I got tagged with this over at Hamlette’sSoliloquy, and since I’ve started at least two Hobbit posts and never finished
them, I’ll just start over with these five questions.
R U L E S
1. You Must Be Tagged to take the Q&A
quiz
2. You must tag (notify) at least three
other bloggers (or whatever they are on) for this Q&A
3. You must answer the following questions
to the best of your ability
4. You must have seen The Battle of
the Five Armies to be tagged/take the quiz
WARNING! There's going to be spoilage!!!
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Tell your story of how you came to
see the movie(s) or got into Tolkien in the first place.
Read Lord of the Rings back in college after a friend gave it to
me. Loved it. Anxiously awaited the first movie, fell in love
with everything about it and saw it umpteen times in the theater and then
anxiously waited for every movie thereafter.
Read Hobbit sometime after Lord
of the Rings but did not love it.
For years, all I could remember was the riddle scene.
2. Who are your three favorite characters
in The Hobbit Trilogy?
1. Bilbo. I NEVER thought I’d pick Bilbo as a favorite,
but The Battle of the Five Armies changed that.
Bilbo is amazing. Bilbo is caring
and fierce and determined and courageous and loyal and smart. Bilbo stands up to everyone around him, from Gollum,
to Smaug (I mean who but Bilbo would risk getting incinerated to step out and tell
a dragon that he cannot go to Laketown!), to Thorin, to Gandalf. He grows so much through these movies. Without him, the Company of Thorin certainly would
not have made it to (or into) the mountain. It’s
his quick thinking and smarts that get them out of more bad situations, and he
does this while being criticized and told he does not belong and in constant peril
of his own life. What Martin Freeman
does with this character is so amazing. Every
time I watch the movies I see new stuff to love. There is so much depth to Bilbo, and so much
I admire.
2. Thorin. I NEVER thought I’d pick Thorin as a favorite
either, but... not to sound like a broken record but The Battle of the Five Armies
changed that. I fell in love with Thorin
in this movie. Rather ironic because he’s
now suffering from dragon sickness and is almost at his worst behavior yet (he goes back on his word! Thorin! How could
you?), but I think that’s all part of what worked so well. Hearing Thorin echo Smaug word for word...
shivers. Annnnnd, he defeats it. He is not his grandfather (just like Aragorn
is Isildur’s heir, not Isildur himself) and he pulls himself out of the
madness. Love. And then he turns just plain
awesome. Going to help Dain fight the
orcs, going to fight Azog... My b-i-l objected so strongly to Kili/Fili’s deaths
in the movie compared to the book, but I had the opposite reaction. I needed things to happen this way. I needed Thorin to continue to redeem
himself. Instead of Kili and Fili dying
to defend him (which, honestly, he hadn’t really earned), he dies trying to save
them. When Fili is killed, and Kili
storms up to kill orcs, it is Thorin who rushes over to try to save his
nephew. Dude, I am soooooooooooo onboard
with Team Thorin when he does that. This
is what I needed to really root for him. Fili and Kili don’t
need to prove their loyalty or nobility, they’ve already done that multiple times throughout. But Thorin does. And this movie gave me exactly what I needed
to approve of Thorin. I LOVE his fight
with Azog, and I love how he dies. It is one
of the best death scenes, and I love how he smiles at Bilbo. Oh, that death scene is just perfection.
And now,
going back and re-watching the first two Hobbit movies, I can see Thorin in a
different light. Now instead of an
arrogant jerk, I see a very bitter man who’s been dealt a bad hand and been
betrayed left and right. Watching how he
changes towards Bilbo is a highlight. When
Bilbo is trying to convince them to get in the barrels and is hearing nothing
but complaints, he looks at Thorin for help, and Thorin backs him immediately. Thorin would not have done this in the first
movie, but he is finally learning how to trust someone again who is not a dwarf. Each time I watch the first two movies again,
I notice new things in the character arcs, and it just fills me with joy. But I had to get to that third movie for it
all to make sense. Even in the midst of dragon sickness, it is Bilbo with his acorn that can almost break the spell, and at least earn a rare smile from Thorin. No one else has that affect on him.
Third
favorite? Um... LegolasTaurielKiliThranduilBardFiliDwalinAzogBeornElrond. In other words, I cannot pick a third,
because after the first two clear favorites, I really love all of these characters
about the same, and I honestly can’t put one about another. This is one of the only movies I've ever encountered where I love so many characters equally that I cannot rank them.
3. Did you cry during The Battle of
the Five Armies, and if so, which scene(s) and what type (sniffling, sobbing,
choke-crying)?
Hah.
