The Hobbit is Not Very Good: An Unexpected Analysis - Part 3: The Battle of the Five Armies

welcome back randos to my breakdown of The Hobbit trilogy so far it isn't very good but who knows maybe the Battle of the Five Armies will surprise me even people who like The Hobbit trilogy as I did when I first watched it seem to agree that the Battle of the Five Armies is where everything falls apart check out Parts one and two if you are new to the channel but with that out of the way let's dive straight in we re-enter Middle Earth exactly where the Desolation of Smaug left off we are in Lake Town there is fire on the horizon and the lake townians are panicking we see evil McGee blaming everyone else for his own failure whilst ordering his underlings to carry his valuables to an escape pod all the while making abundantly certain that the audience understands that he is evil selfish incompetent hypocritical short-sighted and greedy not warn you open camera TV withdrawals they've woken the dragon they broke the Apocalypse now I'm trying to evacuate myself here The Fellowship of the Ring began with a flashback depicting the forging of the Rings The Two Towers began with a flashback depicting Gandalf battling the balrog The Return of the King began with a flashback depicting gollum's transformation an Unexpected Journey began with a flashback depicting the fall of Erebor the Desolation of Smaug began with a flashback depicting Thorin and Gandalf planning their mission the Battle of the Five Armies begins with an irritating zero-dimensional clown person rambling about how evil and selfish he is this to me might be considered kind of a step backwards suffice it to say we are not off to a good start and just in case you hadn't worked out what this character's priorities are despite the multiple occasions where he has said peasants bad money good we get this Messiah should we not try to save the town the town has lost save the gold and with that I'm I'm done dedicating time to this character I think I've said enough in the previous video Zero Dimensional pantomime clown that exist to entertain five-year-olds are rather frustrating when attempting to deconstruct them because they are about as complex as a paper airplane anyway we see that the other people of Lake Town are also trying to evacuate with their belongings the film could have started right here with the people Bilbo claims to care about trying to save their loved ones before Smaug arrives but I guess they hired Stephen Fry and so needed to make the most of him we then see that ladyless was rather successful in her healing of Keeley get him up come on brother as we will soon see Keely appears to be not only mobile but you would be forgiven for forgetting that he was moments from Death moments ago remember this scene is taking place almost immediately after the healing scene from The Desolation of Smaug maybe this can be explained by the fact that Keely is a dwarf and as such is more resilient than the other races maybe this can be explained by the fact that ladyless is a god when it comes to Healing people as she has demonstrated that she is far more capable than either elrond or Arwin or maybe this can be explained by the fact that Keely needs to be mobile now because it's time for an action scene I will let you decide also maybe I should have noted this at the end of the last video but this scene confirms that yeah Legolas has he's gone he chased the Orcs over the bridge and out of Lake town and has not returned even though he covets ladyless's firm booty even though he knows who Thorin is and what he intends to do even though there is fire on the goddamn Horizon indicating that a goddamn dragon is coming as we will see later Legolas does eventually decide to return after the dragon has been dealt with of course but for now I guess he just really didn't like the fact that bulg made him bleed his own blood anyway Gaston's son says that he will not leave without Gaston and ladyless tells him that they have to leave or they will die excellent dialogue once again from this certified Wordsmith meanwhile Gaston is still locked up because he is guilty of um and he sees that Smaug has arrived anyway lady lusts the children and the dwarves begin their escape on Gaston's boat [Music] so this is the third time we have seen that Smaug is already here in Lake Town you may be asking yourselves why is Smaug waiting surely he would just annihilate everything because that's kind of what Smaug does and I want to offer a defense if you recall from the previous film Smaug is extremely proud and Vain and he thinks that he cannot be defeated he is also vindictive and sadistic his reason for being here is multifaceted he wants to show Thorin the true meaning of Revenge he wants the people Bilbo cares about to suffer he believes the lake townians are working with the dwarves and are therefore partly to blame for his humiliation at the end of the previous film he has also been asleep for a very long time and he is likely gagging for a bit of Carnage he does not simply want to murder everything as efficiently as possible he wants to make a show of it he wants to terrify the living [ __ ] out of everyone to torture them to make sure they understand how hopeless their situation is before finally incinerating the them this will ultimately prove to be Smaug's downfall in approximately um eight minutes spoiler alert I guess but this is absolutely in character for him so then the Bernie Nation begins and Smaug starts to Torch Lake Town Gaston is still locked in his cell and is still trying desperately to escape during the Mayhem we see that evil McGee is still in Lake town and is trying to escape on his boat filled to the brim with gold and accompanied by I assume the entirety of the Town guard if only we could take more of these poor people with film stop trying to bait me I am stronger than this and then this happens [Music] all right I guess I'm not stronger than this I now have no choice but to continue talking about these two characters because for some incomprehensible reason they are vital to the plot of this movie their absurd behavior is a prerequisite for understanding The Narrative progression in this film so here we go evil McGee's boat crashes into the good guys boat firstly this is depicted as if it was unavoidable but neither boat is traveling very quickly and yet they both Ram into each other despite the fact that they should each clearly be able to see the other boat secondly this is a random coincidence there is no narrative reason why these two boats should be in the same location at the same time anyway suddenly greaseberg realizes which is yet another unbelievably obvious setup I'm going to let you guess what do you think happens next pantomime villain number one says to pantomime villain number two that they're carrying too much weight what do you think will happen next [Music] I am going to guess that every single last [ __ ] one of you was absolutely correct character Nuance be damned I guess but then it gets worse so I need to take this moment slow because there is a lot to say about it not only did they just so happen to bump into the main characters but they also just so happen to be sailing right past the prison cell where Gaston is currently locked up what are the chances well saying that evil McGee and greaseberg already have a track record of being in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time so now I guess it's time for them to be exactly where Gaston needs them to be instead of Vice Versa Gaston has thrown what appears to be a rope out of his cell in order to try and use it to bust himself out of jail my first thought was why and how does he have a rope one would think that giving prisoners access to rope might be an intentionally stupid thing to do for obvious reasons but this moment is surprisingly not reliant on in-universe stupidity it is instead reliant on incredibly good and bad luck as well as Gaston having the fabric bending skills of a middle-aged cat hoarding spinster for you see this is not a rope Gaston has made this he has woven together this fabric that was presumably taken from the bed inside his cell and turned it into a rope he has managed to weave this fabric into a functional rope in a minute two minutes it can't really have been any longer than that because he saw Smaug flying around before he started making the Rope so either Smaug has been patiently waiting for him or he managed to level up rope bending in a matter of seconds so anyway let's skip past the how and move on to the why why has Gaston made this rope well upon realizing that evil McGee and his evil mcboat just so happened to be traveling under his cell he throws the Rope out of the window and is miraculously able to hook evil McGee around the throat as the boat goes past so either he planned this in which case he did legitimately see evil McGee's boat approaching and then craft his rope in 10 seconds flat or he made the Rope preemptively for some bizarre reason and then realized he can hook it onto the passing boat anyway the Rope goes tight slams into the bars and pins evil McGee to the back of his boat the force of this is enough to break open the wall of his cell but it is also not enough to slice evil McGee in half this may suggests that his neck is stronger than the walls of a building but as we are about to see Gaston put his foot through a roof this isn't actually an inconsistency it just means that these buildings have the structural Integrity of the plot of rings of power anyway after his Fantastical Escape Gaston acquires a bow from the Armory and heads towards the bell tower to get a clear shot at Smaug okay evil McGee is evil selfish incompetent hypocritical short sighted and greedy ladyless is unbelievably skill at healing Keeley got better Legolas cares more about fighting Orcs than saving either ladyless or any innocent peasants grease bag is cartoonishly evil Gaston is extremely skilled at fabric weaving is ingenious and is Brave we then rejoined the dwarves and Bilbo who are observing Smaug's destruction of Lake Town from a distance yeah you could say that none of these characters seem to realize that this is entirely their fault there is no moral complexity present here none of the dwarves at any point considered the consequences of their failure this concept was never even brought up until Gaston addressed the citizens of Lake Town in the previous film have you forgotten what happened to Dale have you forgotten those who died in The Firestorm the dwarves just seem to be like we let's go get our home back oh rare there's a there's a drag oh wait no and he's oh dear he's awake and oh okay he's going on a murderous Rampage who could have possibly seen this coming and now an entire town is being murdered and the dwarves do not seem aware that they are to blame one potential fix for this would have been if Thorin had good reason to believe that Smaug was dead this would mean that the risk of waking him is far far lower and it would mean that the dwarves would not need to weigh their desire to reclaim Erebor with the risk of unleashing a fire-breathing monster as depicted no one at any point wrestles with the risk of unleashing a fire-breathing monster despite them all being extremely aware of this risk well that would be a reference to smog with the terrible Airborne fire breather teeth like razors claws like meat hooks oh I am not the flesh off your bones in the blink of an eye what the films have communicated clearly is that Thorin is willing to risk unleashing Smaug in order to reclaim his home this is not a problem inherently because this is absolutely crystal clear Thorin is cognizant of the risk and he is willing to proceed regardless great no right to enter [Music] pouring a dick yes does this make him a badly written character no it is possible that all of the other dwarves share his Viewpoint one for one but as the film never depicts any conflict between the dwarves as to the moral complexity of their mission and the risks involved I find it very hard to take seriously as an honest portrayal of empathy what this scene needed was for one possibly many of the dwarves to declare this is on us we knew the risks look at what we have done and Bilbo to his credit said precisely this at the end of the previous film what have we done the dwarves however not so much anyway we cut back to Lake town and see Gaston racing across the rooftops to get to his vantage point because we needed even more maximum in the most maximum of drama and tension Smaug sees this and decides to chase him Smaug has no way of knowing who gastoni is or what he intends to do but as Gaston is the only person running around on the rooftops it is probably reasonable for Smaug to want to kill him just in case however he does not use his fire breath because Gaston is Decked Out head to toe in mastercrafted plot armor we also see the boat containing ladyless Gaston's children and the dwarves they don't appear to have any kind of plan they are simply drifting around the town praying that they don't roll a critical failure on their stealth check and hoping that Smaug doesn't kill them meaning that their survival is entirely out of their hands anyway Gaston climbs the Bell Tower and fires two shots at Smaug this is very confusing both we and Gaston are intimately aware of how to kill Smaug you need to shoot him with a Black Arrow fired from a dwarvish wind Lance at the end of the previous movie Gaston gave his single Black Arrow to his son so that he could go and assault the town guard he has now escaped from prison and put himself in immense danger so that he can fire a couple of shots at Smaug with a bow he may as well be using a water pistol I have no idea why he's doing this meanwhile Gaston's children noticed their father in The Bell Tower and I now know precisely why he is doing this oh yeah it's all coming together Keeley notices that one of Gaston's arrows successfully hits Smaug but ladyless says oh yeah nothing will okay so this is what I like to call a clunky as balls setup multiple things have just happened so as to allow Gaston's son to have his hero moment Gaston escaped from prison Gaston chose to climb the bell tower to shoot Smaug with his bow knowing that it would be ineffective the boat was near enough to the bell tower for them to see him doing this ladyless reminded everyone that a normal Arrow cannot Pierce Smaug's hide which everyone in the boat is already well aware of this then prompts Gaston's son to leave the boat and thereby risk his life to obtain The Black Arrow and bring it to his father what should have happened is that upon breaking out of prison Gaston would immediately try to locate The Black Arrow unfortunately this can't happen because everyone has forgotten that black arrows are necessary to kill Smaug until ladyless reminds them the purpose of this is that the black arrows were set up in the previous movie and the writers do not trust that the audience has a functional memory the people are [ __ ] they needed to re-establish that black arrows are the only thing that can kill Smaug a good way to do this may be to have Gaston's son be hiding The Black Arrow in the boat and have the camera focus on the Arrow while the characters are talking thus making the audience question why the film is showing them this particular Arrow prompting them to then remember what the Black Arrow is a bad way to do this may have been to have a mid-action scene flashback literally playing the line from Balin only a Black Arrow fired from a windlass so as to feed the same information to the audience once again in exactly the same way a terrible way to do this may be for every character involved to also forget what black arrows are only to then remember alongside the audience so anyway now that this moment has been set up let's see how it plays out [Music] we cannot go back [Laughter] what the [ __ ] do you mean we cannot go back this is a child and you are abandoning him to die ladyless does not know why Gaston's son has left the boat she is not allowing him to risk his life so that he can deliver The Black Arrow to Gaston what has in fact happened from her perspective is that this kid jumps off their escape boat and runs into an inferno and she says oh no their whole Escape Plan quote unquote is entirely reliant on luck so there is no reason why she in particular could not leap out of the boat with her insane Elven agility grab the kid and get back in the boat a way to fix this problem could be for them to actually have a plan of Escape Beyond if they had a strict deadline they had to meet where they had to get through a gate before it closed or something then this could actually provide some complexity to her decision ladyless could be forced to choose between risking the life of one child or risking the lives of three children three dwarves and herself the obvious answer in this scenario would be to risk the life of one instead of seven which I think is what they were trying to do here as depicted however she simply decides LOL now he's gone we can't stop by so anyway Gaston releases his last arrow and it has no effect because of course it doesn't Gaston's son then arrives and Gaston says are you doing why didn't you leave you were supposed to leave when when was this established did I miss the part where Gaston told his son to leave Lake Town more importantly though nothing can stop it no this might Gaston actually has Amnesia I was half joking earlier when I questioned why he climbed the Bell Tower with a bow and arrow but it turns out that the reason he did this is because he genuinely thought that he could kill Smaug with a bow and arrow despite the fact that maybe an hour ago at most he was running around Lake town with a Black Arrow trying to get to the dwarvish windlands so Gaston's son then hands The Black Arrow to his father who then tells him to leave Laketown and get to safety Smaug attacks the bell tower once again forgetting that he can breathe fire and consequently fails to kill either of them but importantly does prevent Gaston's son from leaving this may sound incredibly minor but Smaug not only failing to kill either of them but also preventing Gaston's son from leaving directly leads to his demise Smaug then lands for the first time and addresses Gaston stand against me Gaston still suffering from Amnesia tries to ready his bow only to find it damaged and unusable suggesting that his intention was to fire The Black Arrow at Smaug using his bow instead of the dwarvish windlands as a side note unlike the book version The Black Arrow is not actually an arrow it is a large metal bolt that as we have already seen is fired from a windlance which is essentially a Ballista the prospect of firing a heavy metal Bolt from a bow is sheer insanity but I guess in this film Gaston's brain don't be thinking too good I of course cannot confirm the actual physical properties of the arrows he uses or of The Black Arrow itself for all I know The Black Arrow is made from the offcuts of mithril and weighs even less than a normal Arrow but as a point of comparison a real world Arrow used with a longbow will typically weigh around 50 grams or .05 of a kilo a Roman ballista bolt would typically weigh around 26 kilos which is 520 times heavier than an arrow Gaston is essentially trying to load a tomahawk land attack missile into a cult single action revolver anyway smoke taunts Gaston telling him there is no hope and that he cannot save his son from the fire Gaston realizes that he cannot get to the windlands or perhaps that it has already been destroyed he also cannot use his bow because it is broken and also because it is the wrong weapon to fire a Ballista bolt so naturally he decides to use his son as a bow he jams the broken limbs of the bow into the ruined structure of the Bell Tower and says boy stand here do what father says and then he seats The Black Arrow on his son's shoulder and draws back the bow string yes this is actually happening so this kid is about to have his jaw removed via some Unholy slap in the face and how the [ __ ] do you aim like this boy stand still boy little to the left no not your left my left so the problems with this are so absurd that I am just going to list them firstly physics and don't even begin to try and tell me that physics don't matter it's just a movie blah [ __ ] blah it being a movie does not mean that you get to contradict your rules in this way so you cannot fire a Ballista Bolt from a bow the amount of force needed to launch the bolt properly would be far more than could be generated by a man pulling a bow string jamming the broken parts of a bow into a plank of wood is not anywhere near secure enough to store the amount of energy required to launch a Ballista bolt there is no way to accurately fire this by balancing the bolt on a child now onto the character issues let's assume that firing a Ballista bolt using a child in a broken bow is physically possible Gaston's son being here is reliant on random chance Gaston being here is reliant on him leaving his brain in the jail cell them being alive is reliant on Smaug being aware that Gaston is shooting at him but consciously decide not to kill him it sure is a good thing then that Gaston's wife is dead because if she saw this she would go ballistic okay I'll see myself out anyway this scene seems to be an idea that sounded good on paper but is unfathomably stupid on screen the idea of family overcoming evil the idea of Gaston literally using his son to fire The Black Arrow the idea of the sun helping the father do what the great-grandfather could not why they decided to have Gaston use his son as a piece of Siege equipment to communicate this is simply Beyond me so while Smaug taunts Gaston he sees the hull under smog's wing where his ancestor girian of Dale had managed to loosen one of his scales and thus create a weak point Gaston's reaction is this you have nothing left so there are two possibilities here one is that he did not believe the story to be true which would make perfect sense as I have already explained no one could know that smelg's armor was weakened in this way and that he smiles upon realizing holy [ __ ] carrion did actually make a hole now is my chance I can actually kill this [ __ ] alternatively and possibly more likely given the rather booked state of Gaston's brain he did believe the story but had forgotten it until he saw for himself the hole in Smaug's armor he then Smiles upon remembering oh yeah he has a hole in him I guess I'll aim for that neither of these explanations work whatsoever given Gaston's actions so far in this film so my assumption is that this shot happened so as to remind the audience that Smaug has a weak point in case they had forgotten so Gaston releases The Black Arrow and it hits Smaug perfectly in his weak point I would not have a problem with Gaston's accuracy if the rest of this scene functioned we have already seen that he is extremely skilled with a bow and it was heavily implied that he has been waiting for this this moment for his entire life I don't have a problem with Gaston being able to make this shot the problems I have are everything leading up to