Home Entertainment THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF FIVE ARMIES will have the mother of all battlefield finales

THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF FIVE ARMIES will have the mother of all battlefield finales

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It’s been more than a decade since The Lord Of The Rings trilogy burst onto the scene, creating a new cinematic fantasy universe for the ages. A trilogy that set a mighty high benchmark. While I’m not certain if The Hobbit films will ever be held in such high regard, they are pretty much neck and neck with the quality and success of the first two LOTR movies. And if this prequel is ever going to surpass LOTR, it’s going to need to do so with a battle that puts The Return Of The King to sleep with its ghostly army.

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Speaking with EW about the battle sequence that The Battle Of Five Armies has been leading up to, director Peter Jackson said he and his team had instilled a rule that would keep the emotional focus on the main characters:

We have a rule that we’re not allowed to go more than two or three shots of anonymous people fighting without cutting back to our principal characters. Otherwise the audience just ends up with battle fatigue.

Which in itself was pretty challenging, as the entire battle would be waged in a more confined space:

Before we could loose the first arrow, we had to design the landscape itself and figure out, ‘Okay, if we have 10,000 orcs, how much room are they going to take up? Are they going to fill up the valley or look like a speck?’ Then we could start drawing the arrows on the schematics.

Which also involved various plans, war councils and an old Tolkien favourite. EEEEEAAAAAAGLES! A throwback to the Lord Of The Rings, whick Jackson is well aware of. Especially their importance in how quickly they can resolve a plot when necessary:

Tolkien uses eagles in a way that can be kind of awkward because they tend to show up out of the blue and change things pretty quickly. So here they’re just part of the plan, not the saviors. I mean, I do realize that if the eagles had just been able to bring Frodo to Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings and let him drop the ring in, those movies would have been much shorter.

The Hobbit: The Battle Of Five Armies is out on December 17, and it stars several armies wirth of actors such asIan McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace, Luke Evans, Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Fry, Cate Blanchett, Ian Holm, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Ken Stott, James Nesbitt, Orlando Bloom, John Bell, Manu Bennett, Jed Brophy, Adam Brown, John Callen, Billy Connolly, Ryan Gage, Mark Hadlow, Peter Hambleton, Stephen Hunter, William Kircher, Lawrence Makoare, Sylvester McCoy, Graham McTavish, Dean O’Gorman, Mikael Persbrandt, Aidan Turner.

Last Updated: October 27, 2014

One Comment

  1. When I first heard that this movie was going from two to three movies I got a bit worried that the final movie was going to be a challenge in that it was going to be all Battle and that it was going to be a little over stimulation. If I remember the book correctly the battle is joined and then you get taken to a recalling of events to detail the important bits that you need to know. And I think that was done because ***Mild Spoiler*** that the “heroes” of the story are not really the heroes of the battle. It is mostly the grunts that sort it out with a little help of superior air support.

    What I am worried about is it all going all Michael Bay on itself, where so much is going on that you get lost and then you stop caring. And trying to follow 15 – 20 characters in a full on melee confined claustrophobic environment leads me to be worried that it is going to be the case and that it is going to have to go on for too long.

    But I live in hope that this is going to be the Tolken movie we deserve.

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