Richard Armitage

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies: A Movie Review

/ Casey Tingle / Leave a comment

In the last installment of The Hobbit trilogy, Bilbo, Thorin, and the rest of the dwarves enter the Lonely Mountain and begin looking for the Arkenstone. When it can not be located, Thorin begins to believe he is being betrayed by the other dwarves and begins to mistrust them. The people of Laketown and Thranduil the Elvenking are also demanding to receive treasures that belong to them in the Lonely Mountain, but Thorin  would rather go to war than hand his treasures over. At the same time, a dark force is growing and heading their way to take the Lonely Mountain by force.

As a fan of The Hobbit, I wasn’t too crazy about the last installment. I was excited about it coming out and I heard that it was a really great movie… and then I saw it. And it was OK. I thought there were a bunch of parts that were kind of corny and silly. The fact that Smaug dies within the first five minutes in the movie made me wonder why they waited until this movie to have that occur. Maybe they were afraid people would forget what had happened? I’m not really sure.

The rest of the movie was mainly the battle (which makes sense given the title). But that’s two hours of fighting, which some people may find to be boring. Of course, there are other small scenes that occur in the middle of the battle that set up the story for The Lord of the Rings and I did enjoy the bit at the end where Thranduil tells Legolas to go find Strider.

However, I still feel like this Hobbit trilogy could have been easily kept down to two parts. The majority of the second film didn’t even happen in the book and I think if there wasn’t all that extra story line added it could have all been cut down. But, overall I still enjoyed it and am glad that it was made into a film. But now I feel like I should go re-read the book!

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

/ Casey Tingle / Leave a comment

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

What? A new post!? I know! Crazy.

I saw The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug the first weekend it was out, but haven’t had time to sit and write something up about it until now. Gotta get myself back in writing mode!

Anyway, I would first like to say that I really enjoyed The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. That being said, I should add that the second installment of The Hobbit movie trilogy is 95% fabricated and has nothing to do with the book. Sure, there were some parts, like them reaching the mountain and Bilbo meeting the dragon, things of that nature, that were part of the book. But besides that, everything else was made up by the writers of the script. But that’s OK because the movie turned out to be pretty awesome.

Continuing on their quest to reclaim Erebor, the dwarves and Bilbo Baggins get into some trouble when they run into a horde of spiders while going through Mirkwood. Using the one ring, Bilbo saves the dwarves, and we get to see first hand how the ring is beginning to affect him. Unfortunately, as they fight off the last of the spiders, they are overtaken (and saved from the spiders) by the wood elves that live in the forest. All the dwarves are jailed, but Bilbo escapes using the ring and manages to save his friends from capture. As they escape in barrels down a river, they are pursued by both elves and orcs. Luckily, they outrun both and make their way into Lake-Town and finally to the Lonely Mountain to reclaim their gold from the dragon.

Even though the movie was mostly creative license, I thought it was very well done. The stories weren’t farfetched and went very well with the rest of the story line. In fact, I feel if you haven’t read the book in a very long time, it would be difficult to figure out what was and was not part of the book (unless you have a great memory).

Grade: A+

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

/ Casey Tingle / Leave a comment

I actually saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on the December 13 midnight showing even though I had to get up early for work the next day, and I must say that it was definitely worth it. I won’t go into detail about the plot for two reasons:

1) I did a review of the book a few weeks back.

2) The movie was very, very close to the book, and so very satisfying.

In fact, there were parts that weren’t in the book that I was glad they added (although I have been told that a lot of the extra stuff was in the appendices which I didn’t read). The scenes added only enhanced the film and the whole story, going into more detail on parts that were only really glossed over in the book, such as the necromancer (who is Sauron for those who don’t know) and adding in the white orc.

I was really surprised that this film was still 3 hours long. Knowing that it was going to be broken into 3 parts, I was expecting to see a 1.5 to 2 hour movie. But since it is 3 hours long, it makes me very curious to see where they’re going to take it. The first movie ends about half way through the book, which makes me wonder what’ll happen if they finish the book with the second movie. Will the third be about the events that happen between where the Hobbit ends and the trilogy begins? Honestly, I think that would be pretty cool, but since I don’t know for certain all I can do is wait to find out.

Yes, I know there are critics out there saying some negative things about the movie, but my advice is to not listen to them. Although that’s my advice with every movie, it’s especially true for The Hobbit. Go see it. You will not regret it.

Grade: A+