As usual my movie reviews often have lots of spoilers so if that is something that bothers you then make sure you see it before you read this.
Unlike many Tolkien die hard fans I was not first exposed through the books. My first experience with Tolkien's tale was the old animated Hobbit movie. To say it made an impression would be something of an understatement. I later got to the book and of course loved it as well and have read it many many times. I am still not sure exactly what I think of this three part orgy of Cinematography. Unlike The Lord of the Rings at least here the problem was the creation of to much content rather than the exclusion. If they had done the Ring Trillogy to the same level it would have taken 9 movies, possibly more instead of the 3 done.
The Good: Man oh man the visuals. Love or hate the high frame rate, it is stunning. I think the problem with it is that there is not a lot of history with it. Filmakers have had decades to figure out how best to utilize lower frame rates. Hell these days the frame rate no longer means what it once did... there are no frames of film. Just bits on a hard drive. Movie magic has some catching up to do. However... where it works the audience has some catching up to do as well as the more realistic movement can catch you off guard. What cues us in subliminally via a life time of movie magic training to just go with the story is not there... as a result our comfort zone is broken and hence the wide ranging reactions to what is put on the screen. The 3d on the other hand.... well I didn't hate it. But they really need to figure out how to do that without the damn glasses.
The level of exposition. Where the Lord of the Rings skipped over the depth in places, here they were able to spend about equal time between telling the story and showing off holywood candy sequences. This was in some ways very frustrating because it is so odd that that after it is all said and done, The Hobbit ended up with a more serious telling of the tale on the big screen than the entire Ring Trillogy got.
Martin Freeman as Bilbo. Seems he is popping up everywhere these days. Here is hoping he has continued success. His scenes with Thorin and Gandalf really did a great job capturing the heart of the tale.
I also enjoyed for the most part the expansion of Bard of Laketown, though I do wish they could have done so without the whole oppressive "Master" of the town bit. There was plenty to drive his character without the imprisonment etc...
Honorable mention to the expansion of Balin and the execution of Smaug.
The So So:
I am not one of those super incensed by the fabricated characters and bits. On the whole I was ok with everything they did from the material based inTolkien's extended lore for side elements (necromancer etc...) to the whole cloth creations like the forced love story element between Tauriel and Kili (Elf Dwarve love??? really????). Why does it not bug me to much? Well, there is no denying that Tolkien's tales were sausage fests, even with multiple species of characters. A bit of modernization and beefing up some female character involvement was not a horrible thing to do. In the final equation I think the character of Tauriel came off better in the whole than say the inclusion of Legolas, Galadriel and Sauruman. Yes, even with the elf dwarf love thing. I did have a bit more issue with the whole Azog thread... I will get to that.
The over use of set piece action sequences. I also accept these as necesarry evils... and they were fun to an extent. But I think they were way to drawn out in several cases. The escape from the Goblin caves and the river ride out of mirkwood in particular stand out... as did the bunny sled warg chase in the first film.
The master and the wretch characters. Don't get me wrong... Stephen Fry played it to the hilt and the wretch was pretty wretched and provided a couple of good chuckles. That is why they make it to So-So vs the Bad section. However, one wonders why the wretch would have maintained any position of favor at all after the demise of the Master character. I just cringed everytime Bard continued to send him to do things. Made ZERO sense and went against the 'compentent no non-sense" nature of that character.
The Bad:
Orlando Bloom. I didn't really object to the desire to include the Legolas character in the tale as the imortal nature of elves in Middle Earth lore certainly makes it plausible enough. One almost wonders why Tolkien himself didn't include him as a tie in to the greater Ring Trillogy much as was done here. Perhaps he forsaw the awkwardness of Orlando Bloom on screen and just couldn't bring himself to make it easy? Bloom's performance was dogged by what seemed to be a mailed in performance combined with a very muddled story line trying to deal him as a third leg in a love triangle with Tauriel. Just for good measure they also had him be the cliche rebellious son to the wood elf king. It would have helped if there had been a bit more chemistry with the Tauriel character, but what chemistry there was went to the relationship between her and Kili. Overall it wasn't a bad idea, it was just poorly executed on multiple fronts.
The whole thing with Azog and Thorin. Especially the culimation of that concoction in a one on one battle at the end. I mean for crying out loud, you have the spectacle of the battle of the five armies which drives the title of the movie and yet you instead choose to focus a good 1/3rd of so of the screen time of the actual battle to a mano a mano battle generated by a storyline thread completely concocted for the movie? Azog appears once in the book, as a refference to a goblin that killed Thorin's grandfather in the mines of Moria. It is this thread that winds its way through the entire trilogy that grates the most on my sensibilities as a long time lover of the story. If there was one element that just didn't need any sexing up it was the main thread of the story driving Thorin to the mountain.
Conclusion:
I suppose in the end I enjoyed the movies overall more than I was irked by the poorly done bits. However, It probably should have been two movies instead of 3. As for why I had a real problem with Azog but not the rest of the storyline additions/modifications? The difference between most of these and the Azog thread is that they were subsidary elements that just attempted to add to the overall tale and perhaps make it a bit more ballanced. Azog, on the other hand, was inserted into the core of the story... and it just didn't fit in my opinion. That said, it was a much better integrated element than Legolas or even the side story of the necromancer battle.
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