During the 2004 Oscar time of year , The Lord of the Rings : The Return of the Kingpulled off a uncommon clear chimneysweep of every Academy Award it was nominated for , including Best Picture and Best Director forPeter Jackson . A decade afterwards , it was quite a unlike story forThe Hobbit : The Battle of the Five Armies , the finale of Jackson ’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’sThe Hobbit . That moving-picture show only received a unmarried nomination for Best Sound Editing , and it did n’t win .
So why wasn’tThe Hobbit : The Battle of the Five Armiesas beloved asThe Return of the King ? We ’re revisiting this query becauseThe Battle of the Five Armieshit theaters 10 years ago this month . This is also a timely question considering that the animated celluloid , The Lord of the Rings : The War of the Rohirrim , will be out in theater later this calendar month as well .
In retrospect , Jackson faced an uphill battle from the start , but he and his collaborators , Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens , made a few missteps of their own that contributed to the less enthusiastic response thatThe Battle of Five Armiesreceived .
The cast is immaculate
One surface area where The Hobbit films did not let down is the cast . Martin Freeman , one of the wiz of the original adaptation ofThe Office , was well - chosen to play a untested Bilbo Baggins , the Hobbit at the center of the write up . freewoman captures Bilbo ’s humanity and compassion , as well as his willingness to encompass the escapade alongside a group of dwarf .
Richard Armitage also brought a destiny of gravitas to the expatriate dwarf king , Thorin Oakenshield , who does n’t always see eye to heart with Bilbo . That personality dispute boils over in this plastic film , but their eventual reconciliation is one of the motion-picture show ’s more affecting moments . Jackson also brought back a handful of mold members from his former films , including Ian McKellen as Gandalf the Grey . That was a wise choice , but bringing Orlando Bloom in to reprise his character as Legolas might have been a whole tone too far . He really seems out of position in all of his panorama across the new trilogy .
The director switch
Jackson was originally planning to ill-treat aside and get Guillermo del Toro channelize a two - film adaptation ofThe Hobbit . Del Toro remain a credited screenwriter alongside Jackson , Walsh , and Boyens on the three plastic film that followed , but he departed the undertaking after it faced numerous delays . That ’s when Jackson stepped in to take over the photographic film .
Few , if anyone , would have fence against Jackson return to the humans of Middle - earth . The Lord of the Rings trilogy set the standard for fantasy in pic . But the fundamental difference is that Jackson had years to ready to shoot those movies , and a lot less time to get quick for The Hobbit plastic film . Jackson has openly say as much during behind - the - scene characteristic for the second trilogy . That may be whyThe Battle of Five Armiesand its two predecessors do n’t find as fully realized as the previous trilogy .
Two films become three
SplittingThe Hobbitinto two movies was an understandable decision . The 1977 alive version ofThe Hobbitstruggled to narrate the integral report in an shortened fashion . There ’s a lot that pass in the book , and giving it two films seemed like the right way to go . One of the ways that Jackson and fellowship slip from the path was their decision to make two films into three moving-picture show .
Bilbo Baggins has a citation inThe Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship of the Ringsin which he state that he feel “ sort of stretched , like butter scraped over too much bread . ” That ’s an apt comparability that fans have made for eld about The Hobbit trilogy . Three films pushed it too far . And while there are a lot of exciting succession in the last film , the middle chapter , The Hobbit : The Desolation of Smaug , suffered from the decision to make it a separate movie .
Taking down the dragon
The Battle of the Five Armiesopens with one of the celluloid ’s most thrilling scene , as the dragon known as Smaug attacks the the great unwashed of Laketown and destroy their home . SherlockandDoctor Strangestar Benedict Cumberbatch bestow his voice to Smaug , and he turn over the flying dragon a deliciously wicked persona . Smaug enjoys rain down wipeout down on these mass , and he considers it his revenge for the dwarves stealing from his hoarded wealth .
Among the townspeople , Bard the Bowman ( Luke Evans ) steps up to face the dragon . The vista is a little draw out compared to the novel , but it ’s still one of the highlights of the film .
The love story that didn’t shine
Tolkin did n’t have a lot of large role for female characters inThe HobbitorThe Lord of the Rings . Jackson compensated for that in the original trilogy by elevating the lovemaking story between Aragorn ( Viggo Mortensen ) and Arwen ( Liv Tyler ) . So Jackson and his squad tried to recreate that dynamic in The Hobbit films with the gnome Kíli ( Aidan Turner ) and a female elf discover Tauriel ( Evangeline Lilly ) .
While it was an admirable try , create Tauriel for the film meant that she did n’t have a natural space in the story . All of her scenes were invented for the picture show , and she does n’t have enough screen fourth dimension with Kíli to justify the idea that they had fall in love despite just have it away each other . Tauriel ’s split over their broken connexion felt forced and false at the end of the motion-picture show , and the vista lack the exponent or the impingement it was mean to have .
The further adventures of Gandalf and friends
One of the ways thatThe Hobbitwas stretched out to three film involved adding things that were n’t in the novel . Tolkien did create appendices which revealed where Gandalf disappeared to for portions of the story .
Jackson expanded that into a sort of mediate - earth Avengers as Galadriel ( Cate Blanchett ) , Elrond ( Hugo Weaving ) , Radagast the Brown ( Sylvester McCoy ) , and Saruman ( Christopher Lee ) squad up to rescue Gandalf from Sauron . But their confrontation is brusk , and it falls monotonous on the projection screen after building up to that import . It just lacks the larger-than-life scale of the difference of opinion with Sauron from the premature trilogy .
The final battle delivers on its promise
In the novel , Tolkien mostly sidelined Bilbo from the titulary battle of the five armies and he did n’t seem to have much of a desire to flesh that out . Because flick is a optic medium , Jackson and company would n’t have been able to get away with making a like determination . And as seen inThe Two Towers ‘ battle for Helm ’s Deep , they were already experienced with expanding minor sequences from the novel .
The last battle of this plastic film still hang brusque of the high ofReturn of the King , but it does capture an epic ordered series as the ground forces of humans , elves , and midget bury about their quarrel with each other long enough to face an consuming military group of orcs . And unlike the original trilogy , a handful of major characters in this film do n’t make it out of the battle with their life .
One last goodbye
It ’s inauspicious thatThe Battle of the Five Armieswas so severely snubbed by the Oscars , because it absolutely deserved to come through an Academy Award for Best Original Song . Billy Boyd , the actor who played Peregrin direct in The Lord of the Rings trilogy , wrote and performedThe Last Goodbye , the Song dynasty that play over the ending credits . It ’s a truly beautiful tribute to both trilogies , and a fitting way to close out the franchise .
Except the dealership will never truly end , even though most of Tolkien ’s original stories have already been adapted . Amazon ’s Prime Video is exploring an early era of in-between - earth inThe Lord of the Rings : The Rings of Power , while Warner Bros. is planning new alive - action picture show includingThe Hunt for Gollem , with Andy Serkis direct and reprise his character as the claim animate being .
The Hobbit : The Battle of the Five Armiesmay not be a chef-d’oeuvre like the earlier LOTR films , but it ’s still easily among the honorable fantasy movies ever made . And since both the theatrical and extended variant are readily available to pour on Max , it ’s deserving revisiting this vacation time of year .
WatchThe Hobbit : The Battle of the Five ArmiesonMax .
