material. This probably stems from the decision to have the fortress of Dol-Guldur in a ruined state already.

Did anybody else find that Azog the Defiler reminded them of Blofeld?
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lordhadrian's avatar
Interesting thoughts :)  Didn't think of Blofeld, but it makes sense :)