Of course I did. Because there
are EAGLES. And whenever the eagles
appear, in every single blooming Middle Earth movie, I sob. Fellowship, Return of the King, An Unexpected
Journey, Battle of Five Armies... all have eagles, all make me sob when they
appear. This is not sad sobbing, of
course, it is... I have no blooming idea what it is, actually. The eagles are so beautiful, so awesome,
so... I-have-no-words-only-feelings. They
continually provoke an overwhelming, emotional response in me, and all I can do
is cry whenever I see them because I have no other way of expressing how much seeing
them affects me. I will even get teary when
I hit their music while listening to the score to Battle.
The first time I saw Battle, I sobbed
(a good 30 seconds at least) when the eagles showed up, and my eyes welled up
when the elves leaping over the dwarves to fight the orcs, and my eyes welled
up when Bilbo reacted to Thorin’s death, and that was it. The second viewing, I got more emotional, and
tears spilled out over a few additional moments. On my fourth viewing, I was just... well, I got
teary over the previous scenes and then some.
I got teary when Bard told his son to look at him, in the beginning. The elves leaping over the dwarves
again. When the dwarves burst out of
Erebor led by Thorin and charge the enemy -- that is a moment!, when Thorin and Kili react to Fili’s
death, those darned eagles, when Bilbo reacts to Thorin’s death, when Tauriel
reacts to Kili’s death, when Thranduil talks to her, when Bilbo tries to say he
was Thorin’s friend to Balin and can’t...
Good thing I am never without Kleenex.
4. Were the deaths compelling to you,
and if so, whose?
Yes.
All of them. Although I admit,
Smaug’s death made me laugh on the first viewing. It is no secret that I adore dragons, just not
talking ones. (I fully blame Dragonheart for this, which soured me
forever on talking dragons.) I’ve gotten
used to Smaug in Desolation (as one does with repeat viewings), and
fortunately, he doesn’t talk much in this one, but I wanted some full-on dragon
roar when he was wounded and flailing about and... I was disappointed. I have since gotten used to that too, so now
I’m fine with it.
Fili, Kili, and Thorin were all
compelling to me, particularly Thorin (see above for reasons). I’m also very saddened by the death of
Thranduil’s elk. And Thranduil walking
among the slain elves is very compelling as well.
5. Overall, were you satisfied with the
movie itself?
Dear me, yes. YES! I
loved this movie! It was my favorite
movie of 2014, in a year filled with all kinds of new movies I really
loved. But this movie trumped them all. It gave me all kinds of characters I wanted
to be. It gave me satisfaction at every
turn for everything it set up in the previous movies. And it has one of the best endings of any
movie, ever, where it leads straight into Fellowship and makes me want to start
all over again. Where I had not been
particularly fond of An Unexpected Journey when it came out, and I had really
liked the second but not loved it, I have now re-watched the two first ones,
and NOW everything makes sense, now it all flows together, and I can now
honestly say I love all three movies.
(Minus the trolls and the goblin king and the Master of Laketown’s eating...
which makes Denethor’s eating scene look positively neat and fussy – but those
are tiny complaints.) There was nothing
I’d change about the third movie, except to ask for more! Also, the extended editions of the first two
films are soooooo much better than the theatrical. What they put into An Unexpected Journey
added so much to that movie. The
Desolation additions were not so key to the plot for me (with a couple
exceptions, like Bilbo giving his word (why was that cut??), but they were still fun. More Beorn is never a bad thing. I can’t wait to see what else we will get in the
extended version of Battle.
The third film just really satisfied
me so strongly, gave closure in the best way I could have asked for, that I
just want to move into the movie and live there for awhile. The third movie also has the best score, and
I’ve been listening to it non-stop since I got it.
6. Describe the movie in one word.
Satisfying.
I left the theater happy and charged up and ready to go on my own adventure. It gave me all the escape I crave from my entertainment, with a whole mess of characters I came out loving. It doesn't get much better than that. The Battle of the Five Armies is now my second favorite Middle Earth movie behind The Fellowship of the Ring.
Now to tag 3 other bloggers. This is kind of rough, as I don't actually know many people who have seen it! So, if you want to join in, I tag Charity, and Carissa. If anyone else wants
to be tagged, either comment here saying so, and I'll add your name, or you can
consider yourself tagged and just do the meme :-)
3 comments:
I have a very wistful feeling right now, wishing that I loved the final movie like you did. Sadly, I didn't, not at all. *sighs* Thanks for tagging me, though! I wrote a post and it will publish tomorrow, but I thought I'd warn you about my sentiments. I tried not to be too harsh, I swear.
Yes, I did know you didn't enjoy it; I had read your post on it awhile back (and I never commented, sorry about that! I meant to, and just lost track of time). That's okay! Movies don't work for everyone. I will still enjoy reading your answers to the questions! Three people in my family hated the movie, one so badly he nearly walked out of the theater, so I'm used to the negative side. So far, it hasn't affected my own personal enjoyment of it, which, considering I'm going again tomorrow, is a good thing. LOL!
And you even included a picture of Bard! You sweet person, you :-)
I. Can't. Wait. For. 9:55pm.
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