him making this shot plus the fact that Smaug is looking directly at them and as he has extremely good eyesight he can clearly see what they are doing and yet he doesn't care to protect his weak point that he knows exists anyway Smaug has now been mortally wounded and he dies 10 minutes into the film if I had gone to see this film because of the awesome dragon on all the posters I would have been an absolutely Furious eight-year-old and as smell crashes down from the sky he just so happens to land on evil McGee and his boat full of selfishness because of course he is a baddie and he got what he deserved this kind of thing is meant to be cathartic to create a character so reprehensible that it becomes extremely satisfying watching them get their comeuppance this usually works best when the bad guy is outsmarted by the good guy they think they have won but they missed a key detail and have been intellectually bested there are multiple examples of this in The Departed which I will not elaborate on however because they're not directly comparable and I don't really want to spoil the ending another example that is perhaps closer to The Hobbit is aliens spoilers for aliens so skip forward to the timestamp on screen now if you want to avoid spoilers so Burke is extremely selfish and is willing to kill others or allow them to die in order to become rich much like the master of Lake town he attempts to flee during an attack from the aliens in the film much like the Master of Laketown he accidentally encounters an alien during his escape and is killed much like the master of Lake town so why does the Burke scene work where the master scene does not Burke's motivations are fleshed out and understandable we understand why he is a dick whereas with the master we only understand that he is a dick this makes his demise that much more cathartic additionally when Burke flees during the fight he is actively being cowardly he is letting the heroes fight and die while he runs away the master is also running from a fight but so is literally everyone else in Lake Town apart from Gaston so I would argue that the master leaving Lake town is not so much cowardly as it is sensible additionally him being killed by an alien during his Escape is unlucky but it's absolutely reasonable given how many aliens there are and given that they were surrounded the master being killed by Smaug is entirely as a result of bad luck the dragon just so happened to land on him I assume that Smaug also squashed multiple other people as well but as the film focuses on the master I guess we aren't supposed to think about it additionally Burke's death serves as a form of poetic justice he planned to get rich off the aliens he is directly responsible for the deaths of everyone in the film the aliens were born from his victims he does not redeem himself in his final moments and he goes out like a coward his own actions directly led to his own demise this is poetic and extremely satisfying to watch in the case of the master he had no direct interaction nor narrative link with Smaug had he attempted to grab even more gold on his way out and as a result of his greed he was then faced with an angry dragon then this would work far better as depicted however there is nothing poetic about the Master's demise it is simply bad man gets squashed meanwhile the dwarves and Bilbo realize that smelg has been defeated gloyne then notices the Ravens returning to the mountain as was foretold and Thorin does not appear happy that soon everyone will know of Smaug's defeat he moves towards Erebor alone as the dwarves celebrate again it is slightly vague as to what thorin's mental state is here the film seems to be implying that Thorin wants to claim Erebor and the riches within before anyone else has a chance to this seems to make sense although what role the Arkenstone has to play here is rather confusing because now that Smaug is dead Thorin does not actually need the Arkenstone own because he no longer needs the assistance of any of the other Dwarven kingdoms to retake Erebor I assume this will all become clear soon okay Ballin does not understand when he is at fault ladyless let's children kill themselves Gaston has Amnesia is actually an idiot and exploits the bodies of children in the operation of broken Siege weaponry we then cut back to the aftermath of smelg's attack on Lake town we see the screaming survivors crawling ashore after having rode to relative safety Gaston's children are looking for their father whilst the dwarves have decided to leave the survivors and head to Erebor this may seem like a dick move but in defense of this the reason why oin and fili remain in Lake town was because Keeley was injured and the reason why buffer remained in Lake town was because he was [ __ ] don't say that word anyway as Keely is no longer injured and as the lake townians are no longer in immediate danger they have decided to regroup with the rest of their party yes they could potentially be helping the peasants get to shore but I think the best face way to interpret this is that now that Smaug is defeated they know that Erebor is up for grabs they need to be with Thorin to reclaim their home how 13 dwarves and a hobbit are going to hold Erebor from anyone who is looking to claim it is at this point unknown but I digress so this next bit I really wanted to gloss over because it's rom-com [ __ ] time but there is unfortunately import important character information within Keeley asks ladyless to come with him I know how I feel I'm not afraid you make me feel alive I don't know what that means I think you do I can entirely understand the dwarves wanting to get to Thorin as Thorin is their King and he may be in danger or dead or honestly who knows at this point I can also entirely understand ladyless staying with Gaston's two daughters to make sure they are safe as they are as if this even needs saying children who have just gone through one of the most traumatic things possible and who believe their father and brother to be dead ignoring for the moment the fact that ladyless was previously depicted as not giving a [ __ ] about protecting Gaston's children the reason ladyless is here at this moment is because she gives a [ __ ] about protecting Gaston's children by asking ladyless to come with him because he's totally in love or whatever just informs us that Keely is at this point motivated entirely by his weenie he is aware of who Gaston's two daughters are and what they have just gone through and he knows that Gaston stayed behind in Lake town and that he is likely dead and yet his intention is to leave and take ladyless with him anyway because ladyless has fantastic hearing she hears Legolas approach indicating that he did actually decide to come and help or at least that was my impression until he opened his mouth he tells her to leave Keeley as she is needed elsewhere so Legolas was last seen chasing bulg he did not notice or perhaps did not care that ladyless had stayed behind he has now realized that Smaug has attacked Laketown and he has followed the evacuees to locate ladyless he is intimately aware of what has just happened and he offers no Aid whatsoever he intends to leave immediately with ladyless Keely turns away to join the other dwarves before offering her the Talisman that he was playing with when they first met I would forgive you for not recalling but this Talisman was a token given to Keeley by his mother so that he would remember his promise to return to her he has now given it to ladyless and the implication is that he in 10 to return to ladyless instead as this is the symbolic purpose of the Talisman the problem with this is that bypassing the Talisman to ladyless and thereby promising to return to her he has symbolically let go of his promise to return to his mother maybe his mother is dead in which case this would make marginally more sense but as this is not in the film it appears as though Keely cares more about Excavating ladyless's sinkhole than returning home to his mother after a dangerous quest in amongst all this grease bag is behaving like an exaggerated cartoon person because what the [ __ ] else were you expecting give me one of them I'll catch my death in this town this is again in line with what we have seen this character do the problem is that this scene depicts the survivors of a dragon attack trying desperately to find their loved ones after having just seen their homes turned to Ash it also depicts two doomed would-be lovers going their separate ways this scene is clearly supposed to be tragic and if not for the inclusion of this clown screaming about how selfish she is it may potentially have been emotionally effective it is entirely possible to have a scene that is both tragic and Darkly comedic but this scene in The Hobbit instead should be tragic and in its inexplicable attempts to be funny it ends up being extremely cringy and tone deaf so grease bag assaults The Peasants and declares himself to be in charge as the master is missing greasebag evidently genuinely thinks that he can be in charge purely because he says so he has no means by which to enforce his will upon the people and he knows that they do not like him the master is not present and neither are any of the Town guards he seems to behave as he does so as to allow Gaston to embarrass and emasculate him he is seemingly incapable of cognition he is incomprehensibly stupid and I can't believe that anyone with a functioning brain would ever behave in this way greasebag does not know things he does not react to things he simply opens his mouth and the will of the writers is blasted into our ears the purpose of this scene is to show us an impossibly reprehensible character being as evil as is comprehensible so that we can be entertained when bad things happen to him so he attempts to take a blanket from this woman who refuses saying I'll be dead before I answer the lights of you which is a very odd thing to say when she has presumably taken orders from the master for her entire life and the master isn't exactly an improvement over griesberg griesberg then declares his intent to murder her and moves to strike her but his hand is seized by Gaston go turn him on your own Alfred so Gaston escaped Lake town after using his son as a Siege weapon and is now reunited with his family and with impeccable timing otherwise I guess greasebag would have murdered this poor woman in front of everyone and proclaimed himself to be the new Master this man claims to have seen everything that happened in Lake town and declares he brought a piece down shot dead with The Black Arrow foreign this causes the people to embrace Gaston as their hero how much more impactful would this moment have been if Gaston was just some guy who stepped up to the challenge in order to protect his family and friends we will unfortunately never know what we have here is heroic hero phase who is the Town Hero and fights against depression gives food to the poor and beats up the baddies and when the dragon attacks he then decides to save the town by fulfilling his Destiny and defeating it because as was set up in his second scene Gaston is the Town Hero pretty pathetic huh then we get some more cringe Ohio to the Dragon Slayer full hail King bad honestly you know how much I despise this character and I have already skipped things that are so surface level that a three-year-old could tell you all there is to know about them but unfortunately there are so many problems with this scene that I can't ignore it grease bag declares Gaston to be the king of Lake Town firstly Lake Town doesn't have a king it has a master additionally even if we assume that grease bag has the power to declare a new king he does not know that the master is dead so he has no reason to want to replace him additionally both grease bag and Gaston seem to think that killing a dragon makes you the king Gaston responds do not call me that I'm not the master of this town as if he knows that when you kill the dragon you become the king when a more normal response may have been what the [ __ ] are you talking about why am I suddenly a king I know I killed the dragon but what does that have to do with anything additionally as we will soon see Lake Town has been absolutely annihilated so whilst yes Gaston did indeed kill the dragon it is unclear as to how many lives he actually saved so after asking where the master is this woman from earlier tells Gaston that he is halfway down the anduin what um anyone at all familiar with a map of Middle Earth will be able to tell you that the river anduin is on the other side of mirkwood the river upon which the lake upon which lake town sits is the selduin this means that the writers wanted to name drop a river that was featured in The Lord of the Rings as the anduin is the river that the fellowship Rose down after leaving lothlorian and it is also the river upon which australiath is located and in so doing made this woman an idiot who doesn't know where she lives anyway grease bag continues to act like grease bags so as to allow heroic hero phase to show how Brave and righteous he is [Applause] [Applause] [Music] and so he takes charge of the people of Lake town and they depart for Erebor to ask Thorin to honor their deal all right Keeley does not care about children ladyless cares about children grease bag is evil says things that make no sense because it sets up other people saying things in response is spineless and is a liar Gaston does not want to be a king and will lead the people out of necessity we then cut to Philly Keely buffer and oin arriving at Erebor all they know at this point is that Smaug was awoken and has since been killed all of their companions being dead is not off the table for them at this point they see some of the destruction smell has caused and walked through the front door hey imagine that they make it quite far into Erebor before Bilbo approaches them and I am possibly naively expecting Bilbo to have some kind of purpose within this film Beyond and then he rescues the dwarves you need to leave we all need to leave I've tried talking to him but he won't listen Karen he's been down there for days he doesn't sleep he barely eats he's not been himself because remember children Thorin has the crazies he is being driven mad by the Arkenstone maybe or is it the gold pile yeah maybe is it his genetic maybe is it a curse upon Erebor itself seemingly it is some combination of the above anyway Bilbo claims Thorin has been down there for day which doesn't entirely line up at all it was not days ago that Smaug was released Smaug attacked Lake town and was defeated within one night the dwarves and the other survivors reached the shore seemingly the next morning and we already know that Erebor can be reached from Lake Town within a day given that fili Keely buffer and oyne have no reason at all to take their time this scene is taking place at most 48 hours after the end of the previous film anyway upon hearing Bilbo say that a sickness lies upon this place they rush off to help Thorin either implying that they are well aware of what happened to thraw and thus want to prevent this from happening to Thorin or implying that feli and Keely now have the crazies as well so they reach the mountain of cash and sea [Music] Thorin despite being mentally frazzled welcomes them to Erebor and they decide yeah okay thorin's totally fine even though he is currently walking around telling himself how much he likes gold suggesting that either Philly and Keely are unaware of the gold sickness that runs in their own family or that they are also Afflicted or perhaps that they do indeed notice that their uncle is now a fruitcake and have decided to ignore it none of these hypotheses are ever addressed in this film the only two dwarves to even acknowledge that Thorin is going mad are dwalin and Balin and even then only after a significant amount of time spent swimming in thorin's gold-plated [ __ ] we then get some revisionist history before I show you what happens I will remind you of what we saw happen in the previous film Bilbo and Smaug accidentally ended up right next to the Arkenstone both characters were aware of what the arkan Stone was Smaug said to Bilbo I am almost tempted to let you take it if only to see Oakenshield suffer watch it destroy him watch it corrupt his hard and drive him mad but I think not I think our little game ends here so tell me Thief how do you choose to die Bilbo then puts the ring on becoming invisible and upon realizing that Bilbo has disappeared once more Smaug sprays fire everywhere now here's what the Battle of the Five Armies wants you to think is what happened in that scene Bilbo puts the ring on and is able to grab the Arkenstone and Escape before being engulfed in fire no additionally this scene confuses the rules of the ring when someone puts the ring on they become invisible including anything they are wearing how exactly it knows to make your clothes invisible is unknown but until now this is a question that was never relevant the specific mechanics of how the ring does what it does have never been problematic until now this scene implies that when you put the ring on anything you pick up also becomes invisible the reason this is implied is because we already know that Smaug knows that the arkan stone is there and he knows that Bilbo wants it and yet he is unable to prevent Bilbo from taking it had invisibilbo picked up the Arkenstone and it remained visible Smaug would have abso [ __ ] lutely been able to see it and this would then make Bilbo's Escape even more absurd than it already is so why did the writers make this Choice why conceal from the audience whether or not Bilbo has the Arkenstone there are a couple of reasons one is to provide an additional Cliffhanger going into film three as this is a significant unanswered question two is to prevent a Bilbo from telling Thorin no I couldn't get it sorry as Bilbo is not a liar and to therefore allow Thorin to suspect that Bilbo is hiding something from him and justify his paranoia the problem is that narratively this was entirely unnecessary I know that I have already pointed out multiple problems and inconsistencies with thorin's crazies but for now I'll just accept what the writers wanted to convey Thorin was already acting crazy before Bilbo acquired the Arkenstone Thorin then went back to not being crazy after Bilbo acquired the Arkenstone the repetition of Smaug's dialogue cry cry huh drive him man appears to be a direct attempt to explain thorin's behavior Thorin is acting crazy because Bilbo took the Arkenstone meaning that Bilbo is now stuck because he can either reveal that he already has the Arkenstone and risk thorin's wrath or he can keep it hidden which honestly could lead to any number of things few of them good the problems are that this requires that Bilbo did actually take the Arkenstone in the previous film which I simply don't believe was possible it requires that Thorin be crazy and also not crazy as required by the plot it requires that Thorne and Bilbo not confront each other after their initial standoff and it requires that Thorin believes that the Arkenstone is still within the treasure horde given thorin's mental state and given his extremely paranoid Behavior towards Bilbo specifically in the previous film and given that Thorin immediately saw through Bilbo's dismissive answer all Thorin needed to do which would have been entirely reasonable was search Bilbo okay Thorin really likes gold trusts but also doesn't trust Bilbo and Bilbo is unwilling to call people out when they threaten to kill him and doesn't trust Thorin cut back to the peasants where grease bag is acting like grease bag right that's enough of that Gaston clarifies that his intent is to ask only for the gold that was promised to them so that they can rebuild their lives he believes the gold to be cursed and that he has no intentions of taking more than they were promised this makes a degree of sense and it is totally within character for Gaston Legolas it turns out is still here and he decides to have a chat with Gaston warning him that something bad may happen as a result of Smaug's defeat there are many factions who want Erebor for many reasons setting up the core conflict of this film my question is why is Legolas telling Gaston this he has never met him he doesn't know who he is he doesn't like Outsiders and he doesn't seem to care about protecting the lake townians therefore Legolas appears to have waited around so as to tell the audience that there is conflict on the horizon speaking of conflict Azog and his army of physics simulations marched towards Erebor I.E have no idea why the army is in this movie look substantially less believable than those in The Lord of the Rings but anyway bulg approaches Azog and informs him of Legolas and ladyless I am happy to assume that bulg was able to locate Azog bolg knows that Azog is leading saron's Army he knows that they intend to head to Erebor and he knows where they came from plus a giant army is easier to locate than just Azog on his own bolg tells Azog that the elves fled like cowards which is of course the opposite of what happened and Azog is not happy about this saying that they will return with an army this moment is absolutely critical bolg has lied to Azog in saying that Legolas and ladyless fled leading Azog to believe that this will prompt an army of elves to march on Erebor so why did bolg lie he hasn't exactly come across as a character with a fragile ego and yet this lie is necessary for the plot of this film to function it does of course turn out that there is an army of elves on their way to Erebor but this is four reasons that are entirely different to what Azog has just been told anyway because Azog does not want to risk losing Erebor as a result of bulgs [ __ ] up he orders bulk to ride to gundabad and to let the legions come forth what what and where is gundabad this was not set up whatsoever gundabad has been mentioned once in this Trilogy so the sudden reveal that they have a gundabad raises more than a few questions why were the Orcs in gundabad not already a part of this fight did Sauron not want them why did the gundabad Orcs not already have an interest in Erebor where is gundabad all rather important questions none of which are going to be answered at any point in this film anyway what has essentially happened is that Azog has realized that an army of elves is likely going to meet them in battle at Erebor so he has said ah [ __ ] what do I do now oh yeah let's go and ask gundabad to come and help this would be like if in the Lord of the Rings when Sauron is attacking ministerius Gandalf says Ah [ __ ] what do I do now oh yeah let's light the beacons and ask Rohan to come help then when the harajram arrived Gandalf says Ah [ __ ] what do I do oh yeah Aragon go to the mountain and ask the army of the Dead to come help what is the army of the Dead you may ask yeah it doesn't matter they can help you see you may be thinking but random isn't this an extremely simplistic overview of exactly what happens and no rohan's Aid the army of the dead and the haradrim were all set up the audience already knew who these