In the midst of the busy-ness of my hospital attachment, I am so glad that I am able to use the last free movie ticket that I have to watch this. Honestly, without the free ticket, I will not watch this as the reviews are kinda mixed. In addition, I watched The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug when I was home and that was quite underwhelming.
With the cliff-hanger ending of The Desolation of Smaug, it is pretty expected that The Battle of the Five Armies will open with Smaug destroying the Laketown. Sadly, in less than 5 minutes, Smaug is expectedly dead by the black arrow shot by Bard the Bowman. After that, all the boring part comes. Legolas and Tauriel departs for a place that sounds like "Gundahbad" to me for a reason that I can't fathom until the end of the movie. In the mountain, Thorin gets crazy over the jewels and the dwarfs spend half the movie to search for the Arkenstone while Bilbo is in a dilemma whether to surrender the Arkenstone.
Wealth and riches drive people mad but it makes a bad plot for a movie. Bard leads Laketown survivors to the mountain to get the promised part of the treasure as he helped the dwarfs on reaching the mountain. Add in the Elven King who also wants to get an elven heir loom hidden with the treasures. Yes, he is willing to send an army to fight over a necklace.
It does not make any sense to me that a handful of dwarfs dare to declare war. Or perhaps, it is weirder that such a large number or elven army and man do not dare to invade the castle straight away. I am sure it is to give time for the dwarf army to come. Lol. In the midst of their fight, the orc army arrives as they also want to claim the treasures. Thorin gains his sanity and decides to redeem himself by going after the orc's leader (is his name Azog or something?). Legolas and Tauriel are back to announce that there is a second wave of attack. But they are too late as Thorin, Kili, and another dwarf already went to the orc's camp. The climax of the movie is the fight between them vs Azog and another orc and end with the dwarfs and orcs' death.
You may wonder now, the title has 5 armies but so far we only have dwarfs, humans, elves, and orcs. Where is the 5th army? I only find the answer when I google it. The 5th army is the eagles that comes last. What the...
How do these eagles come? They are informed by Gandalf. One 'exciting' part that I did not mention is the fight of Saruman (he used to be a good guy), Elrond, and Galadriel to rescue Gandalf from his capturer. The battle ends with Galadriel going zombie-mode to chase away Sauron's eye on the sky. Come to think of it, it is just a CG fight against computer-made soldiers but I don't know why I think it is exciting to watch.
Despite my limited knowledge of the Lord of the Rings universe (as you can tell from how I don't know the characters and locations names), I still find the movie enjoyable to watch. I was expecting that I would be checking my watch as the movie runs for 2.5 hours but the movie was able to hold my attention throughout. Of course, it is less intense and exciting compared to Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The movie was released 6 months ago so the fact that the cinema was still 80% full when I watched it shows that people enjoy this movie and it is a success. I still will not buy the DVD to re-watch it though. Haha.. I own The Return of the King because I think it is that good. Haha...
No comments:
Post a Comment