The Battle of the 5+ Armies

[Thinlómien]

Seriously Legate and Greenie I laughed aloud at your reviews. Now here's my list of pluses and minuses:

+ the canon scenes: the Arkenstone/ bargaining business (including Bilbo's night visit), Thorin's death, the auction
+ the very ending: nice transition to the LotR movies, done more innovatively/subtly than I thought they would
+ sometimes the movie had some kind of psychotic charm to it and was very entertaining
+ some panoramas (dying Smaug falling, Laketown refugees the morning after, even some of the battle scenes) were very beautiful, basically like Alan Lee (or John Howe) paintings
+ sorry but I actually liked the Thorin/Bilbo romance, I dare argue it veered from the territory of queerbaiting to actual representation
+ Bilbo/ Martin Freeman in general
+ Balin made every scene he was in about 200% better
+ sad hot dad Bard and his epic moments
+ the little we saw of Dáin was much less of a joke than I dared hope
+ despite the ridiculous under ice floating and other length issues, I sort of liked Thorin vs Azog
+ Dáin calling Thranduil a sprite
+ cute Galadriel and Elrond!

- the cheap drug trip visuals (Sauron the Pyromancer, green Galadriel, Thorin's trip into the yellow abyss)
- the music (really boring apart from a couple of nice runs of the Laketown theme, I suspect they killed Howard Shore's inspiration)
- the generally stupid Grimafrid ruining what could've been a cool feminist moment, Bard's squeamish daughters vs his brave son
- the silly-looking monsters (including the massive wereworms who had about 30 seconds of screentime)
- the sheer volumes of the battles - did you know that there are about 200,000 golden-armoured Elf warriors lurking in Mirkwood? neither did I
- speaking of which, the scale of everything makes LotR seem like a joke
- both Smaug's death and the White Council stuff seemed really removed from everything else
- seriously they should have cut Beorn if they only wanted to give him 2min of screentime in DOS and 2s in BOTFA
- Tauriel and Kili (even though the actors did their best!)
- Thranduil (a really despicable guy, and not really even in the spirit of the books)
- Legolas's stunts - imo Legolas was much more fun in the previous movie
- Legolas's quest to find Aragorn (what the actual ???), oh and btw apparently his mother died in on a campaign against Gundabad???
- Thorin's dragooon sickneeessss ("GOLD!" - he was like the baddie in Disney's Pocahontas)
- Fili and Kili's deaths - seriously, how did they manage to botch the emotional impact of them so bad?? they didn't feel like anything to me

I'm pretty sure I forgot something but I'll tell you when I remember.

PS.

Originally Posted by Esty

Lommi, the entertainment value sounds like the annual tradition of watching the Eurovision Song Contest to bash most of the entries! I really wish I had someone like you guys to watch with - I'll be alone amongst strangers tonight...

It was a very similar experience to be honest! I think the best part was Volo laughing uncontrollably when Kili died, but fortunately it sounded a lot like crying so he maybe didn't ruin any fangirl's evening. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the movie nonetheless!