factions were and what their allegiances were when the haradrum arrive and start squashing the rohiram the audience isn't caught off guard saying oh I guess they have elephants now where did they get those because the existence of this faction and the mama kill was set up in the previous movie anyway we cut back to Legolas and ladyless he tells her that he knows who bolg is revealing that bulge is the son of Azog he claims that bulg fled North after leaving Lake Town this creates a we problem so there are two possibilities I had assumed that Azog LED his army from dolgoldur around the south of merkwood to then head north to Erebor passing Lake Town on Route however this doesn't make any sense if Legolas is correct about the direction bulk fled if bulk fled north of Lake Town it means he went this way around mirkwood he met azog's Army on Route meaning that Azog was in fact heading north out of dolgoldur to approach Erebor from the West so why make such a big deal out of this well this matters because the recently introduced gundabad is located right about here this means Azog intended to lead his army right past gundabad but had no intentions of joining forces or ordering them to send their own Army despite the fact that from what we have been explicitly told it is quite likely that Azog and bolg are from gundabad originally sauron's forces and the gundabad Orcs are already working together meaning that this makes absolutely no sense unless they plan to hold back their forces at gundabad for some reason and then decided actually we need to call in our strategic reserves this may be explained somewhere in the book but as depicted in the film it comes off as if they waited until film 3 to introduce gundabad as a faction because they remembered that there need to be five armies in the Battle of the Five Armies so Legolas explains to ladyless what and where gundabad is because being a millennia old Elven Captain she is completely unaware of an ancient Orc Stronghold that lies less than 300 miles from her home dumb [ __ ] an Elven messenger then approaches Legolas how the messenger knew where to find him is a mystery but honestly for this video to remain in any way digestible I'm going to have to gloss over problems as minor as this the messenger says that thranduel has summoned Legolas to return to the Woodland realm immediately and that ladyless has been banished Legolas tells the messenger that if ladyless cannot return then neither will he and we fall back into Roman on [ __ ] time he then says that he will ride North to gundabad and asks her to come with him so this appears to suggest that Legolas wants to go to gundabad and that this is the reason for him disobeying his father he is not simply refusing on a matter of principle he has an objective and returning to mirkwood does not align with this objective excellent so my question then is why does Legolas want to ride to gundabad the film thinks it has done a sufficient job of explaining this but it absolutely has not the dialogue in this scene has tricked the audience into thinking that this makes sense Legolas is one single reason to ride 300 miles away from Erebor to gundabad is that bulge is from there that's it does Legolas desperately want to murder bolg it can't be that simple because Legolas evidently stopped chasing him at some point so that he could return here and then start chasing him again does Legolas suspect that bold may lead the gundabad Orcs into battle and he believes that he can prevent this by Charlie to pistols at dawn is Legolas just making up reasons not to return to merkwood so that he can have an adventure with ladyless I just I I don't know anymore I have absolutely no idea what Legolas plans to do when he arrives at gundabad he does not have an objective or a reason for going there and I can only assume this happens so as to allow the plot to progress later down the line okay Gaston is Honorable grease bag hates women hates working likes gold bulg doesn't want his papa to know how bad he sucks ladyless is inexperienced with Middle Earth despite being an elf who is poo potentially thousands of years hold and Legolas prioritizes love over being his father and King we then cut back to dolgoldur which now appears empty Gandalf is still imprisoned the last movie did Brother irritatingly invent out of nowhere that Gandalf is capable of teleportation but I am happy to assume that he needs his staff in order to do this as we have never seen Gandalf perform magical Feats without his stuff he then hears galadriel's voice in his head Miss Randy and this is something that has happened multiple times in both the Lord of the Rings and in The Hobbit a power that Galadriel has is that she is able to communicate with people telepathically in The Fellowship of the Ring she speaks to Frodo when he arrives in lothlorian but before he has actually met her she is aware that he is carrying the ring and she was also aware that Gandalf had fallen into Shadow without anyone telling her in Return of the King we also have her voice over when Frodo is attacked by shelob may it be a light for you in Dark Places when all other lights go up and I don't think that Galadriel is literally communicating with Frodo here given that the dialogue is identical to the scene in Fellowship I give you the light of Erin may it be a light for you in Dark Places when all other lights go out this scene is instead A visual representation of Frodo recalling that he has the light of lendil and it is of course also here to remind the audience that Frodo has the light of elendil I usually dislike when films do this so look no further than my previous rant about The Black Arrow but honestly given the length of these movies The Shield obscene occurs at least eight hours after the lot lorian scene so I can forgive It Anyway the final example of Galadriel speaking to people in their heads is in the Desolation of Smaug where she communicates with Gandalf as he enters merkwood something Moves In the Shadows beware the Necromancer it's not what he seems this is the first time Galadriel has done anything like this explicitly she is directly communicating with someone across a significant distance via some form of telepathy this explains why she's able to do this now in the Battle of the Five Armies although it raises multiple questions across the six films if Galadriel is suddenly able to speak to people on the other side of Middle Earth this combined with the fact that she can read minds means that there are many instances where doing so would have been extremely useful again this is probably a topic for another video as if I were to even try and list them now this video would never be released the only defense I can think of is that she is only able to do this with other beings of immense power such as Gandalf to summarize then The Hobbit movies inventing this ability for Galadriel has the potential to create multiple holes in The Lord of the Rings anyway we see Gandalf moping in his cage in dolgulder lamenting the fact that he ran in on his own and was almost immediately apprehended and placed in a location tragically bereft of butterflies mission accomplished we see him communicating with radagast or at least that seems to be what is implied and if I'm right about this then this suggests that multiple characters in Middle Earth are able to communicate directly with each other from across the continent yes these characters are ones that have already been established as being extremely powerful but forgive me for suspecting that the writers have decided to invent a new power for them so as to justify a dramatic fight scene in the sixth and final film in the series anyway Gandalf is manhandled by a particularly large orc who says that Gandalf has something Sauron wants one of the three Elven Rings this plugs one hole and creates many more this explains why Sauron did not kill Gandalf as they are building on the idea that Sauron is trying to collect all of the Rings of power like Pokemon we already know he has thrain's ring and we also know from an Unexpected Journey that Sauron already has two of the other Dwarven rings as well of the Seven Dwarf Rings four were consumed by dragons two were taken by Sauron before he fell in Mordor why Sauron is doing this is unexplained and as I have mentioned before is inexplicable if the Rings function as depicted in The Lord of the Rings additionally if sauron's goal is to obtain Gandalf's ring I can't help but think locking him in a cage waiting for a while and then asking one orc to go and slap him around a bit is not a particularly optimal method by which to do this especially given how easily Sauron overpowered Gandalf in the previous film as Gandalf does not have his staff the orc is able to give him a reasonable spanking and if not for the timely arrival of a certain character Gandalf would have lost his finger and his ring during this scene meaning that Gandalf has been defeated how much of this was due to his mental strain caused by his battle with Sauron and how much was due to starvation and thirst is unknown because we simply have no frame of reference for how much time has passed anyway prior to entering dogolder alone instead of waiting for backup or bringing radagast with him Gandalf sent radagast to get Galadriel for help we have seen both Galadriel and Gandalf communicate across vast distances via telepathy so why radagast needed to physically go and get her is unknown well it counts it doesn't make sense I don't usually ask that magic systems in movies delve too much into the specifics of how this kind of thing works and in The Lord of the Rings when this kind of thing happened it didn't negatively affect the world building when galagio communicates with Frodo in fellowship with ring this requires that she is aware of where Frodo is what his name is what he is doing and that he is carrying the One Ring all of which can be summed up by saying that Galadriel can read Frodo's mind and communicate with him when she is relatively close by that's it there is no oh but if she can do that then why didn't she do X because this does not contradict anything she is not seen to do this from the other side of Middle Earth and there were no other opportunities for her to use this ability in The Hobbit movies Galadriel at the very least can communicate with Gandalf from the other side of Middle Earth if not vice versa and she can also read his mind Gandalf is also aware that she can do this therefore there is now zero reason as to why radagast would need to leave in order to bring her to dolgulder the only potential reason I can think of was so as to ensure that Galadriel knew that she was needed as she may not have been reading Gandalf's mind at this exact moment but even this doesn't work Galadriel should already know what Gandalf knows and one would think she would have her eye on him anyway as she is very aware of the morgul blade and she explicitly sent him to the highfels of Ruda okay so setting aside how her arrival makes less than no sense unless we simply say oh it's galagial she's really powerful so obviously she knew Gandalf needed help Galadriel is now here with impeccable timing and she vaporizes the orc thus saving Gandalf as she walks through dolgulder this happens [Music] die and they find themselves surrounded by the nine the Nazgul this tells us that the Nazgul have remained hidden until now as we already know that they have been here for the entire Trilogy or at least we can be certain of this with regard to the witch King and can reasonably assume it to be true of the other eight because sauron's original plan of asking one orc to take Gandalf's ring didn't turn out so well he has decided to whip out the big guns and send the Nazgul this partly works but mostly doesn't firstly Galadriel is also a ring bearer meaning that as per sauron's apparent goal of becoming a Pokemon Master we can assume that he also wants galadriel's ring however Sauron is also here in dolgoldur at this very moment I have no idea how powerful he is in his current state relative to Galadriel but if the Nazgul are this much of a threat then I have to assume Sauron being present would only increase the likelihood of him defeating her Additionally the Nazgul seem to have announced themselves before phasing into reality suggesting that they very well could have ambushed Galadriel while she was carrying Gandalf suggesting that potentially Sauron wants to be discovered and wants to be defeated in this scene I will come back to this idea shortly anyway after witnessing the Nazgul Implement some rather questionable timing elrond and Saruman reveal that they are also totally here now and oh my God it's morbin time or something I just came good God that looks horrible anyway we now get our fangirl moment of watching Galadriel Saruman and elrond team up to fight the nine throughout this sequence the Nazgul appear to be some kind of Ghost type creatures which is very different to how the witch King appeared in an Unexpected Journey and is also very different to how they appeared in The Lord of the Rings in fact if someone less familiar with Peter Jackson's version of Middle Earth were to watch this scene they would be forgiven for thinking these ghosts were something else entirely they also seem to be able to teleport and they seem to be way way more agile and acrobatic than we have ever seen previously oh the limitations of using actors in suits am I right this is kind of similar to a problem that the Star Wars prequels introduced which came about as a result of advances in technology we see that during the prequels the Jedi are immensely skilled in combat then a couple of in-universe decades later Vader and Obi-Wan are now extremely slow and cumbersome when fighting each other this of course is because their fight in A New Hope was made with a fraction of the budget that Revenge of the Sith had plus the fact that David prowse and Alec Guinness were 42 and 63 respectively and creating anything like the climactic battle as seen in Revenge of the Sith in 1977 would have simply been impossible even if George Lucas had planned that far ahead is this the fault of a new hope no although revenge of the sith's existence now retroactively creates this problem with a new hope when absorbed within the entire continuity of the series similarly the Nazgul in this scene appear to be much more threatening aggressive and flat out dangerous than they ever were in The Lord of the Rings this is honestly a problem in many other franchises not just Star Wars or the Lord of the Rings the alien creatures in Alien Covenant are vastly more agile physically capable and dangerous than the titular alien ever was in the original film and yet alien Covenant expects the viewer to accept that the 1979 creature came about as a result of deliberately bioengineering the 2017 creature into a perfect killing machine when it was already evidently far better at killing people and much like the creatures in Alien Covenant the simple fact is that the Nazgul in the Battle of the Five Armies are entirely a product of visual effects this meant that the filmmakers had no limitations in terms of what was possible with regards to their physicality a couple of other factors will have also come into play such as the fact that Hugo weaving was 54 at the time of filming and Christopher Lee was a staggering 92 years old because this man was an absolute boss plus my admittedly cynical presumption that this entire scene was added on short notice and so needed to be filmed quickly allowing no time for complex choreography as seen in Revenge of the Sith anyway while elrond and Saruman fight the Nazgul Galadriel tries to wake Gandalf up before radagast and his God damn ban rabbits arrive how exactly they made it fully inside is a mystery and the Nazgul conveniently stopped respawning for a moment so as to allow Gandalf to be whisked away this also makes clear that radagast decided not to help fight the Nazgul likely because he does not have the skills required to do so if true this may appear to partially explain Gandalf's actions in the previous film no can't come after me but I will remind you that Gandalf also had zero reason to enter dolgoldur at that point period anyway Galadriel tells radagast that dolgoldur is draining Gandalf's life which is a line that I almost didn't mention because it means nothing it was not set up previously and it does not pay off later it's just again delf has to go because DOL gildura is really evil or something so Gandalf asks Galadriel to come with him and she refuses opting to stay with Saruman and elrond so as to confront Sauron why Gandalf wanted her to come with him is open for interpretation maybe he thought they wouldn't stand a chance against Sauron maybe he didn't want Galadriel specifically to die to save him maybe he thought Saruman and elrond had it handled and he wanted to whisk Galadriel away on a magical journey anyway because the fight scene is now finished the Nazgul stopped respawning and uh I assume dead but then wait they're already dead so I guess they're now properly dead again but wait they're Undead in The Lord of the Rings so I guess now they're just not in the scene anymore because the script says the fight is over so to summarize briefly this whole scene came off like a shallow but flashy video game level and I have to say this is probably the best video game level from the trilogy so far the scene looks pretty cool and it is superficially pretty awesome seeing elrond Saruman and galagial fight as their skills have until this point only ever been implied the problem I have with this scene outside of the logistics by which it is allowed to happen is that the Nazgul are totally different to the Nazgul from The Lord of the Rings they are reduced to Ultron Bots brainlessly Zerg rushing the heroes so that they can show off their flashy moves if these were instead Elite Orcs or some other respawning spooky then the scene would have worked far better but random if they were Orcs then the white Council would have just destroyed them and there would be no tension or Stakes much like the Goblin Town scene we must be watching very different films [ __ ] Alter Ego because the nuzzle aren't exactly putting up a fight this doesn't appear to be much of a challenge for The Avengers sorry for the white Council they're just effortlessly slicing through an infinite horde of respawning bad guys anyway Galadriel is now also extremely weakened presumably as a result of healing Gandalf and then Sauron so this next bit I need to take slowly Sauron could have appeared at any point suggesting that he was screwing with the white Council by throwing the Nazgul at them however Sauron does not appear to have a physical form and as stated in the Fellowship of the Ring Sauron cannot take physical form without the one ring so why he reveals himself at all is a mystery he tells them that the East will fall that the age of the elves is over and that the age of the orc has begun this is a very interesting comment as it suggests that Millennia old Elven captains are not the only ones with a very poor grasp on middle Earth's geography we can also add this ageless demigod to that list the East has already fallen the East is where Mordor is it is the West that Sauron intends to conquer as Sauron simply has to be aware of how powerful Galadriel and Saruman are this suggests that he is risking his plan for world domination so as to taunt the heroes so he then respawns the nazgull presumably because he intends to kill Galadriel Saruman and elrond after having revealed his plan to them and then glad you'll decides yeah actually I'm okay hey guys do you remember this thing I did in the Adam I was blue and it's scary imma do it again LOL so Galadriel evaporates the Nazgul back to being dead again and then she blasts Sauron Over the Horizon like team [ __ ] rocket all right so I have a couple of questions if you don't mind why is Galadriel a wraith-like spookster this seems to be a callback to her appearance in fellowship with ring but the context here is entirely different so I am thoroughly confused why is she suddenly turbocharged if she is powerful enough to throw Sauron in the trash surely Sauron should have been aware of this thus making his decision to reveal his evil plan to them even more confusing and at the risk of beating an eviscerated horse why the [ __ ] does he want everyone's Rings had he not been interrupted by galadriel's arrival Sauron would have acquired Gandalf's ring in addition to three of the Dwarven rings and Prophet I hesitate to say this next part concretely but I think we have more than enough information to confirm it if we are going entirely from the films Gandalf would have been killed if not for galadriel's arrival Gandalf was already weakened from his fight with Sauron and this orc was easily able to overpower him had Gandalf lost his ring he would have been entirely defenseless Sarah has no reason to want Gandalf to remain alive therefore I think it's entirely reasonable to suggest that if Galadriel hadn't arrived at that exact moment Gandalf would have died if Gandalf had died he never would have worked out that Bilbo's ring is the One Ring meaning that the fellowship would never have been formed and the ring would simply have remained in Bilbo's possession in Rivendell or at least until it drove him mad and sought a new Bearer the events of the Lord of the Rings are now entirely contingent upon Gandalf being [ __ ] and galagial having impeccable timing then the scene closes out by further tying itself in with the Lord of the Rings Galadriel has just banished Sauron to Mordor but claims that he will flee into the East which firstly you just threw him East so of course he's heading that way this seems to suggest that the East has actually fallen and thirdly why does Galadriel think that Sauron will flee to the east if she just banished him to the void I have no [ __ ] idea elrond then says that they need to warn Gondor making me wonder exactly what the state of Mordor was prior to the events we just saw was it exactly as seen in The Lord of the Rings minus the eye of Sauron was it hordes of Orcs just chilling and minding their own business waiting until Sauron comes back from his holiday in dolgulder if so why did galagio throw Sauron into Mordor instead of anywhere else did she have other options why was Sauron posing as a necromancer in merkwood if he already had forces in Mordor was his intention that his activities as the Necromancer are not linked to Sauron because if so he failed at the very first hurdle by revealing himself and the morgul blade to radagast would Gondor have already been very aware of what Mordor is and the threat that it poses book nerds please fill me in but my impression going purely from The Lord of the Rings movies was that Gondor had been keeping the various evils of Mordor at Bay for a long time not for 60 years or so additionally my understanding of The Lord of the Rings would suggest that Sauron wanted to be in Mordor whereas this scene suggests that he was only in Mordor because Galadriel threw him there 60 years prior anyway elrond suggests that Sauron must be hunted down and