The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Trailer

I'll be honest, when I first saw this, I was in the middle of some movement, I was getting used to a new area where I was working, (Still Army stuff) and I barely had time to get a quick look at the teaser trailer for the new Hobbit movie.

My first reaction was, well this is going to Desolation of Smaug part 2 and I'm not really gonna like it. In case, you missed my Desolation of Smaug review or you're unsure on my thoughts of the Hobbit movies, basically, I loved the first one. The second one, I liked but it wasn't quite the movie I expected. It was more of a filler instead of an adaptation of one of my favorite novels of all time. They added in Kate from Lost and I just wasn't wild about the added in stuff.

The thing about The Battle of the Five Armies is that this movie is going to be 75% filler. The Battle of the Five Armies basically takes up a chapter in the Hobbit. If we were tracking how many pages left of the book we have left in this last movie, I'd be surprised if it was more that 50 pages.

And Peter Jackson expects to give me a three hour long movie about Kate from Lost falling in love with a Dwarf, Smaug fucking shit up, and a Battle where a couple people die.

The point is, I know now for sure that the Battle of the Five Armies is going to be a filler movie.

That being said, I watched the trailer for the second time and suddenly I see something, an opportunity if you will.

This is the Hobbit's last chance to really make an impression.

Let's go back to An Unexpected Journey. The awesome thing about this movie was that this movie depicted some of my favorite reading material in the world.

I was crying at the end of this movie because it just had a lot of heart and it rang true to the source material.

It wasn't the epic that the Lord of the Rings movies was but that's not what the Hobbit was when it was a book. To me, the Hobbit is more of a Fairy Tale rather than a Fantasy epic. And that's why I loved An Unexpected Journey so much.

The Desolation of Smaug on the other hand seemed to me like they were trying to get back to the Fantasy epicness they achieved in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Legolas was shoehorned in there so fast it didn't make any sense and they just glanced over the introductions and importance of characters like Bjorn (man bear... bear). Instead they went for special effects and over the top action.

Knowing that the Battle of the Five Armies is probably going to be more like Desolation of Smaug rather than An Unexpected Journey should bother me, but it doesn't.

The trailer starts with Bilbo saying maybe I'll remember everything, who lived and who died. This really cements the fact that Bilbo is not actually the center of this story. In reality, Bilbo is more of the observer, watching the things that happen around him. However, this does not mean that he's not a character. The first thing I would hope for is that The Battle of the Five Armies focuses a little bit more on Bilbo. Maybe he's not the center of why the Battle of the Five Armies happens but there's still something to be said about the things he's seen.

If you give him more of a character and development in the next film, it will actually show how these events have effects Bilbo and you can give credit and omage to the older interpretation of Bilbo from the trilogy. Isn't that the point of prequels?

So if they are going to spend 3 hours on maybe 4 chapters and 50 some pages, take some liberties that work and develop your characters Peter Jackson!

So that's my first hope for the new film.

Secondly, I want to talk about Kate from Lost.

Kill her off.

She doesn't exist in the books, the love story between her and Fili, or Kili or whoever it is isn't going anywhere, kill her off.

That being said, make it worth something. Make her character have a point.

If Evangeline Lily was just in this movie to be a female Legolas, kill her off right away and don't waste my time. But if you actually want to utilize her correctly, make her a little more complex and have her character mean something. You have 3 hours Jackson, do something with it!

I am under the impression that she will die. There are a lot of characters who will die in this next movie from the book, I think because she is not from the source material. This makes her a perfect candidate to die.

And finally, Bard.

I know what you're trying to do Jackson. You're trying to make Bard your Aragorn character. You're trying to make him the tall dark and handsome outcast thrown into a position of greatness.

Don't make him Aragorn!

Aragorn was his own character with his own set of circumstances. The reason his character was good was because they were original circumstances and you had three movies to develop it.

Bard has maybe a movie and a half. While that's not that much time, take some freaking time to develop him as a character. Make him different than Aragorn. This whole copy and paste thing it kind of looks like your doing with Bard has been done before.

Remember these guys? Yeah nobody does.

These two were suppose to be the replacements of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly in the most recent Pirates of the Carribean.

Nobody remembers them because they were just copy and paste from the previous films.

Mr. Jackson, do not do this with your characters in The Hobbit.

Bard is a character you can develop, make him something totally different instead of just a hesitant outcast turned leader. Use some originality and make the Hobbit stand out as a film.

There are a lot of characters in the new Hobbit films that need work, especially the dwarves. But the good thing is that the storyline of the dwarves is pretty laid out. Just don't try and copy and paste from things that were done in previous film and use what you can from the original material and you should be fine.

The things I do like about the trailer is the beckoning back to the original trilogy. I kind of lost it when I heard Billy Boyd's voice from the Return of the King singing to a sequence of battles and just all around badassery. Jackson had to have known that this was the movie that was the closest to Return of the King as he could make it. What I will say to that is, do what you can to beckon back to the original trilogy. It will get people into the theaters and enjoy that old vs new factor.

But for god's sake. Don't try to make this film Return of the King.

Don't try to make The Battle of the Five Armies as epic as the Battle of Middle Earth was. Its not going to get to that point. We're just going to be a little bit disappointed because you're making the key players of this movie people we barely know, like Bard, Legolas and Kate from Lost, and Legolas's Father. And while Thorin is in that mix as well, its still not enough to make the stakes as high as they were in Return of the King. Don't try.

What you can do, Mr. Jackson, is make this movie about how this conflict is effecting these characters and give them legitimate character development.

Now its a trailer, but what I saw from it is a bunch of reaction shots from the key players of the war. What I hope is that this is pointing towards the effects this battle/war has on character like Bilbo, Bard and Thorin. I want to see the conflict of Bilbo choosing exactly what side he wants to fight on. I want to see the corruption of Thorin as he comes into power. Luckily, Mr. Jackson, you have 3 hours to do that. Don't screw that up.

My point here is, make Battle of the Five Armies different. Its what you did with An Unexpected Journey and for me, it worked. Stop trying to make Lord of the Rings again, you're just going to end up with disappointed fans.

Since starting this review, I've watched the trailer about 5 times more. Needless to say, I like the trailer. I think it promises a lot. At least this time, I know I'm going into a movie that will not be following the source material 100%. While I'm hesitant about that, especially with my thoughts on The Desolation of Smaug, and how they may have changed since I wrote my review. I am optimistic that Jackson is going somewhere with this. I think Jackson just has to have a solid script and make use of the 3 hours he has. He has to make a compelling story, drawing from again, about 50 or so pages of source material. Hopefully it works out. But more importantly, its the characters he needs to focus on. Hopefully that works out as well.

I'm hesitantly optimistic about this movie from the trailer.

But what do you think? What are your thoughts on the trailer. I know I'm a little bit behind but what're your thoughts on the direction the movies are going and how do the Hobbit movies compare with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy? Leave your thoughts and comments below.

I'll leave you with this. In case you haven't seen it, here is the trailer. Take a look and let me know your thoughts. Enjoy!