re: Thoughts on The Hobbit: The Battle of 5 Armies (Spoilers)

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Good advice regarding gold. I would think there would be a dip, but how connected are these disparate economies really?

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Like a country music station, the hits keep on rolling... disparate.

Seriously though, have not seen the movie. I thought the plan was to make it in two, and the 3rd was a bridge between Hobbit and LOTR. Viggo dropped off, so this is what we get. Trolls with trebuchets/catapults, on their backs, made it too much like Star Wars bad.

Also, I saw someone fall at work from 5 feet, his face looked like something out of the Walking Dead, and missed work for 18 months. Folks in the Hobbit fall 100's if not 1000's of feet.

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he doesn't meet "Strider" for another 60 years

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I haven't read LOTR, but in the movie it looked like they had met before that. LINK

There are definitely some changes that i like about the series:

1. The quest is to simply steal the Arkenstone. In the book, it was unclear as to the true motive other than get the treasure.
2. They fleshed out the happenings at Dol Guldur. The book alludes to events, but doesn't get into detail.
3. The elf king sending Legolas out to find Aragon completes the circle on that story.

They drilled some key scenes: Bilbo and Golem in the cave and Bilbo and Smaug. The blew some other scenes: escape from the goblin caves, the escape from the woodland elves, and the battle of five armies was bad. They royally fricked up Beorn. Not sure why they even had him in the film.

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Do you know what unusual means? As I have said once, if it happens 49% percent of the time, it is unusual. 10% of the time definitely fits into the category.

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That's an interesting definition of unusual you made up for yourself there.


Hope you'll firgive me if I don't abide by it though.

I dont want to sit in a casino and remark "how unusual!" for every single event.

Just because something doesn't occur the majority of the time doesn't make it uncommon or remarkable.

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Trolls with trebuchets/catapults, on their backs, made it too much like Star Wars bad.

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Really, this bothers you? I think giant fighting trolls are cool. Having catapults strapped to their backs is fine

Saw this on Saturday, and I thought it was pretty awesome.

Sure, there were some parts that were cringe-worthy, but in a trilogy full of those parts, it didn't bother me as much as in previous installments. And the whole trilogy is much more cartoonish than LotR, so I guess some silliness can and will be present.

Legolas running up the falling stones was not only stupid, but laughably bad. And the Orc leader dude leaping out of the water through the ice was hella strange as well. But whatever.

For reference, I rank LotR as the best/#1 trilogy of all time. I absolutely loved those movies and that whole story. The Hobbit movies, while obviously in the same vein, don't really compare at all for me. They're entertaining enough, and that's about it. But that's coming from someone with literally zero attachment (nostalgic or otherwise) to the source material.

Someone explain something to me though...what were the five armies?

One was the dwarves.
One was the Orcs.
One was the Elves.
One was the humans of that water town destroyed by Smaug (I guess).
Was the last one the dude that arrived late and started dropping bears on everybody? If so, that seems a littel strange to call them an "army."

Anyway, that was sort of confusing to me.

So there were two Orc armies then...that's what we couldn't figure out (if it was two parts of one army, or two different armies).

So we just never saw much of the second one, which was the one they kept talking about coming in from the north, correct?

And the dude who came flying in with the eagles and dropping bears on everything...that was just sort of reinforcements and not an "army," yes?

1. Humans
2. Elves
3. Dwarves
4. Goblins
5. Wolves

It was less clear if existent at all in the movie that the wolves or wargs are a separate entity entirely from the goblins.

Yeah. My list is how it is in the book. The movie makes it confusing, and either of the other two lists would work.