destroyed which suggests firstly that this is possible and secondly that they did not have the means by which to destroy him just now my understanding was that sauron's spirit is Immortal and less the one ring is cast back into Mount Doom and my understanding was also that elrond was intimately aware of this fact meaning that his assertion that they can simply find and kill Sauron seems rather muddled the scene ends with Saruman saying leave Sauron to me so this is quite clearly a fan service moment as we already know that at some point between now and the start of the Fellowship of the Ring Saruman ended up joining forces with Sauron the problem with this is that Saruman as powerful as he is does not seem to be anywhere near as powerful as Galadriel and yet he seems to think he can deal with Sauron all by himself maybe this is a ruse and Saruman does not actually intend to defeat Sauron but this honestly would raise far more questions than it answers and because the scene ends before we can see elrond or galadriel's reaction we simply have to take the line at face value so in conclusion this scene is precisely what happens when you sacrifice internal consistency and character motivations on the altar of fan service the way this scene is filmed the way the Nazgul are revealed the way elrond and Saruman arrive and the way Galadriel temporarily defeats Sauron are all constructed so as to maximize nostalgic feels this is not at all unless like many scenes in rings of power the island Kingdom I hate you this scene serves as the payoff and the conclusion to The Necromancer subplot in The Hobbit trilogy but it also attempts to tie itself in directly with the Lord of the Rings thus creating many more problems if someone were to watch The Hobbit trilogy with zero knowledge of The Lord of the Rings this scene would not come across nearly as bad as it in fact is the contradiction of both Galadriel and the nazgul's powers as well as what happens to Sauron would not be problematic at all they only become so when acknowledging the Lord of the Rings in continuity this isn't really a defense this is in fact similar to a quote-unquote defense I have seen of the force awakens where people will excuse many of the film's problems by digesting it as a standalone film rather than as the seventh installment in a nine movie series this is entirely up to the viewer but I am unwilling to make that concession as the Battle of the Five Armies is like it or not a part of a larger whole vaporize things with her mind Gandalf is not physically capable and requires his staff to do anything radagast is useless in a fight and Sauron wants to be discovered but also does not want to be discovered we then return to Erebor and we see that Thorin is immensely frustrated that they have failed to locate the Arkenstone remember Bilbo is currently in possession of the Arkenstone but he has not disclosed that to anyone Balin asks Thorin if he doubts their loyalty but Thorin seems inconsolable all the while Bilbo watches Thorin carefully weighing his options Thorin then States know this if anyone should find it and withhold it from me I will be Avenged which tells us pretty clearly how far Thorin has fallen he has gone from I've never been so wrong two if you take my Jewel I will [ __ ] you up Bilbo then follows barlin who appears distraught by thorin's current behavior he describes it as Dragon sickness saying that he has seen it before presumably referring to thraw even though thraw's sickness had nothing to do with Dragons but [ __ ] me right for thinking about this for more than a few seconds so far Balin and Thorin appear to have been the closest of friends out of the group and now Balin is watching his close friend of over a century be driven mad which he understandably doesn't appear to be taking particularly well Bilbo then asks if giving the Arkenstone to Thorin would help and I very much appreciate that he does this by finding the Arkenstone and hiding it from Thorin Bilbo has essentially meddled in things that he does not understand I am willing to assume that upon fleeing Smaug and encountering Thorin Bilbo either lied and claimed not to have found the Arkenstone or that he gave a dismissive grunt so as to not actually lie to Thorin but also to try and hide the fact that he has the arkan Stone in his pocket either way this means that Bilbo made the conscious decision not to reveal to Thorin that he had the Arkenstone with the benefit of hindsight it is entirely possible that this was the right call but going purely from the information he had at the time his good friend Thorin had showed up asked if he had it and Bilbo at this point decided to withhold that information if Bilbo knew at this point that Thorin was crazy then again this makes a degree of sense as depicted however I do not think Bilbo had nearly enough information to conclude that he should conceal the Arkenstone from Thorin so given that he made that decision alone impulsively and very quickly as Smaug was about to find them that Bilbo seeks help now makes complete sense sense and that he seeks help from Balin even more so Bilbo thinks he is doing the right thing in concealing the Arkenstone but ultimately he wants to help Thorin barlin believes that giving the Arkenstone to Thorin would in fact make the madness worse Balin is clearly reading between the lines here and seems to be aware that Bilbo has the Arkenstone he also appears to place an exceptional level of trust not only in Bilbo's willingness to continue to conceal the Arkenstone but also in his ability to do so Balin has just voiced what very well could amount to treason in thorin's Gold adult brain and yet he is willing to defy his King in order to try to prevent his Madness from exacerbating I think this scene is pretty excellent with one exception which I will get to momentarily this is the first emotionally effective scene in the trilogy since Thorin and Bilbo's Embrace at the end of an Unexpected Journey the reason this scene mostly functions is because it is driven almost entirely by the characters as elbow is reasonably and justifiably seeking advice from someone whom he trusts and it also serves as character development for Balin who is at this point evidently willing to disobey Thorin where this scene fumbles is in the further Exposition as to what exactly is driving Thor in Mad barlin specifically refers to it as Dragon sickness which suggests that it is caused by some kind of dragon-related curse upon the gold itself this seems once again to be contradicting or at the very least blurring the lines as to what specifically his making Thorin go mad I think the best faith interpretation of everything we've had so far regarding the crazy gold is that large quantities of gold have an innate quality that causes their owners to go mad as Thorin and previously thraw were the only people to have been affected within Middle Earth this is colloquially referred to as Dragon sickness because of the obvious link between dragons and large quantities of gold the Arkenstone serves as a smaller more tangible representation of the massive gold pile the Arkenstone is the single most valuable jewel within Erebor and the object of thorin's Desire so the movies seem to be treating the Arkenstone as if it is merely an extension of the wealth of Erebor rather than a separate entity with a distinct purpose the Arkenstone is in fact a specific Jewel that was acquired separately to the rest of the world of Erebor and it serves a purpose Beyond merely being a form of wealth meaning that it is not untrue to say that Thorin is being driven mad by all the gold and it is also not untrue to say that Thorin is being driven mad by the Arkenstone this wouldn't be a problem if the films had been at all clear in how they communicated what exactly is causing the gold sickness as we will find out soon we will not find out soon anyway we then see Bilbo playing with something implication being that it is either the ring or the Arkenstone and unfortunately Thorin approaches Bilbo suspiciously and demands to know what he is holding this reinforces that Thorin has become exceedingly paranoid possibly with specific regard to Bilbo this makes sense given what we have been told about thorin's sickness however the problem with this is that Thorin is willing to make demands and threaten people in order to uncover the Arkenstone but he seemingly never thought to actively search anyone what is that it's nothing shot me anyway Bilbo reveals that he was playing with an acorn that he claims to have taken from bayonne's garden and he tells Thorin that he intends to take it home with him to plant in his own garden as a Memento of his Adventure this prompts a discussion with Thorin during which his sickness seems to have left him possibly upon the realization that he just threatened his friend Bilbo who turned out to be playing with an acorn this is also quite interesting as it shows us that the dragon sickness is not all-encompassing Thorin seems to be entirely functional provided the Arkenstone is not at the Forefront of his mind he is more than capable of having a civil discussion with someone about something unrelated upon realizing that he seems to be speaking to the Thor in he befriended previously Bilbo attempts to speak potentially to confess that he has the Arkenstone sorry but he is interrupted by dwalin as dwalin tells Thorin that hundreds of survivors of Lake Town have entered Dale thorin's face drops and he gets down with the sickness once more so Bilbo is trusting and Balin will not blindly follow orders we then cut to the ruined city of Dale where the peasants from the ruined town of Lake have taken up residence Gaston has led the people here with the stated intention of acquiring the gold that was promised to them by Thorin [Music] company of thorough concealed survived grease bag having now decided to flip on a dime and serve as Gaston's greasy underling informs him that the braziers outside Erebor have been lit and Gaston takes this as proof that Thorin and his company survived their Encounter With Smaug it is unclear at this point how Gaston feels about this as it is entirely possible that he had assumed them all to have perished and that he was simply expecting to walk into Erebor take what he was owed and leave interestingly he does not outwardly appear to be in any way angry about what has happened to his home he warned Thorin of what his perceived greed would summon and Thorin did not heed this warning as a result many innocent people have been killed and Gaston and his three children could very easily have been among the dead I would have expected Gaston to be absolutely furious with Thorin upon realizing that he is still alive and thankfully the film does acknowledge this perspective soon he instructs The Peasants to take shelter in Dale for the night and orders bag to take the night watch that's a damn stupid thing to do so grease bag has greased his way underneath Gaston's devilish handsomeness because he is a slimy sack of [ __ ] that only cares about his own well-being greasebag has spent the entirety of his screen time in the previous film being an antagonistic douchebag to Gaston inconveniencing him threatening him assaulting him and ultimately arresting him for no reason other than that he had decided that Gaston is a troublemaker I don't doubt that greasebag would attempt to put his foot in Gaston's door so as to ensure he is not treated like the other peasants as he wants to be a man with some amount of status but what I take tremendous issue with is the fact that Gaston seems to have forgotten entirely who grease bag is and for some reason decides to trust him with taking the night watch throughout this entire film in fact Gaston's attitude towards greeceberg seems to be that of a mildly disappointed oh you as if grease bag is his middle-aged son who just proudly announced that he scored 100 on the Autism test despite not practicing for it yes maybe Gaston thinks it will make greasebag piss off if he gives him a boring job and deprives him of sleep but the flip side to that coin is that Gaston is explicitly placing both his own safety and the safety of the people that have trusted him to take care of them in the exceedingly incompetent and exceedingly greasy hands of Grease bag mcmanabrau alrighty then what could reasonably happen here that would give us a further understanding as to why Gaston and griesberg are doing what they are doing would be to have the peasants question why Gaston has decided to place any amount of trust in grease bag and Gaston could then respond with something along the lines of We're All in This Together he wants the same thing we do or something we then see the dwarves reinforcing erebor's defenses by fortifying the rubble Smaug left at the front gate as a side note I made an error with my criticism as to why the dwarves did not use the front gate in my previous video and I will address that properly when I do the final autopsy video Thorin clearly intends to physically blockade the city so as to prevent anyone from entering despite the fact that Erebor only currently has 14 occupants Keeley takes issue with this people of Lake Town have nothing they came to us in need they have lost everything well done Keeley and by extension well done writers someone needed to voice this concern so as to challenge thorin's values and the fact that Keely was the one to do it makes perfect sense given the fact that his life was saved in part by Gaston's family this combined with the fact that Keely is relatively speaking young dumb and full of [ __ ] means that more than anyone else present he is perhaps the most likely to feel empathy for what the leakedownians have just been through and thorin's response is well to be honest it's incredibly cruel tone deaf and ruthless but the idea here is I assume that the dragon sickness has not only made Thorin incredibly paranoid in his desire to locate the Arkenstone and protect his mountain of cash but also that it has turned him into a cold and remorseless [ __ ] Womble do not tell me what they have lost I know well enough for the hardship those who have lived through dragon fire should Rejoice they have no to be grateful for this is notable because this is the only reference we have so far for Dragon sickness affecting The Afflicted person in a way that has nothing to do with the treasure itself I can totally understand thorin's paranoid Behavior with Bilbo previously as he is being driven mad by his love of gold so much that he is willing to turn on his friends I can also totally understand Thorin wanting to blockade the entrance to Erebor so as to ensure no one else can take his gold from him what is slightly harder to believe is that upon being asked to help the peasants of Laketown who are suffering directly because of his own actions Thorin would reply those pathetic [ __ ] should be thanking me they survived the consequences of my incredibly Reckless and selfish behavior who are they to complain subtlety is not exactly these films strong suit and as ever the frustrating thing about this is that it had an easy fix barlin feely or buffer could have backed Keely up and said this is our fault Thorin we did this we need to make things right they don't even have to mention the fact that Thorin promised the lake townian's gold this is simply a question of morality and the fact that not one of the dwarves ever voices anything like this suggests that all of them are simply slaves to thorin's insane whims for the majority of their screen time in this film in particular the dwarves are not a collection of 12 independent characters they are a hive mind that acts collectively based on what needs to happen in any given scene as I have already explained not one dwarf present seems to be aware that what happened to Lake town and therefore the current presence of a horde of peasants is entirely their own fault okay Gaston has a very short memory and is very forgiving grease bag is greasy Keeley is empathetic and Thorin is a crazy butthole we then rejoin the peasants the following morning who are complaining about not having any food claiming that their children are starving and that they will not last three days this strangely highlights the fact that their immediate plan upon having their homes destroyed and livelihoods lost was to acquire money when one would think food would have been higher up the priority ladder yes money can of course be exchanged for goods and services but as acquiring the money is by no means a simple exercise I would have thought it far more reasonable that they at least feed their children before heading to Dale go fishing go hunting Salvage what you can from Lake Town you have options open to you anyway as a reminder that this film came out in the before times in the long long ago that was 2014 Gaston behaves like a sexist pig and declares that the women the children and the wounded will eat first children the wounded and the women come first he could certainly learn a thing or two from the writers of rings of power tavists were wounded in children wounded in children he then asks Greece bag if he has anything to report from the night watch and he responds oh quiet sorry I must report nothing gets past me except an army of elves it would seem well well [ __ ] well if it isn't the consequences of your own actions you incompetent sack of meat Gaston is now a broken character he trusted someone whom he absolutely should not have trusted and he did so for absolutely no discernible reason this person behaved in an entirely selfish and incompetent manner as he has done in every single scene in which he has appeared and as a result an army of elves have snuck up on the lake townians this is already bad but it's actually worse than it might initially appear so let's take a closer peek at what has just happened and bear in mind the information Gaston has he has to know that his family were attacked by Orcs I know we didn't see this happen because we haven't really seen him interact with his family at all in this film Beyond saying yay you're alive too yay but his kids were attacked by Orcs yesterday there is no way they didn't say Dad these mo [ __ ] Orcs were all up in my [ __ ] meaning that Gaston has to be aware that there are at least some or walks nearby meaning that the risk of them being attacked by Orcs again is not zero and yet armed with this knowledge he asks the least competent person in Middle Earth to keep watch when doing so could reasonably have led to the deaths of everyone in Dale so now regarding the elves Gaston asks greecebag if anything happened during the night he says no and it turns out that there are elves here now elves who arrived at some point during the night or early morning and have remained standing in perfect formation waiting for someone to discover them this is minor but it amounts to an army of elves doing something that they have no reason to do in order to facilitate a dramatic reveal anyway it turns out that thrandwill has led his army to Dale bringing food and supplies for the lake townians I think it is probably reasonable for thranduel to have known about Smaug's attack as his messenger sent for Legolas was of course rejected and sent back to the Woodland realm I think it is also reasonable for thranduel to have expected The Peasants to have moved to the ruins of Dale as it is the most obvious location in their immediate vicinity what is not reasonable is that thrandwill's claimed reason for being present is to help the lake townians when him having the information regarding Smaug would require that his messenger travel from Lake Town back to the Woodland realm and then thrandwell and his army travel from the Woodland realm to Dale in a day distance and time please stop forsaking it anyway The Peasants are extremely happy to receive the food and thrandwell then says though gratitude is misplaced I did not come on your behalf I came to reclaim something of mine so this raises a couple of questions why did thranduil say we heard you were in need of Aid only two moments later say I don't give a [ __ ] about you I'm here because shiny if thranduel is indeed only here to reclaim the jewels from Erebor then why is he letting the filthy peasants swarm his food supplies if his intention is to join forces with the lake Towners to serve his own ends then maybe this is a sensible move to make but then it calls into question why he directly tells Gaston [ __ ] you and your peasants I'm here for my gyms well it counts it doesn't make sense and since doing the previous videos in this series it has come to my attention that the white gems of pure Starlight that thranduel wants are not as I had assumed mithril some of you in my comments did explain what they are and why he wants them but going purely from the film all we get is that they are the heirlooms of his people you would go to war a handful of gems heirlooms of my people are not likely forsaken this is admittedly far more of an explanation than I was expecting but whilst it is sufficient this was the perfect opportunity to delve further into thranduel's character and remaining accurate to the source material would have been a fantastic way to do this anyway Gaston tells thranduil to wait unable to believe that he will go to war over some gems he asks thranduel to allow him to speak with Thorin so as to negotiate the gems for thranduil and the gold promised to the laketownians the film then Cuts away so unfortunately we don't see the rest of this discussion we simply have to assume that thranduil was willing to allow Gaston a mortal man whom he has just met to negotiate on his behalf needless to say this does not seem like something thranduel would ever do but okay movie whatever you say okay Gaston is an idiot his way to trusting and avoids violence when possible grease bag is incompetent and threandwell is truly outrageous we then rejoined the dwarves inside Erebor and see that they have finished blocking the entrance we then must unfortunately bear witness to a dialogue exchange that is very reminiscent of the dialogue from rings of power in that characters speak past each other without actually responding to or addressing what the other has just said so Thorin observes the presence of an Elven Army inside Dale as Gaston approaches Gaston addresses Thorin respectfully son of three life beyond hope which suggests that he is willing to set aside his feelings on the matter and negotiate to the benefit of both his people The Elves and the dwarves Thorin asks quite reasonably why he is armed for war referring to the elves and Gaston replies why does the king Under the Mountain fence himself in like a robber in his hole Perhaps it is because I am expecting to be robbed so here instead of continuing to be respectful and addressing Thorin appropriately He suggests that Thorin is behaving like a robber the reason he does this I expect is because he cannot answer thorin's question there is no explanation he can give as to why Dale appears to be prepped for war other than to say give me what I ask for or we will kill you thrandwill is pointing a gun at thorin's head and so anything Gaston says will be clouded by that fact