Hobbit, The: The Battle of Five Armies (Blu-ray)

Fans of the book "The Hobbit" & "Lord of the Rings trilogy" are some hard core fans to satisfy! Changes are almost always made when converting books into movies because movies have a whole different pace. Peter Jackson has managed to do a great job staying close enough to the books & deliver stunning action filled movies to please both hard core fans & introduce a new generation of people who hopefully enjoyed the films enough to want to discover & read the original source material. As far as Jackson's releasing the theatrical versions & then extended versions can be viewed as a clever capitalistic maneuver, but I'm sure most fans will agree that the extended versions are a much more satisfying movie experience. Its not just fleshed out with superfluous filler they actually contain a lot more information in character development & action as well. I have heard many complain that peter Jackson's move to make "The Hobbit" a trilogy was a indulgence & not necessary. I don't agree when J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the Hobbit it was originally a children's story & while it was a prequel to the Lord of the Rings I believe the changes were necessary for the movie franchise. Jackson needed to deliver a much edgier version of the hobbit to match the scale & scope of The Lord of the Rings trilogy that had already impressed movie goers. I think the extended version of "The battle of the five Armies" benefitted the most from the extended material. Now that it is all "in the Can"...so to speak future generations watching these movies from beginning to end will have a very satisfying extended experience!!! Its hard to review act three of a six act story without bringing up the other acts that make this a staggering epic tale. Many fans of the Sword & Sorcery genre thought of Tolkien's books as the gold standard for the genre, I believe Peter Jackson's film interpretation is now the Gold standard for the movie genre of Sword & Sorcery. Some consider Tolkien as the Grandfather of the genre while others give this distinction to Robert E. Howard, I love both men's work & where Howard published mostly short stories for the pulp magazines Tolkien gave his work to the world in novel form. I have no reservations advising Tolkien fans to get the extended versions of the films, it may not be as important for the more casual fan. I now have both trilogy's in the extended version & while they all benefit from the extra little gem's that are in the extended versions "The Battle of the Five Armies" greatly benefit's from the extra material in the extended version. while a lot of the extra material is action sequences there is a bit more character development & the extra battle action in the extended version really drives home the dramatic impact of the Five Armies!!! I was very happy to by both version's being able to sit down & watch the extended version with my daughter & then letting her take home with her the theatrical version as a gift. I gifted her the theatrical versions because her Grandma took her to see them in the theater.

I know this should have been one movie, but... I can't help but enjoy these movies and say what you will, but so much work and effort went into these films, and I feel as if that is often forgotten. also for me to hate these films is for me to be a bit of a hypocrite, bc people get mad about what was put in, but they forget that the LOTR movies had stuff put in it from appendices and other books of Tolkien's as well. the hobbit movies just wished to include a lot of other stuff from Tolkien's other works, and it gave background. for example, i'm not ashamed to admit this, but the first hobbit movie helped me put into perspective and comprehension the council of Elrond chapter in the Fellowship of the ring book. there was so much in that chapter that it is hard to put into perspective, but an unexpected journey really helped me understand it all better. also there was a lot of good acting, some great scenes and some lovely directing in a great deal of places. and that stuff that was added do not at all ruin the movie for me. people get angry about legolas being there, but he did technically exist in mirkwood at the time of the hobbit, and the hobbit book was Tolkien's first outing when it came to publishing and he was still building his world. he came up with legolas after he published the hobbit, but he did exist in that time frame. as for tauriel, like with legolas, people are spending too much energy with their hate on that, for when they entered mirkwood, they were taken prisoner by elves, and all those elves were individuals who just go unnamed. in writing, that is called a blindspot, where you can take a character that goes nameless, give them a name and give them a more prominent place for development. also, this was done in LOTR films, where characters were taken from the multitude, given a name and given a cool role, i.e. Lurtz, who was the uruk-hai who led the force that attacked borimor at the end of LOTR. He's not really in the books, but since there was an uruk-hai host that attacked the company, there easily could have been a leader who was like lurtz. blindspots have the right to be filled in sometimes for dynamic storytelling purposes. if you hate tauriel and legolas being there, then cool, but you can't hate them and then say its ok in LOTR, bc that's a double standard. I know these films are not as good as the LOTR movies, but there is something really fun and enjoyable about them! I know people hate them, but I admit that I cannot be one of them. while I wish the cgi was better handled and man I hate 48 fps, I still find a lot of good elements to these films and think they are still great.