The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Dir: Peter Jackson
2014
****
Peter Jackson's initial Hobbit outing; An Unexpected Journey, plodded along at a snails pace. The follow up, 2013's The Desolation of Smaug, was overlong and had questionable action sequences and special effects. It's fair to say Jackson corrected all these mistakes in the final installment, The Battle of the Five Armies. The film starts where the last one left off, making for an action-packed introduction but also raising the question why such an important part of the story was cut in half in the first place. Again, stretching the one book across three films really diluted the magic of J. R. R. Tolkien's original story. Rewriting a novel for a film is one thing but to add characters and chance the plot of a much loved classic just so you can stretch it out for profit is fairly bad behavior in my book, it's okay if justified but in this case I think two films, as was originally planned, would have been sufficient. However, The Battle of the Five Armies is a joy, nothing is rushed and the pace is consistently exciting. The special effects are vastly improved and the silly action sequences have been removed (although there is a short scene whereby one character rides a horse cart, sans horse, down a hill that looked like it was straight out of The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, a film Jackson (over) produced in 2011). The battle scene at Dol Guldur that sees Elrond (Hugo Weaving), Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), Radagast (Sylvestor McCoy), Gandalf (Ian McKellen and Saruman the White (Christopher Lee) fight the Nazgul and Sauron is a stunning bit of cinema, with amazing special effects and beautiful cinematography. It's a great scene for fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and a wonderful final performance from the late, great Christopher Lee. The concluding battle is an epic affair, there have been many epic CGI battles since Ridley Scott's 2000 film The Gladiator re-invented the genre but this has to be one of the better ones. Introducing Dain played by Billy Connolly was an act of genius alone. The last scene sees the trilogy come full circle and sets up the events of The Lord of the Rings perfectly and without the schmaltz I thought the Return of the King had. I believe Jackson learned valuable lessons from the previous films, I just wish he had got it right from the very beginning.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Dir: Peter Jackson
2013
***
The story continues. The sequel has a bit of a faster pace than the original, which was welcome. The original story is still stretched a little thinly though and the addition of extra characters and events is sacrilege (or so my more nerdy friends tell me). I liked the Stephen Fry and Sylvester McCoy cameos very much and I thought the Smaug special effects were rather good. I liked the film but it's beginning to get a little samey. You've either seen it in the last film or in TLOTR.  The Smaug scene at the end of the film is the big pay off and obviously what was concentrated on most because all the other action films are over the top, ridiculous, cartoon-like headaches. The barrels down the river scene made me feel a little bit sick, the effects were laughable in places and I thought the whole thing was utterly unnecessary. Seriously, compare the special effects to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (the Dragon bit) and it doesn't hold up at all. All part of the filler I guess. I liked it but cut out 30 minutes or so and I would have loved it.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Dir: Peter Jackson
2012
***
Turning one book into three films, fiddling with the story and adding new characters is all part of this shameless money-making machine after the success of the original films and will no doubt please the producers of the franchise greatly. To be honest, when it is all done to this high standard, why not? You should always read the book first kids, that is if you're interested, personally I was never a Goblins and Wizards kid, I was more into Dinosaurs and Astronauts so I have never and probably will never read the book. Not because I'm sure it's not good or anything, I just have about 1000 books I want to read first. I liked the film a lot, it's nice to see some new faces along side a few favourites from the LOTR films. I found it a lot easier to watch than I found the first film although it is a bit wishy washy at times. The camera lingers...are they safe...did they make it....yes, they made it, there are 2 more films to go and a ton of money to make, get on with it. I'm not sure the hard-core fans will like it but then they seemed to like Peter Jackson's self-indulgent LOTR trilogy, so I'm going to guess yes. As a non-fan, I thought it was still pretty good. My favorite thing about it has to be Sylvestor McCoy, he was brilliant.