he continues that the lake townians and the elves do not intend to steal from Thorin but that they seek Fair settlement Thorin then agrees to negotiate rather surprisingly and they discuss their terms on behalf of the people of Lake town I ask that you honor your pledge a share of the treasure so that they might rebuild their lives this is more than reasonable as if you recall from Gaston's perspective Thorin is to blame for what happened to Laketown From thorin's perspective I have no idea what Thorin thinks about his culpability and what happened because it was never discussed previously and it this point in time Thorin is of course crazy so whilst I totally understand Gaston not literally saying to Thorin you did this to us we need your help as this would no doubt cause Thorin to become extremely defensive I would have potentially liked to see a scene where Gaston discusses with franderwill how he should approach Thorin this would make it clear to the audience how Gaston truly feels about Thorin and that he is willing to set that aside in order to secure the best deal possible for his people anyway thorin's response is again uncharacteristically reasonable given that he is supposedly suffering from Dragon sickness I will not treat with any man while an armed host lies before my door and Gaston's response is that if Thorin does not agree to his terms the elves will attack Erebor making this less of a negotiation and more of an ultimatum this next part I find particularly interesting after Thorin refuses to bow to the threat Gaston claims that his cause is just his people helped the dwarves in their time of need were promised payment for doing so and in return they received ruin and death things are starting to heat up Gaston has finally addressed the point that should have been at the Forefront of everyone's Minds for the previous hour Smaug's Devastation of Lake town was thorin's fault if not directly then at the very least as a result of his selfishness and negligence the movies did not at any point force Thorin to wrestle with the morality of his quest however he has just been blamed directly for the suffering of the lake townians as I have already mentioned I can totally believe Gaston becoming emotional given what has just happened and I can also totally understand thorin's response Thorin claims that he had no choice but to trade his Birthright for food and shelter that he does not consider this to be a fair trade and that therefore he need not honor the terms confusingly he then refers to Gaston as Gaston the dragon slayer indicating that he somehow knows that it was Gaston who killed Smaug how he knows this I have no [ __ ] idea so previously when Thorin was dealing with the men of Laketown he was addressing the master as the master is not the one currently negotiating with him I think Thorin can reasonably assume that the master is now dead how this adds up to Gaston being in charge because he killed the dragon is unknown but in thorin's defense that is actually precisely what happened so maybe it isn't all that insane anyway Gaston argues that Thorin should honor their agreement regardless because he gave them his word why should I honor such terms because you does that mean nothing Gaston may not know it but he is directly appealing to what I found to be thorin's core principles Thorin is Honorable Thorin keeps his word after seeing his company standing by his side awaiting instruction he refuses to negotiate any further and consigns himself to whatever the elves will throw at them this seems like abject Insanity yes Thorin is suffering from Dragon sickness and the topic of the negotiation was that of parting with his treasure so I can understand him being utterly suicidal and deranged but I have a much harder time accepting that the other 12 dwarves would accept this without so much as raising a voice in concern they are about to be attacked by thranduil's Elven Army there are 13 dwarves within Erebor all thrandwell needs to do is bring a single ladder and he wins Thorin has just signed their death warrants and none of them seem to care there is a tremendous difference between being loyal in the form of bravery and being loyal in the form of suicidality when Sam decided to accompany Frodo in his quest to destroy the ring this was bravery yes there was a substantial risk that he may die as a result but his reason for joining Frodo was to help him save the world when Thorin tells Gaston to tell thranduel to murder them all the apparent acceptance of this state of affairs from the other dwarves is not bravery yes it could potentially be described as loyalty but this kind of loyalty requires that all 12 of them be perfectly willing to die for no reason other than that Thorin said so the only way around this is to suggest that they are so blindingly loyal to Thorin that they will do what he says even if what he says is die and the problem with this is that in the case of Balin specifically we have already seen earlier in the film that this is not the case in fact I'm going to elaborate on each of the dwarves here for a fun little exercise I'm going to quickly run down what I would expect the dwarves reaction to this would be given everything we have learned about each of them so far dwalin would stand with Thorin and no matter the danger to his own life he is utterly loyal and proud and at this point seems to place absolute faith in Thorin barlin would attempt to convince Thorin that he is wrong I do not believe that Barling would follow Thorin into a literal suicide charge Feeley and Keeley as thorin's nephews would probably do what Their Uncle says and not think too much about it Ori would do whatever Dory does Dory is honestly a coin toss if today is nice cup of chamomile tea day then he and Ori would probably stand down but if today is cocaine hookers and underground fistfight's day then Dory would be leading the charge Nori I have no idea because he doesn't have a character oin I also have no idea bifur I have no idea I assume you can just kind of Point him in a direction and he goes that way buffer is also a coin toss because he is both sensible and grounded but is also a catastrophic idiot gloin also does not have a character so I can't call it either way and finally Bombay has two character traits firstly that he is fat and secondly that he does not speak neither of which inform us as to what he may be thinking at this moment so hopefully that little exercise adequately made the point that we are now 78 of the way through the run time of this Trilogy and based on my hopefully comprehensive understanding of these 12 characters I can only justify the present actions of 25 of them I know staggeringly little about these characters imagine if we got to the battle of the pelenor field without understanding who Mary Pippin Gimli theodon or faramir were without understanding why they were doing what they were doing that would be a catastrophic writing failure and that pretty much sums up the state of this movie also one final comment on this shot I find it highly amusing that this is a very staged moment for the trailer or the poster or whatever and yet the actor playing buffer was either not on set that day or they didn't realize that Ori was standing in the way anyway getting back to the film Gaston returns to Dale and and Bilbo confronts Thorin Thorin dismisses Bilbo but Bilbo continues that there is an army of elves in Dale and that they are all going to die if they go to war we are in fact outnumbered now longer [Applause] this movie I am struggling okay so whilst this makes the dwarves acceptance of their fate make a little bit more sense as they were presumably aware that help was coming this requires that this Crow managed to get from Erebor to the Iron Hills and that Dane is able to assemble his army in March on Erebor before thranduel is able to bust his way inside with my understanding of the geography of Middle Earth it will take at Absolute minimum a week for reinforcements to arrive making this a remarkably special plan that relies entirely on blind luck fantastic yet impossible timing and once again the shattering of distance and time and if that wasn't bad enough it gets [ __ ] worse forget for a moment the nature of the Arkenstone with regard to Dragon sickness what is the purpose of the Arkenstone what is the purpose of thorin's quest why does Thorin need the Arkenstone well as explained in detail in the opening of The Desolation of Smaug and the scene in Bilbo's house in an Unexpected Journey thorin's ultimate goal is to retake Erebor from Smaug and return it to its former glory to do that he needed an army to command the Dwarven kingdoms and summon their armies he needed the Arkenstone because the Arkenstone gives its Bearer the power to rule over the dwarves I assume this to be symbolic rather than literal but either way the reason Thorin needed the Arkenstone was so that he could summon the Dwarven armies to Erebor and yet Thorin has just summoned the Dwarven armies to Erebor whilst the Arkenstone is not in his possession this has once again broken The Narrative of this Trilogy in the first film we were told that Dane would not Aid Thorin on his quest and it was strongly implied that Dane will not respect Thor in his King Under the Mountain without the Arkenstone fast forward to the Battle of the Five Armies and thorin's plan to have Dane save the day therefore requires that Dane changed his mind off screen for no reason that his ever explained nor even implied one other possibility is that Thorin has lied to Dane in his call for Aid potentially he claims to currently have the Arkenstone and he hopes that he will have found it by the time Dane arrives had this been made clear in the film then it would have added that much more tension and urgency as Thorin now needs to acquire the Arkenstone in the next few days rather than a general sickness adult desire for things that are shiny and finally on the Dane point thorin's plan also requires that Dane accepts that Thorin has the Arkenstone and so immediately Marches On Erebor Dane evidently requires no proof he does not require that Thorin meet with him prior so as to assert himself as the king he simply gets a bird that says Thorin needs help and so he's like all right ladies let's go [ __ ] some Elven Pricks so anyway Gaston returns to thrand Daddy and tells him that Thorin has refused their offer granddaddy doesn't seem surprised and sarcastically says Such a Pity still you tried this doesn't seem out of character for him at all although it does make me question yet again why he allowed Gaston to attempt to reason with Thorin maybe he thought it would be funny maybe he wanted to drag Gaston down to his level of cynicism I have no idea because the writers decided not to elaborate the scene ends with thrandwell stating that dwarves understand only one thing and that they will attack at dawn okay thranduil is cynical Thorin has insane plans that rely on blind luck and is Clairvoyant and Gaston is Honorable and is not good at negotiating we then have a montage where we see the lake townians equipping themselves with weapons from the Dale Armory whilst the dwarves arm themselves with gear from Erebor during this Montage we see that Balin is somewhat hesitant to put on his armor reinforcing his wavering conviction and faith in his King as we also saw a quick shot in the previous scene suggesting that he is still very much doubting thorin's capacity as a leader Thorin summons Bilbo and hands him a familiar looking shirt vest is made of silver steel Mithra no blade can pierce it okay so at first glance I very much liked the fact that he has taken a moment to ensure Bilbo is as safe as he can be he knows Bilbo is out of his depth here and rather than just letting him sit in the corner playing with acorns he decides to give him some armor that just so happens to also be of immense value to ensure his protection excellent I hope the rest of the dwarves are also wearing mithril that cannot be pierced by any blade otherwise this scene becomes rather silly actually on second thought Gandalf told us in Fellowship of the Ring that this mithril shirt is worth more than the Shire and everything in it meaning that the extremely paranoid greedy and insane Thorin has just willingly given an item of incomprehensible value to Bilbo Thorin has just parted with an immense amount of wealth this is not inherently a problem provided someone addresses it which of course they don't had Thorin explained that he values Bilbo's safety over the value of the mithril itself then this would have explored the nuances of his state of mind which is something these films seem to be allergic to perhaps the reason they chose not to do this is because if Bilbo learned of the value of the mithril then this may have contradicted the Lord of the Rings but either way what we're left with in this film is a contradiction in thorin's character that can only be navigated by simply saying well thorin's crazy so of course his actions don't make sense which is of course not how being crazy Works having somebody making wild decisions that make no sense that benefits nobody anyway Thorin declares that the mithril shirt is a gift a token of their friendship and that true friends are hard to come by then things get weird I have been blind no I began to see I'm betrayed so my only explanation for this is that Thorin is [ __ ] Bonkers and I want to draw a distinction between crazy and [ __ ] Bonkers because these are not the same thing if someone is crazy their actions may not make sense to others but typically their actions will make sense within their own head what crazy people do will typically make some amount of sense to them conversely if someone is [ __ ] Bonkers their actions will not make any sense to anyone including themselves they simply spin a wheel and do whatever the arrow points to Thorin believing that someone has taken the Arkenstone and is hiding it from him is totally explicable paranoid Behavior or as I just described vanilla crazy behavior Thorin not realizing that Bilbo is by far the most likely culprit is nonsensical or [ __ ] Bonkers Thorin has known the dwarves far longer than he has known Bilbo Bilbo was also unaccounted for inside Erebor With Smaug for an extended period of time Thorin cannot rule out that Bilbo has lied to him so why he has decided to confide in Bilbo that he thinks someone has stolen the Arkenstone from him is a mystery in response Bilbo says the quest is fulfilled you've won the mountain is that not enough and thorin's replies are muddled and confusing although this was clearly intended so as to convey how sick Thorin has become Bilbo even directly asks Thorin if the treasure is worth more than his honor as by refusing to give any to Gaston he is essentially breaking his word and yet Thorin doesn't seem to care is this treasure truly worth more than your honor oh no but I was also there I gave my word it was normally done but the treasure in this mountain does not belong to the people of Lake town we have multiple references so far for Honor being the single most important thing to Thorin honor is what drives him to do what he does and now as a result of this Dragon sickness Thorin has forsaken his honor rather than making him irrational and a bit erratic the sickness has seemingly made Thorin behave in the exact opposite way to how he would usually behave okay barlin doubts Thorin Thorin now doesn't care about honor and trusts Bilbo more than his kin Bilbo attempts to be diplomatic suddenly Gandalf he has arrived precisely when he means to at the city of Dale it is mighty convenient that Gandalf arrives on the eve of battle but then again convenient timing is kind of what Gandalf does frequently anyway we see the lake townians are training with each other in preparation for their impending attack which makes sense as they do not appear to be soldiers and then griesberg tells Gandalf to piss off believing him to be a vagrant we don't want no tramps Beggars nor vagabonds round here we've got enough trouble without the light for you because he's a baddie anyway Gandalf then has a chat with Gaston and thranduwill telling them that they must set aside any grievances they have with the dwarves war is coming the suspects of dongle door have been emptied all in vocal danger Gaston doesn't know how to take this information and thranduwill says I can see you know nothing of wizards they are like winter Thunder on a wild wind rolling in from a distance breaking hard in alarm sometimes the storm is just a storm surrandewell seems to be suggesting that panicking about random [ __ ] is kind of Gandalf's thing and he seems more than content to put his feet up drink some wine and ignore the whole thing at this point this seems very Reckless for thrandwill but we soon get an explanation as to why he distrusts Gandalf Gandalf however persists that armies Of Orcs that have been bred for war are on the Move Gandalf believes or at least claims that sauron's hand was forced when Thorin set out to reclaim arable the idea that Gandalf presents is that Sauron wants to control Erebor so as to assist him in his conquering of Middle Earth there are a few problems with this idea however this does not explain why any of the previous revealing involving the witch king and the Mughal blade happened in the first film if Smaug is working with Sauron then Smaug could simply have allowed sauron's forces inside Erebor Sauron did not need to wait for Thorin to retake Erebor or to dispose of Smaug in order to claim it for himself in fact by waiting for Smaug to be killed he has ensured that multiple other factions are also interested in claiming it when they would never have even tried had Smaug being alive the fix for this once again is easy remove all references to Smaug and Sauron working together make Sauron also be unwilling to go anywhere near Erebor while Smaug lives and now that Smaug is gone he is merely another interested party to add to the list Gandalf continues that Sauron never intended for Thorin to reach Erebor which is why Azog was dispatched to kill him confirming that Azog must have been aware of thorin's intentions and therefore one would think could easily have ambushed him however this does go some way to explaining why Azog and his Orcs were already hot on thorin's heels in an Unexpected Journey so if Gandalf is correct then this does indeed mean that sauron's plan was to have Thorin killed and then take Erebor himself with a Little Help from Smaug why Thorin needed to be dead for him to do this is unknown why Sauron didn't do this at any point in the previous 160 years in which Erebor had been abandoned is unknown anyway Gandalf then says that Erebor is the gateway to reclaiming the lands of angma and that if angma rises again then the lands of men and elves will fall at this point I was wondering where exactly angma is on on the map maps in general have been tragically absent from this Trilogy when they were integral to conveying distances allegiances and the geography of the setting in The Lord of the Rings this very conversation could have been taking place with Gandalf thranduel and Gaston looking at a map which would have then made clear where exactly angma is as well as gundabad neither one of these locations has been shown on a map but if we take a look at a map of Middle Earth we will quickly see that Gandalf's suggestion makes zero sense and before you start reading in the comments this does not count as drawing on external information the map of Middle Earth is frequently seen in The Lord of the Rings and occasionally in The Hobbit the map itself is canonical within the world of the film so I am not cheating by doing this so Erebor is here also gundabad is here right between Erebor and angma so to summarize Gandalf's suggestion is that Sauron wants to take Erebor so that he can reclaim angma which is nowhere near Erebor and he wants to do this when he already has both a stronghold and an army at gundabad which as we are about to learn explicitly is right on the doorstep of angma put another way Sauron is marching his army from gundabad hundreds of miles east so as to attack Erebor and he is doing this so that he can reclaim angma which is in the other direction well it counts it doesn't make sense I find myself speechless I don't have any theories as to why this plot thread was inserted this utterly disintegrates with the smallest amount of scrutiny it is possible that Gandalf is incorrect about sauron's intentions but given that thrandwell doesn't reply Gandalf this plan is [ __ ] why would Sauron do any of that it makes less than no sense I have to assume that the writers either didn't know or didn't care given the attention to detail present in The Lord of the Rings I am tempted to assume the latter anyway upon hearing Gandalf's tides of Doom Fran daddy asks where the orc armies are as by Gandalf's own admission he must have rode right past them and then we cut away because finishing conversations is not something that this film likes to do okay thrandwell does not trust Gandalf's wisdom is generous with his allies and is suspicious and Gandalf connects dots that don't connect so immediately after threand daddy asked where the orc armies are we see that they are digging a giant tunnel things are about to get weird guys prepare yourselves oh yeah man who knew I had forgotten the great Earth eaters too I think everyone had forgotten about the great Earth eaters I don't think one single person going into this film was thinking oh boy I can't wait until we see the great Earth eaters I am not going to touch this until it actually happens however so what I think is implied by this scene is that azog's Army marched from dolgoldur to gundabad and then got these Earth eaters so that they could attack by surprise this appears to make some amount of sense except that Gandalf rode from dolgoldur and evidently did not see an army he has to know something is up he saw them leave he followed them and yet he did not pass them maybe we are supposed to understand he told thrand Daddy and Gaston to prepare for an ambush because the camera cut away or maybe Gandalf simply does not know where asog's Army is because he's an idiot anyway we then rejoined Legolas and ladyless who have arrived at gundabad if you recall their reason for being here is it's gundabad ladyless once again showing herself to be very ignorant of the continent upon which she lives asks what lies Beyond gundabad to which Legolas replies the kingdom of angma he explains a little of the history of angma that his mother died there during a war and that his father thrandwill does not speak of it now then the writers seem to be laying the eggs required to explain why thrand daddy wants those gems so much we will have to see if the eggs hatch or if they get scrambled okay the egg analogy doesn't quite work I'll go back to using naughty words then they are jump scared by giant bats and Legolas tells both us and ladyless what for War I know I've highlighted ladyless's surprising lack of knowledge given her Rank and potential age but I don't exactly know how reasonable it is for her to know what a Gunda bat is so I can't really hold this against her we then see that bolg is here after having been sent to gundabad by Azog so as to bring forth the legions and then the legions come forth [Music] 35 the only reason why the heroes now know about a surprise second Army is because Legolas decided to go to gundabad for absolutely no reason and as a result was lucky enough to discover the existence of a surprise Fifth Army this is of course not character driven this is instead what we armchair critics like to call [ __ ] okay Legolas is incredibly lucky and ladyless is ignorant and inexperienced we then cut back to Erebor and we see that Bilbo is skulking about he fastens a rope to the front gate indicating his intent to leave presumably so as to attempt to convince the men and elves not to attack and to avoid needless Bloodshed he is then interrupted by buffer a character whom I both like and despise you should be inside out of the wind I I uh needed some air they still stink some Dragon this next scene is pretty reminiscent of the scene in An Unexpected Journey as buffer has essentially just caught Bilbo trying to leave buffer believes that the battle will be over very quickly and he doubts that any of them will survive this tells us two things firstly that he does not believe that any army is coming to help them or that if it is it will not arrive in time and also that he is willing to blindly follow Thorin into what he considers to be almost certain death he tells Bilbo no one could blame us all for wishing themselves elsewhere suggesting that he knows of Bilbo's intent and that he does not want Bilbo to die alongside them for no reason this next part is so far the only part of the Battle of the Five Armies that I really quite like midnight numbers get the next watch it'll take a bit to wake him over I will see you in the morning goodbye Boo Boo buffer is explicitly giving Bilbo the opportunity to leave Erebor and he is happy to do so meaning that he is willing to defy Thorin by allowing Bilbo to essentially defect but also that he is not willing to do this himself he will fight and die alongside his King but that doesn't mean he will force Bilbo to do the same and from Bilbo's side he attempts to deny twice what his intentions are and only upon boffa saying goodbye to him does he actually commit to leaving Bilbo wanted the approval of his friend and he did not want to disappoint him as he had done in the first film this short scene is excellent which unfortunately makes the rest of the film worse by comparison so Bilbo descends the wall and heads towards Dale meanwhile Gandalf is arguing with Fran Daddy what do you think I tried to do I think you're trying to save your dwarves friends and I admire your loyalty to it but it does not dissuade me from my Corpus what the hell is going on right now characters are being explored motivations are being clarified conflicts are deepening a stark reminder of what could have been perhaps so here we learn why thranderwill does not trust Gandalf we learn why he planted a seed of distrust in Gaston we learn precisely what thranduel thinks Gandalf is doing therefore we are able to understand very clearly what one character thinks another character's motivations are and regardless of whether or not he is accurate this is entirely explicable From thranduil's perspective this right here is character writing if only other areas of thranduel's character could have been explored in a similar manner anyway having failed to convince thranduil Gandalf then confronts Gaston and tries to convince him not to attack Erebor just as Bilbo arrives to inform them that the dwarves will not surrender under any circumstances this is the halfling who stole the keys to my dungeons from under the nose of my gods yeah that that ain't exactly why what happened thran daddy although I can understand that this is probably what the guards told you then this happens I came to give you this gems we soon learned that Bilbo's intention here is that they use the Arkenstone to bargain for the gold the lake townians were promised as well as thranderwill's vajazzle this certainly makes a degree of sense as we can assume the Arkenstone to be probably the only thing Thorin would ever barter for provided we disregard the fact that Thorin has already summoned an army and therefore does not have any practical need for the Arkenstone however by doing this Bilbo will have utterly severed all respect Thorin will have had for him Dragon sickness or no Bilbo has just stabbed Thorin in the back he has given the king's Jewel to thorin's enemy Bilbo's explanation as to why he has the Arkenstone is that he took it as his 14th share of the treasure which doesn't really make any sense however thrandwell and Gaston would not necessarily understand why so Bilbo's Gambit serves its purpose he then explains why would you do this you owe us no loyalty I'm not doing it for you I know that dwarves can be obstinate with the worst man as you can possibly imagine but they are also Brave and kind and loyal to a fault I've grown very fond of them and I would save them if I can in exchange for its return I believe he will give you what you are owed there will be no need for war this adds a nice bit of moral complexity to Bilbo's actions he has betrayed Thorin in order to save him Thorin may never forgive him but Bilbo evidently doesn't care as long as his friends are not killed he is willing to suffer whatever scorn Thorin throws his way leaving Gaston and thrand Daddy to deliberate Gandalf tells Bilbo that he must get as far away from Dale as he can and I don't like to think what Solomon will do when he finds out what you've done I'm not afraid of Thorin well you should be don't underestimate the evil of gold gold over which a serpent is long brooded dragon's sickness seeps into the hearts of all who come near this mountain these goddamn films can't make their minds up can they from what Gandalf has just said the reason why Thorin is losing his [ __ ] is because the goal older pile was brooded over by Smaug this makes absolutely no sense thraw was afflicted with the sickness before smog attacked Erebor and additionally Thorin is the one single person currently being affected I am going to properly dive into all of the explanations given for the golden crazies when I do the final autopsy though so for now let us continue the scene ends with Gandalf telling greasebag to give Bilbo food and shelter and to tell him if Bilbo tries to leave a decision which will absolutely prove to have been wise okay buffer is extremely loyal to Bilbo and knows Bilbo extremely well pranduel values loyalty is not easy to fool and is blinded by hatred of dwarves and Bilbo is willing to betray a friend to save them we then cut forward to the following day and we see that thrandwell's Army has messed outside Erebor and is it me or do they all look like copy pastes of the same face also these elves movements are very unnatural which maybe was intentional as they are Uber disciplined Millennia old other worldly beings or maybe this whole thing was created in a computer and oh look grease bag is being incompetent again so yeah Bilbo has left and Gandalf was not informed we will see what happens as a result of this soon enough anyways Randall and Gaston approach Erebor and Thorin fires a warning shot in response the cartoon clones ready their bows and the dwarves duck for cover with the exception of Thorin either an indicator of his resolve or that he is [ __ ] Bonkers Gaston then reveals that they have the Arkenstone and that they have accepted it as payment for what they were owed Thorin believes this to be a ruse to the bewilderment of some of his companions this is a ruse and he declares that the stone Gaston has must be a fake right on cue Bilbo appears and explains what he did it may seem like I'm ignoring the fact that Bilbo appears to be teleporting from Erebor to Dale and back again without anyone noticing him but I don't consider this to be a particularly valid criticism as Bilbo is presumably using the ring to do so as for how this was allowed to happen well it may appear that greasebag was incompetent because of course he is and therefore Bilbo's linked out during the night however Bilbo of course has a ring that can turn him invisible therefore it is entirely reasonable that Bilbo would have been able to escape regardless of who it was Gandalf asked to keep an eye on him at first glance grease bag's incompetence is seemingly in this instance not actually incompetence however the filmmakers rather efficiently plugged that Gap immediately so as to prevent any alternative reading of the scene by showing us that greasebag has not checked on Bilbo for presumably hours as he was surprised to find him missing when he brought him some breakfast meaning that there is no way to read this scene other than to conclude that greasebag is immensely incompetent I tried grease bag I really tried to defend you here but unfortunately the filmmakers gave me almost nothing to work with anyway Bilbo reveals to Thorin that he took the Arkenstone lied to Thorin repeatedly and handed it to thrandwell his reason for revealing this to Thorin is so that Thorin understands that he has no choice but to accept the terms and trade the Arkenstone for what he promised the lake townians as well as Trend Daddy's glittery decoration this tells us that Bilbo is willing to physically endanger himself even after Gandalf's warning about Dragon sickness in order to save as many lives as possible Bilbo explains that he wanted to give the Arkenstone to Thorin on multiple occasions but that he reconsidered as Thorin has quite obviously changed you are changed the dwarf I met in Bag End would never have gone back on his word never have doubted the Loyalty of his Kint speak to me loyalty flowing from the rampart which brings us to the turning point for the dwarves their King whom they were willing to lay down their lives for has just ordered them to kill Bilbo whom they all previously considered to be one of their own this is the breaking point for them where they are forced to make a choice as one might expect the dwarves refuse this order prompting Thorin to attempt to kill Bilbo himself as he is of course [ __ ] Bonkers he is interrupted by Gandalf who asks that Thorin returned his burglar to him not making a very Splendid figure as king Under the Mountain are you this perceived insult causes Thorin to release Bilbo and buffer hurries Bilbo away telling him to go while Thorin is distracted Gaston then asks if they have a deal the Arkenstone in return for what was promised Thorin is of course immensely frustrated by all this and thrandu will taunts him further agitating him keep the stone sell it will give you a good price for it most of this scene and honestly most of this movie relies on Thorin being [ __ ] Bonkers and acting irrationally it is difficult to make concrete criticisms of characters like this because at this point thorin's narrative purpose is that he is insane the deal he has been presented with is entirely reasonable Thorin has to part with the gold that he already promised to part with and also give thrandwill his bling that he claims belongs to him and in return he gets exactly what he wants Thorin will have the Arkenstone he will be accepted as king Under the Mountain he will be able to command Dane's Army to defend his kingdom and he will rule over the dwarves his quest will have succeeded unfortunately Thor in his [ __ ] Bonkers and so will not accept a win-win deal he would evidently prefer to die for what his confused brain considers to be a just cause anyway thrandwill has heard enough and the Clones ready their bows seriously I'm not even being facetious here look at this [ __ ] they're all the same dude or perhaps the same soulless CGI Obama Nation curiously I see no ladders present suggesting that thrandwell's intent upon failing to negotiate was to Pelt the stone walls of Erebor with arrows actually I'm not even sure they need ladders we have already seen how agile elves are just swarm the walls and be done with it the only reason this standoff is lasting as long as it is is due to Gaston Gandalf and thrandwill's marginal preference to not kill the dwarves as soon as that is no longer the case this entire situation becomes absurd in a final attempt at diplomacy Gandalf implores Thorin to surrender claiming that the treasure will be his death finally barlin decides to be proactive and he advises Thorin of the obvious they cannot win and then because a crow is never late nor is it early the crow returns indicating to saurin that reinforcements are on the way I will note that this Crow does not appear to actually be carrying a message meaning that I can only assume that either the dwarves speak Crow or the crow speaks dwarf okay Thorin is irrational to the point of absurdity and Bilbo is incredibly righteous and courageous and Over the Horizon we see the arrival of Dane and his Warriors from the Iron Hills this means that even if I accept that Dane's Army left the Iron Hills the very second the crow arrived that he and his dwarves traveled approximately 200 miles in approximately 12 hours I was not quite as egregious as Galadriel teleporting between valinor numenor and the Southlands in rings of power but it is in a word [ __ ] in response thrandwell orders his clones to approach them so now relatively close to the end of the trilogy these films have introduced a key character Dane we have never seen Dane before and all we knew of him prior to this scene was that he was unwilling to assist his cousin Thorin in his Reclamation of Erebor what are the dwarves of the Iron Hill say there's Dean with us they will not come luckily the writers are able to use Bilbo for some Justified Exposition as Bilbo like us has no idea who Dane is who is that it's dead but they are like I've always found sorry anymore all right so this is adequate mildly amusing and Justified well done writers although I am slightly unsure as to why Bilbo is still wandering around in the middle of an Elven Army when previously Gandalf's intention was that Bilbo flee to safety he must leave on tomorrow what get us far away from here as possible anyway Dane approaches the Elven Army in order to negotiate with thrandwill he is voiced by the ever entertaining Billy Connolly and I am intentionally saying voiced by because he is played by a vaguely Billy connolly-esque looking hideous CGI monstrosity initially I chalked this down to poor time management or a lack of care but having dug a little deeper it seems to be a combination of Billy Connolly's struggling with Parkinson's which would of course have affected his voice and his ability to physically perform as well as Peter Jackson changing his mind at the last minute as to what exactly Dane should look like eventually opting to entirely replace him with a CGI character I couldn't find any direct quotes on this from either Peter Jackson or Billy Connolly however so take this with a grain of salt wetter digital have however confirmed that although Dane was originally an actor in heavy makeup much like Azog and bulg every single frame of Dane ironfoot in the finished film is 100 CGI I don't really know how to feel about this as on the one hand if an actor can't do the job then you recast them with someone who can but at the same time it's Billy [ __ ] Connolly and his voice performance absolutely elevates this character Way Beyond what it could have been I have a wee proposition nephew main giving me a few moments of your time would you consider just Dane makes clear that he has no intentions of leaving and his offer is a simple one leave or die Gandalf informs Dane of the impending orc threat but Dane insists that he will split threandwell's head open if he stands between him and his kin unwilling to negotiate further Dane returns to his army thrandwell tells Gaston to stand down and says that he will deal with Dane so at long last the [ __ ] is about to hit the fan I will say that despite all of the nonsense within this film it has done a reasonable job of slowly amping up the stakes by introducing the different armies one by one I am tentatively looking forward to whatever happens next although I am fully expecting it to be a broken mess of batshit insanity so Dane sends in the goat Riders first which appear to be lance-wielding Dwarven Cavalry in response the elves released their arrows and volley arcs above the dwarves and now dear viewer we come to the first of a few multiple choice rounds that I I have prepared for you alongside my Discord community and YouTube stream chat there are a handful of extended only scenes in which something utterly insane occurs so I wanted to give you the viewer the opportunity to guess what happens next as more than likely most of you will not have seen the Extended Cut of this film so as a reminder the Elven Arrow volley is arcing through the air and is about to come down on top of the dwarves what happens next is it a the dwarves release a counter volley of spinning artillery bolts that disintegrate the Elven arrows is it option b the goat Riders tank the volley of arrows but don't seem to care and they keep charging is it option C the dwarves intercept the Arrows by deploying Arrow catches or is it option D the dwarves use a tuber-like device to catch the arrows so that they can fire them back at the elves [Music] he times up votes are in the jury has made its decision now to see how many of you picked the lesser of the four absurdities oh God this is insane you fool so the dwarves have some magic spinny ballista type weapon that perfectly shreds the Elven arrows mid-air before barrowing into the elves Dane refers to these as twiddly wigglies the old twiddly Wellies what is happening uh where do I even begin firstly this weapon appears to be 100 effective not one single Arrow made it through I think it is absolutely unreasonable to suggest that thranduel was unaware of the existence of the twiddlywedlies this weapon makes volley fire absolutely redundant and the Elven Army seems to consist almost entirely of archers Sun Tzu famously said one does not bring archers to a twiddly-widdly fight not only did the dwarves manage to transport multiple pieces of heavy Siege equipment from the Iron Hills to Erebor in record time but they were also apparently able to aim and fire them in unison at precisely the right time so as to perfectly intercept the Elven volley in its entirety this would require an insane amount of floor planning but hey I guess dwarves are just that good so in response thrandu will does exactly the same thing again no I am not joking he orders another volley and the exact same thing happens in response because of course it does at this point the Clones form a shield line which the goat Riders then leap over this would all be pretty cool to watch if it wasn't painfully obvious that this is essentially a physics simulation I am in fact unconvinced that a single actor has appeared in any of these shots so the dwarves break through the Elven lines as the company of Thorin looks on and because something extremely silly is about to happen let's take a break here and consolidate what character information was present within this sequence okay Sandwell is a poor military strategist and Dane is ruthless single-minded steadfast and incredible military strategist and despises elves a loud rumbling is heard and presumably felt and the fighting slows as all sides look on in anticipation foreign you fools you forgot about the great Earth eaters so I have a couple of thoughts on these monstrosities if you don't mind if a 500 foot earth-eating hell Beast can simply emerge from the ground anywhere at any point then you can be sure as God damned [ __ ] that people would know about them maybe not Gaston or Thorin but thranduel and Gandalf would absolutely not have forgotten about the great Earth eaters the existence of creatures like this would change the fundamental nature of the entire fantasy setting Erebor offers no protection against one of these things ministeris offers no protection against one of these things the black gate of Mordor offers no protection against one of these things this is akin to introducing a creature that can mind control anyone at any point or can pick up mountains by looking at them or can rewind time you can absolutely do things like this but not in the final film in the series and the third one chronologically this entirely changes the rules of the game and introducing something like this at the 11th Hour simply comes off as a cheap way to allow for a cinematic moment this is precisely as cheap as it would have been if Dane's Army had arrived on the back of gigantic dragons the size of the Lonely Mountain I can't prove that Dane doesn't have a collection of mountain-sized dragons so I can't say that this is impossible but I can say that had this been in the film then it would have been absurd within the world the films take place in additionally the worms go back underground so as to allow azog's armies to charge out of the tunnels I have no idea why the worms are not used in the battle they could simply hurtle towards the elves and dwarves and they would be entirely unable to stop them this would be like the harajrim arriving at the pelino fields on the Mumma kill only to then Dismount and charge in on foot come to think of it they easily could have tunneled directly underneath their enemies which would have been even more effective anyway the reason these worms exist in this movie is so as to allow azog's Army to arrive in a dramatic fashion so as to interrupt the ongoing battle between the Elves and the dwarves the only defense I can think of here is that the Orcs don't like sunlight which is why they decided to travel underground via some tunnels but this doesn't work because we saw them earlier marching in daylight so as the worms emerge Azog Reveals His presence he has positioned himself in Ravenhill a ruined guard Tower overlooking the battle upon realizing that there is a legion of Orcs spewing out of the ground Dane commands his Dwarven Warriors to charge them immediately ceasing any interest in the elves he was just fighting oh God the horse this is very clear and I like this a lot or at least as with many things in this film I like the idea of this a lot this tells us that Dane is extremely Brave Reckless potentially bloodthirsty heroic headstrong and single-minded all at once he no longer cares at all for his hatred of elves nor his previous goal of reaching Thorin because the game has just changed in a dramatic way as the dwarves begin their charge I see no sign of any twiddly-widdlies so I assume they only brought enough for two volleys which is both extremely lucky and extremely unlucky and feely at this point declares his intent to leave Erebor and join Dane against the Orcs but Thorin orders that they stand down I'm going over the wall who's coming with me down there are a few reasons why he may not want to join Dane but honestly most of them are irrational and entirely as a result of him being [ __ ] Bonkers so I'm not gonna bother at this point we see that the elves have not moved thrandwill appears to be letting Dane make a suicide charge so as to kill two birds with one stone as for whether or not Dane is aware that he is fighting alone is unknown although I somewhat doubt that he would care the dwarves then form a shield wall and this next part I'm gonna simply show you and then dissect foreign I have a few things to say about this so I will start with the good in this moment thrandwill has also decided to set aside old grudges at least for now and fight alongside his enemy against the greater threat we can assume at this point that he believes Gandalf was in fact being truthful hence his decision this tells us that when push comes to shove thrandwill is not quite as Petty as we had been led to believe he is not suicidal in his disdain for dwarves additionally in the theatrical version of the Battle of the Five Armies The Elves and the dwarves never actually come to blows they are instead distracted by the arrival of azog's forces the fact that in the extended version the two armies actually Clash beforehand makes their subsequent team up that much more satisfying to watch this is also visually very nice to look at now the problems firstly this scene was edited for maximum drama but unfortunately it doesn't work because as depicted the elves teleport we see in the these two shots that at the point at which the dwarves are forming their Shield line the elves have not yet moved and the Orcs are given their speed 10 seconds away from Impact at most this means that in order to allow for a dramatic and cathartic payoff the elves traveled from Erebor to the front line in under 10 seconds this is not possible now for what I would consider the more critical point of concern the dwarves have formed a shield line with Pikes at the ready I don't think I have to be a military strategist to say that jumping in front of the shield line is a colossally idiotic and needlessly Reckless thing to do this is almost on par with the siege weapons being placed outside of the walls of Winterfell in Game of Thrones given that we already know the elves are armed with bows and given that they have only fired off two volleys so far I would have expected the far less insane thing to do would be to Pelt the oncoming horde with arrows although I suppose it is possible that thrandu will doesn't want to waste further ammunition before confirming that the Orcs do not also have twiddly wigglies so I can't place the blame squarely on thranduel here because we simply don't know why the elves did this well actually I can tell you exactly why they did this because it allows for a dramatic shot that admittedly looks pretty cool unfortunately much was sacrificed to facilitate this cool this could have worked if we had the added context of thranduil being a cold callous and proud military leader one who does not care about the lives of his soldiers and only cares about winning and showing off to the dwarves how awesome his army is unfortunately the only reason why the third Act of this film occurs is because thrandu will cares about the lives of his elves to an immense degree meaning that if we attribute this strategic Ploy directly to thrandwill then this is a blatant contradiction I think the idea here quite clearly was to surprise the audience with the reveal that Yes actually the elves are joining the fight after suggesting that the they may not be what actually happened however is that the elves disregarded their own safety so as to LEAP ahead of the shield wall for seemingly no reason anyway upon realizing that the elves have joined them the dwarves then also charge in we then get this rather Nice Shot which gives a very clear overview of the battlefield so that we can plainly see where each faction's forces are not necessary but much appreciated a lot of the ensuing battle is spectacle with little in the way of character information so as to not get bogged down in the minutia I will give you an overview but I will then slow down whenever there is something juicy Azog sends in the trolls to take down the Dwarven chariots he then orders part of his army to attack Dale whilst the elves dwarves and men are distracted Gandalf and Gaston realize what is happening and they along with the Laketown soldiers and Bilbo fall back to the city the Orcs lay Siege to Dale using what appear to be catapult-laden trolls these are extremely mobile of course being attached to the back of trolls making me wonder why this is the only time they are ever used in the entirety of the Middle Earth Saga they also have suicide headbutt trolls that ree their way into the city walls to get to the Hornby train set as log had promised them the civilians are then attacked including Gaston's children Gaston has at this point arrived back in Dale so as to protect his children he attempts to locate them whilst ordering his people and he leads a charge against the Orcs accompanied by Gandalf and Bilbo grease bag also orders a charge before hiding because obviously Gaston's son is able to save his sisters from two Orcs thankfully there were only two of them by killing both I like that he doesn't actually win a fight against them the reason he wins is because he surprises the first and the second is blind luck as the Orcs weapon gets stuck so this is certainly rather convenient but as these characters serve no mechanical purpose in the plot and the fact that Gaston's son attacked the Orcs likely doubting that he would survive but did so anyway so as to save his sisters I think this moment works well enough he is not suddenly Superman because he is Gaston's son they then managed to find Gaston but they catch the attention of a nearby troll so in something a little more grounded than this movie what might we expect to happen next Gaston has to save his children well Gaston is an extremely skilled Bowman although he for some reason does not have his bow with him there are many other soldiers who do what might be reasonably expected is for his children to flee in his direction away from the troll and for Gaston to attempt to bring it down from range we could also go one step further and manufacture away for Gaston to work with his son to bring down the troll together maybe Gaston fails to kill the troll with his bow has no more arrows and finds himself cornered only for his son to shoot the troll in the back allowing Gaston the chance to cut its throat but oh boy this is what they went with oh [Music] so instead of the rather more sensible and potentially more narratively and thematically coherent idea that I just came up with in five seconds Gaston grabs a cart and throws himself down the hill the cart somehow stays intact and heading in the correct direction he nearly runs over his children and he takes out the troll by launching himself into it mission accomplished anyway we then see thranduel and Dane battling some more of the Orcs outside of the city we get yet another strange troll type Abomination this one appears to have had its hands and feet removed and replaced with giant metal flails it has also had its eyes removed and it is steered by pulling on chains hooked into its eyelids so this is the kind of thing that either looks really cool or really silly depending on the viewer's age and their daily sugar intake but my primary question is why would you ever remove the Troll's feet as this only impedes its combat Effectiveness come to think of it why would you do any of this this thing can't see it can barely walk it has no hands in what universe is this thing more effective than a non-mutilated troll meanwhile Gaston tells his son to gather the women and children and take them to the Great Hall pay close attention women and children no I am not highlighting this to make another joke about how cultural norms have drastically shifted in the last decade I am highlighting this because it is about to become a plot point in this movie take him to the Great Hall and barricade what show your father some respect you leave it to me sire you heard him we might fill a great hall Alfred women and children only I need every man fighting I'll get them it's a safety song Gaston explicitly tells greecebag that only women and children are to be barricaded in the Great Hall and that he needs every man fighting grease bag is of course a man and yet has no intentions of fighting and given that Gaston knows exactly who grease bag is I have absolutely no idea why he even considers trusting him to save the lives of the lake townian women and children as he leaves with the children grease bag verbally abuses an old woman and then throws the sword Gaston gave him to Gaston's son then and I promise you I am not joking he launches himself through the crowd of wounded soldiers screaming out of my way abandoned the cripples moving on we then get some cartoon [ __ ] with franderwill's moose impaling five Orcs at once before he beheads them and then we get this [Music] okay so his moose has just been cooked he is likely incredibly pissed off right about now and would much rather be chilling with a glass of wine this quick fight shows us how skilled thranduel is that he is not all bark and no bite and that he is willing to personally risk his life in the fight against evil what I am unsure about is why if the filmmakers were going to include this scene of thrandu will being a badass did they feel the need to pre-empt it with the absurdity of the moose-assisted multi-decapitation literally remove that and this sequence functions almost perfectly moving on Azog then says that they cannot hold the city and that the dwarves are almost spent bringing us to the mid-battle low point where it appears that evil has triumphed Dane's piggy is also kebabed Dane presumably regretting only bringing 10 or so twiddly-widlies at which point he says because of course 13 more soldiers will totally change the tide of battle so now we will take a break before returning to Erebor to find out what Thorin has been doing alright Dane extremely Brave Reckless and heroic feeling extremely Brave and willing to fight thronderwell is pragmatic and is an extremely skilled Warrior Azog is a cunning military strategist greeceberg hates good likes bad cut back to Erebor where dwallin is confronting Thorin on their inaction since when do we forsake our own people they are dying out there I think it is no accident that the filmmakers have decided to have dwalin confront Thorin dwalin has so far been by far the most gung-ho in his support for Thorin and the fact that even he now doubts thorin's decision-making makes very clear how far he has fallen one question that I assume will never be answered but why did saurin not want to help Dane against the Orcs yes I am well aware that Thorin is crazy but Dragon sickness has for the most part seemingly only affected his rationality with regards specifically to the treasure if the Orcs defeat Dane thrandu will and Gaston Thorin will not have any treasure over which to be crazy and to reinforce the fact that this really doesn't make any sense we need look no further than thraw thorin's grandfather after being afflicted by the sickness thraw led the dwarves in The Battle of Moria so this sickness doesn't seem to actually hamper the afflicted's aptitude when it comes to basic cognition anyway thorin's response is Bonkers because yeah Thorne's [ __ ] Bonkers dwelling persists that their kin are being slaughtered and Thorin continues to be [ __ ] Bonkers we must move the further on the ground is surrounded they're being slaughtered many die in war life is cheap but a treasure such as this cannot be counted in lives lost it is worth all the blood we can spend his only concern seems to be that the treasure is protected then we get a line from dwarin that I really appreciate you sit here in these first halls with a crown upon your head and yet you are lesser now than you have ever been nothing much to say about this other than that I really like that dwalin is finally being explored he does have a line and Thorin has crossed it he then continues that Thorin will always be his King but that he is unaware of what he has become and then could hurt before I kill you this is relatively in line with thorin's previous Behavior as we have already seen Dragon sickness seems to make the affected simply behave in the opposite way to how they would usually act we then see Thorin walking on the now solidified gold puddle that they attempted to drown Smaug in a couple of days prior we hear the voices of dwell in Balin Gandalf Bilbo and Gaston in thorin's head as he replays their respective comments on his Madness a sickness lies upon that bridge is ours he then hallucinates himself being consumed by gold and then he isn't crazy anymore no I'm not joking this is what happens [Music] I got better just like that in the space of what we have to assume is a few minutes given the fact that there is a battle going on right at this very moment Thorin has uncrazied himself by trying really hard excellent well this certainly reminds me of the sequence in the Desolation of Smaug where everyone was tripping balls until they weren't except that the sheer amount of time dedicated to this crazy gold subplot makes this unforgivable the crazy hallucination forest in the Desolation of Smaug was an isolated incident that should have been cut and in the theatrical version of the film it was cut as it does not affect the rest of the film The Dragon sickness subplot is integral to The Narrative of this Trilogy in particular the Battle of the Five Armies the reason this happens is so as to allow Thorin to redeem himself and join the fight but because the writers had written themselves into a corner there was no alternative to and then he wasn't crazy anymore yeah yeah that'll do in the interest of plugging any potential accusation that I'm oversimplifying or being dishonest in my explanation of what actually happened to Thorin I will elaborate slightly the way this scene is presented is not unlike that of an intense drug withdrawal scene Thorin hallucinates and seems tormented by the voices of his friends accusing him of being greedy and selfish had this taken place over a long period of time then I could maybe buy the idea of him returning to something approximating his true self after suffering in isolation and realizing how sick he has become the problem is that this seems to take place over a period of approximately five minutes making the idea that he suddenly isn't crazy absolutely [ __ ] laughable one parallel I can draw is to the withdrawal sequence from Trainspotting these two scenes are somewhat similar in terms of how they are depicted but importantly there is a very obvious passage of time in the Trainspotting sequence you do not detox from heroin in five minutes and it is impossible to come away from the scene with that interpretation imagine if Renton said to his friends hey guys I'll see you at the pub tonight and then we had the withdrawal scene in his bedroom and then he goes to the pub later that evening that would absolutely cheapen the entire sequence reducing it to a vapid and oversimplified parody of what actual heroine withdrawal might be like that is pretty much what we have in the Battle of the Five Armies for the entire duration of thorin's hallucinations the battle is Raging outside their Gates Dane has already been surrounded dwelling imploring Thorin to help Dane is what prompts Thorin to confront his Madness and by the time he has finished giving himself an intervention and leads his dwarves outside of Erebor to save his cousin Dane is still in the process of being surrounded therefore I think that my claim that Thorin uncrazied himself in five minutes flat is an entirely reasonable read of the scene imagine for a moment that after befriending Frodo Gollum had a chat with his subconscious and then in the next scene he was totally not addicted to the one ring anymore the one ring would have been built up as irresistible full and absolute in its corruption only for this to then be undone in a moment I can't say that this is precisely what has happened here because the rules and effects of thorin's sickness are nowhere near as clear as the effects of the one ring but what I can say is that Thor in overcoming it this easily with zero outside help in the space of a few minutes is pathetic Dane meanwhile orders his Warriors to regroup at Erebor having suffered heavy losses as we see in this shot they are outnumbered at least ten to one inside Erebor we see Thorin approach his party and they resolve to join the battle in order to get out of Erebor they swing a giant Golden Bell into their barricade I assume the rest of them had been playing around in the forges again so as to whip up this giant Bell and Thorin heroically leads the remnants of Dane's Army against the Orcs this adds yet another issue to the sudden reprieve from his Madness if Thorin had decided to stop being crazy five minutes later Dane and the remaining dwarves would have been slaughtered we can draw parallel to Gandalf's timely arrival at Helm's Deep foreign Gandalf certainly did arrive just in time however he had always planned to arrive at this particular time with aoma and the exiled rohirim this did not come out of nowhere and they had an only needed to hold until that morning in the Battle of the Five Armies Thorin has arrived just in time to save Dane and his army entirely because he decided to stop being crazy just in time I say again pathetic during the ensuring battle a troll is brought down and then his catapult goes off making him do a flip and then land with a silly face and bomber also knocks over an orc with a belly slam buffer then manages to take control of the previously seen mutilated Troll and the fighting continues brace yourselves for what is about to come next okay dwelling will not follow a madman and loves his King Thorin got better and Keely doesn't like people fighting for him Thorin and Dane Embrace and Thorin devises a plan to defeat the vastly more numerous Orcs I hope you get a plan hi we're going to take out the leader and so Thorin leads a charge to Ravenhill to confront Azog with dwelling Balin felia and Keely following on a chariot there were quite a few heroic charges in The Lord of the Rings with questionable odds of survival but never any quite like this Thorin approaches the orc Army who have all seemingly forgotten that they are wielding Pikes and he breaks their lines without so much as a scratch almost as if this orc Army does not in fact exist in reality it is merely a copied and pasted asset that poses no threat to the main characters in this film there are two types of Orcs the ones that are a fully CG horde that only pose a threat to the CG hordes of elves and dwarves and the ones that are individual Orcs that are allowed to physically interact with the main characters anyway The Chariot follows and causes much destruction in its wake we now come to the video game level sequence for the Battle of the Five Armies we of course get the usual ridiculous physics and scripted non-threatening bad guy encounters for the Heroes to carve their way through for maximum XP but curiously this scene is very different from any other in the entire Six film Saga you may not be aware but every other Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie was rated 12 plus or PG-13 in the US the sole exception is the Extended Cut of the Battle of the Five Armies which curiously received a 15 plus rating in the UK or an R rating in the U.S what could possibly warrant an R rating in a movie about fantasy Wizards intended for children well I'm going to show you let's just say things get gunky for clarity I will break down what happens and I will save any thoughts on the heightened level of violence for the end of this sequence first up the blades on the chariot wheels slice off the legs of many of the Orcs And now dear viewer it seems we have reached the second round of multiple choice as the dwarves are carving their way through the orc Army what do you think happens next is it a the dwarves encounter another one of their chariots which has been commandeered by Orcs And they fight whilst chasing each other is it option b Keeley falls off The Chariot and runs at Ludicrous Speed so as to catch up and jump back on is it option C the Orcs attempt to stop the Chariots using catapults and obviously Miss every shot or is it option D multiple trolls line up neatly allowing The Chariot to go over a jump and decapitate them all in one go [Music] yeah so here's what happens these six trolls all line up perfectly for seemingly no reason resulting in a sextuple decapitation if they had done this deliberately I would still have a very hard time believing that this amount of coordination is possible where's Thorin they then Dodge a particularly large troll resulting in them careening into a frozen River buffer arrives atop his mutilated troll Abomination and he is able to bring down the other troll then they encounter this [Music] I have no idea what this troll was doing I guess it jumped in the river to hold the bridge so that the Orcs could cross meaning that the orc Army is now down one troll because the Orcs didn't want to get their feet wet maybe I'm thinking too hard about this the reason this is here is to be a bullet sponge for the dwarves and to die in a funny way foreign then they get attacked by two Wags that manage to kill a couple of the goats where's Thorin I thought you were going with him and then a wag is crushed against a rock and blended into mincemeat so having now lost three of their six goats dwelling realizes that they are carrying too much weight and will be caught by the Orcs Parlin then tells dwallin that he feely and Keely should ride the remaining three goats to help Thorin defeat Azog and that barlin's goat riding Days Are Over the understanding between these two seems to be that Balin will have a heroic Last Stand and will go down holding the Wags back an orc is then decapitated by the spinning blades as dwell in Philly and Keely detach their goats The Chariot does a perfect 180 degree spin bringing us to the turret section of the video game level thus allowing barlin to mow down the wugs meaning that all four of them are only alive because of blind luck although honestly the breaking point for suspension of disbelief was about seven hours ago in this Trilogy so I can't really be too hard on this anyway they then see Thorin who has somehow managed to ride his way through the entire orc Army off-screen because yeah why not why should I expect anything more from this film as rings of power taught us if it is off screen it does not exist so because we didn't see what actually happened to Thorin in the last few minutes it actually makes complete sense that he's here now I think a few of my brain cells just committed sepaku anyway so regarding the violence in this scene I am not one to shy away from extreme levels of violence in films provided it is justified by the context I am not into Gore for the sake of Gore but that said a good amount of Blood and Guts can be absolutely crucial in making a given scene function the presence of blood helps communicate to the audience who has taken damage and how much damage is fatal this is partly why I struggle sometimes with PG-13 rated action movies because of the lack of blood for an example of this take a look at this fight scene from Fast and Furious 7. foreign the characters are landing multiple hits and supposedly injuring each other and yet there is almost no progression of injuries or combat Effectiveness they are simply hitting each other until the other one stops moving now take a look at this scene from The Raid 2. in this scene both characters are dealing a huge amount of damage to each other this is abundantly clear because visually we can see it as the fight progresses this means that the stakes of the fight as well as its progression in terms of who has the upper hand is abundantly clear one other problem with a lack of blood can be that it is harder to tell when or why a character has actually died as one way of showing this may be to show a large amount of blood but if the ratings board will not allow this then it can result in a lack of visual Clarity so there is absolutely a place and a purpose for heightened amounts of violence in films and I am by no means a prude who fundamentally objects to the idea of violence or Gore so how does all this apply to The Hobbit well until this scene the movies have been almost entirely bloodless the visual language of the film is telling the audience that when someone dies there is not an abundance of blood think back to the multiple decapitations of Orcs that we have had so far [Music] foreign and not one of them had anywhere near this amount of blood splatter so the problem here is consistency or rather a lack of it is extremely jarring to suddenly have Fountains of Blood come from nowhere regardless of whether or not it is more realistic because the films have conditioned the audience for seven hours into thinking that this is not how the world worked we can assume that the company of Thorin had to stop a few times to empty their bowels on the way to Erebor but because the films didn't suddenly show us in detail how gloyne likes to do a poo this is never brought to our attention and so it is instantly accepted as something that happens off screen and in this case realism isn't even the goal seemingly as the camera lingers explicitly on the mutilated corpses after every Glory kill the point of this sequence and only this sequence is look at all the Gory ways they kill things this chase scene is essentially a scripted series of creative kills much like the escape from Goblin Town and the barrel Chase only the difference here is the sudden and excessive presence of bodily fluids as I've said I have no problem whatsoever with the fundamental idea of Comedy Gore or extreme slapstick violence look no further than the opening scene of Deadpool for an example of a movie that does this pretty well the problem is that this style of comedy and this depiction of action violence does not belong in Middle Earth for reasons that I have explained on another Point throughout making these videos I have received the odd comment saying something along the lines of it's just a children's story of course it's silly stop criticizing it um this is not a children's story or to be more specific there are parts of these films that could be considered a children's story but many parts in particular this entire sequence are not exactly something anyone should expect to find in Harry Potter Narnia or Charlie in the Chocolate Factory so in conclusion this sequence plays out like a theme park attraction there are six different surprises along the way all spaced out one by one for maximum entertainment for the kitties and it all comes off as exceedingly tone deaf and it is easily the most jarring sequence in these films okay Balin is too old for this [ __ ] and Thorin is invincible meanwhile knowing that their men are being slaughtered and are losing the women in the town hall decide to take up arms and join the fight and then this happens Don't Be Afraid what the [ __ ] are you doing here so grease bag has disguised himself as a woman and done an absurd high-pitched parody of a woman's voice before snapping at this other woman in his regular voice her intention is clearly to pretend to be an old woman so as to not have to do any fighting because of course this character is a coward with a capital she is also however unfathomably incredibly and cartoonishly unintelligent if grease bag genuinely wanted to go unnoticed and not do any fighting one would expect that she would try that little bit harder to conceal herself dumb [ __ ] so having now been revealed she has declared a weasel by the other women and then because in case you had forgotten dear viewer grease bag is defined by two characteristics coward and money although I guess she has recently added stunning and brave to her repertoire and as we will soon see she is about to expand those four characteristics to a total of six and so the elderly the women and the injured all charge the Orcs grease bag is later seen attempting to leave Dale after having acquired two entirely new personality traits in the form of Boom Boom she is pursued by a troll but is saved by Gaston [Applause] [Music] this bag believes that Stan is an idiot for not becoming the new Master even though he is in effect the leader of the lake townians meaning that this makes no sense she also insults Gaston seconds after he saved her life get up get away from life I'll take all this from you Master's mantle was there for the taking and he threw it all away football and this suggests quite blatantly that Gaston threw away the mantle of Master of Lake town because he loves his kids what this is also something that didn't happen in this film so I'm unsure why the writers think that it did and then after all of the ridiculous [ __ ] that grease bag has done Gaston still lets her go with two boobs filled with gold after a brief cutaway we see Gandalf as he approaches a troll that is slapping about the lake townians and he attempts to cast a spell oh I didn't mention this earlier but we did see radagast give his staff to Gandalf which is the staff he is now using and is also the staff we see Gandalf with in Fellowship of the Ring the staff doesn't appear to be working as intended almost leading to Gandalf getting himself killed this is pretty remarkable imagine being given an awesome new gun by someone then walking up to a troll without checking to see if there are any bullets in it Gandalf evidently did not confirm his ability to use this staff properly in any of the downtime prior to the battle he tries multiple times to cast a spell and still nothing happens and I hope dear viewer that you are ready for what this alternative way of thinking facilitates what I am about to cover is perhaps the single greatest moment in movie history it is worth plowing your way through all three extended versions just for the sheer Glory of what you are about to witness if you have seen the extended you know exactly what I'm talking about but if you have only ever seen the theatrical cut but you are about to be shaking with disbelief once again I will give you guys multiple choices see if you can guess what happens next is it option a grease Bag shows Gandalf how to use the staff properly thus allowing Gandalf to kill the troll is it option b grease bag accidentally falls off the roof to her death due to her newly developed money boobs distracting the troll saving Gandalf is it option C grease bag accidentally catapults herself into the Troll's mouth saving Gandalf or is it option D Gandalf brings the troll down and then greasebag tries to rob the troll in case it has any gold and she is then killed by the Nearly Dead troll foreign okay votes are in I will now take you through it step by step without making any comments until the end I am simply going to tell you what happens so grease bag is hiding in this catapult upon seeing the oncoming troll she screams and attempts to leave her hiding place a coin from her money boob Falls and lands on the trigger mechanism for the Catapult the troll raises its weapon over Gandalf who is still unable to defend himself the mechanism fires and grease bag is launched into the Troll's mouth the troll then chokes collapses and a shower of gold coins Falls from Grease bags corpse moments like this are why I thoroughly enjoy what I do this is an actual scene from the film yes I am very aware that this is extended only but this is still as much a part of the Battle of the Five Armies as the Boromir flashback is a part of the two towers this is not a parody this is not fan fiction this is something that was scripted and put to film as part of a near billion dollar movie trilogy where do I even [ __ ] begin Gandalf being unable to cast whatever spell he was trying to cast requires that he is an idiot as this is evidently the first time he has attempted to use his staff since radagast gave it to him but what a warning could be a bit Dicky sometimes you just have to twiddle with the top this is dumb for reasons I have already mentioned Gandalf surviving as long as he does against the troll relies on silly levels of plot armor particularly given the hordes of people trolls have been seen to mow through without issue grease bag has hidden inside a catapult which is kind of like hiding inside the barrel of an artillery Cannon or in other words this is some Looney Tunes level of slapstick that can only be a consequence of unfathomable levels of neurodivergence the extremely poor luck on Grease bag's part that a coin just so happened to land in precisely the wrong location the trigger mechanism being so delicate as to fire when a coin is dropped on it is ridiculous as it means that this entire Siege weapon would be impossible to use when mounted on the back of a troll if the whole thing goes off with the slightest nudge the implication from this scene is that Gandalf is about to be killed and would have been if not for grease bag's mishap meaning that once again Gandalf's survival and therefore the eventual defeat of Sauron are contingent upon this abominable Clown's Behavior the Catapult firing grease bag directly into the Troll's mouth also requires extreme amounts of luck this kind of trick shot does not just happen and Gandalf's survival relies entirely on this happening by accident at precisely the right moment and finally the cherry on top of the afterbirth that is this scene is the final shot where we see the coins fall out of the Troll's mouth confirming the level of intelligence that the writers expect of Their audience this seems to have been inserted so that the lowest common denominator can proudly declare oh he got what he deserved didn't he and here's the thing it does not take any Talent whatsoever to depict a character whose death would be cathartic to watch this is frequently done in films to varying Effect one obvious example of this is in the first John Wick the bad guy kills Jon's puppy and so we very much want to see Jon murder [ __ ] the absolute tits off the guy because killing puppies is not very nice in the case of John Wick it is very efficient man is bad because man kills puppy no time is wasted showing us 10 different scenes of man killing 10 different puppies in the case of Grease bag they have spent an unforgivable amount of time hammering home the utter one-dimensionality of this character he is hideous to look at he doesn't care if he causes people to starve he is an idiot he is disheveled and filthy he doesn't like elections he is corrupt he is extremely greedy he doesn't care about anyone other than himself he is physically abusive towards women he has no honor and no moral compass is extremely incompetent hate disabled people and is tremendously cowardly in other words this character has zero redeeming qualities and the films have taken a copious amount of time to make sure everyone knows how detestable this character is all so that he can be killed in what I assume is supposed to be an extremely over the top and cathartic death scene where he finally gets what's coming to him grease bag could have been redeemed maybe he goes down swinging even if rather pathetically to save the women and children maybe he feels genuinely inspired by Gaston maybe there could be more to this character Beyond clown who is bad and then dies anyway it is time to move on from this glorious scene as we still have an hour of this film to go it never ends okay grease bag is stunning and brave and rude and makes things up and Gandalf is an idiot Gandalf and Bilbo then observe Thorin dwell in Philly and Keeley on their way to Ravenhill and it is at this point that Legolas and ladyless arrive with some pretty bad news there's a second Army and they realize that if bolg's Army from gundabad is arriving from the north then they will hit Ravenhill first and ladyless realizes that her little cocktail sausage might be about to die we later see thrandwill taking pause momentarily upon realizing how many of his soldiers have fallen and he consequently orders his army to fall back this then prompts Bilbo to decide that he will warn Thorin of the impending reinforcements Gandalf of course does not want Bilbo to die for no reason believing that the Orcs will see him coming as Bilbo is currently in possession of a magic ring that can turn him invisible he is confident that he will be able to reach Thorin I'll go you'll never make it why not because they will see you coming and kill you no they won't I'm not allowed I'm not asking you to allow again so here I really quite like that Bilbo has decided to return and help his friend even after everything they have been through the last time Thorin saw Bilbo he tried to murder him by throwing him off the ramparts and yet Bilbo is evidently more than willing to for the fourth time in this Trilogy risk his life to rescue Thorin and so Bilbo puts the ring on and makes his way through the battle meanwhile ladyless blocks thranduel's Retreat refusing to allow him to turn away for you see ladyless needs help to go and rescue her little munchkin dwarves will be slaughtered yes they will die today tomorrow one year hence a hundred years from now what does it matter they are more ladyless then declares that there is no love in thranduel's life which is an interesting thing to say to a guy who as she learned very recently lost his wife yes this may literally mean that there is no love in thranduel's life but given the context this absolutely comes off as though ladyless is mocking him consequently thrandu will disarms her because she was standing a sword length away from him whilst wielding a bow you're so stupid and he tells her that she knows nothing of love he then asks if she is ready to die for her love what you feel for that dwarf is not real you think it is love are you ready to die for it this gives us the smallest Peak behind the curtain that is thranduel he clearly loved his wife very much and the implication is that he risked his life trying to save her but was unsuccessful this sits very neatly into many of his other behaviors namely his wine consumption his apathy towards the world in general and his disdain for Mortals he seems to truly believe that Elven lives are worth more because they are Immortal which also informs his decision to retreat anyway before ladyless can answer Legolas spawns off camera and tells ladyless he will go with her to rescue her boy toy this tells us that Legolas is willing to help ladyless do something that actively goes against his own desires he knows that she loves Keely over him but because he respects her he has decided to help nonetheless rather critically Legolas does not seem to actually have any Affinity towards the dwarves at this point he is not helping her because he was impressed by seeing Keeley fighting or something this is one instance of the filmmakers being careful in actively avoiding contradicting the Lord of the Rings as when we first meet Legolas in Fellowship he is not particularly respectful of dwarves we then get a rather quick sequence of fighting which is worth mentioning buffer is killed when an orc demolishes his face with a spiked ax except that actually no buffer is totally fine somehow then biffer launches himself at the orc and instead of killing it like a normal person because as we have seen biffer is anything but normal he headbutts it thus embedding the other end of the ax lodged in his own skull into the orc oh my God what is happening this film is strange buffer then realizes that biffer has lost his ax as it evidently came out with the orc by Duran he's lost your ax no he's not there you go cousin holy [ __ ] you can talk this is the one single example of bomba speaking why he chooses to speak at this moment and no other I can't even begin to fathom you're no way you can stick that all right this one actually made me laugh I have laughed many times whilst watching this film but this is the one time when I laughed at a joke that the film actively made additionally this tells us that the reason biffer behaved like a special little boy with brain damage was because as I had suspected he had an ax in his face it might not be entirely realistic to say that once the ax is gone he's all back to normal but this is the kind of realism that I honestly don't care about all it facilitates is a joke so nothing else breaks in order to make me laugh okay surround oil values Elven lives over all others and possibly risked His Life For Love bomber can actually speak Legolas respects ladyless and ladyless is totally in love after cutting their way through some more Orcs the dwarves observe that Ravenhill appears empty Thorin orders Philly and Keely to scout ahead while he and dwalin deal with the hundred or so goblins that have just arrived no more than a hundred we'll take care of them go because these characters are of course Invincible until they aren't after a brief cutaway we return to Philly search the low levels I've got this and this seems remarkably dumb but okay you are pretty certain Azog is here this is the entire reason why you are at Ravenhill to begin with and even if azogi is alone he will absolutely [ __ ] you up I assume this is why Thorin sent Philly and Keely together but I guess this is the perfect time for hey gang let's split up meanwhile Thorin and dwallin have evidently defeated the 100 goblins that spawned in so as to force freely and Keely to be separated from them and suddenly Bilbo Karen [Music] curiously Thorin is right back to how he was prior to the end of the Desolation of Smaug where he flipped on a dime and became crazy he shows no hostility to Bilbo whatsoever remember the circumstances surrounding Bilbo and thorin's current relationship has not changed Bilbo still took the king's Jewel thorin's Birthright from Erebor and gave it to thrandwill thranduil and Gaston still intend to take a portion of thorin's treasure the last time Thorin saw Bilbo he attempted to murder him for his betrayal the only thing that has changed is that Thorin has decided not to be crazy anymore anyway dwallan wants to find Azog and finish the job but Thorin heeds Bilbo's warning has another Army attacking from the north we are so close that's what he wants a trap myself needs to kill us all take your brother Scout all the towers one by one he will destroy the line of Doreen are you [ __ ] hmm if only there was something you could have done differently so as to avoid this I know that Thorin of course didn't know about the incoming Army but even with the knowledge that there were at the very least 100 goblins plus Azog hiding somewhere in Ravenhill I would have thought it more practical and reasonable not to send felian Keely off on their own I hope nothing bad happens to them as a direct result of this decision so he orders dwelling to go and find Philly and Keeley meaning that all four of the dwarves are now split up as a result of one silly decision to send half your men scouting before dwylin can move very far Azog appears alongside a captured feely he says in Black speech this one dies first then the brother then you Oakenshield you will die last this is pretty in character for Azog although as no one else speaks the black speech this threat will not have been directly understood and then Philly is fillet [Music] he was not wearing any missile I guess Thorin had some to give Bilbo but not his own nephew feli's corpse then Falls and lands in front of his brother who flies into a fit of rage and pursues Azog which seems like absolutely something Keely would do he is not overcome by grief he is fully in Revenge mode Thorin rushes to save his one remaining nephew dwelling follows and Bilbo stays put drawing his sword unsure of what to do whilst on route to Keeley Thor in his ambushed by Azog which reinforces that Azog personally wants to be the one to defeat Thorin we know that he has other Orcs with him and therefore could easily surround him so his goal is not simply that Thorin dies he personally wants to rip him apart additionally this suggests that his previous threat stating that Thorin will die last May in fact have been his way of provoking Thorin into attacking plus of course the fact that he just murdered feely although the fact that Thorin does not speak the black speech makes this idea a little flimsy okay Azog is sadistic and Thorin is not particularly good at keeping people alive and then the hordes of gundabad arrive Bilbo is swarmed by Orcs And he does not seem to react possibly due to the shock of seeing feely die but he is saved by dwalin so the fact that these Orcs have arrived along with bulg and a load of bats would suggest that the entirety of the gundabad Army is Right Here Right Now luckily we have five or so main characters to fight them off I like those odds so then a gundabat flies down to Legolas and lets him grab it instead of attacking him and it sure is lucky there was one bat and only one bat otherwise he would not be able to do this so the reason why this happens is to separate Legolas and ladyless and thus allow them to fulfill their narrative functions Legolas needs to have his boss fight with bulg that was set up in the previous film and ladyless needs to try to rescue her manstress meanwhile during the ensuing fighting Thorin actually gets the upper hand on Azog but is interrupted by the arrival of some more Orcs dwallin And Bilbo continue to fight off The Horde Bilbo by throwing rocks as he doesn't want to get anywhere near the Carnage if he can help it why he is still visible however I am not sure while ladyless fights her way to her little pickle Legolas is about to do something both hilarious and absurd no we're not at the bridge scene yet that we'll have to wait once again I am going to give you multiple choices as this moment is only in the extended version so no doubt many of you are entirely unprepared for this insanity is it option A Legolas encounters bulg also hanging from a gundabat and they do battle mid-air option b Legolas dangles upside down from the gundabat and decapitates a hundred or so Orcs option C Legolas flips the gundabat under his feet and surfs it through the air while popping off shots with his bow or option D Legolas removes the gundabat's wings and attaches them to his own arms forming a makeshift wind suit [Music] alrighty votes are in time to reveal what actually happened [Music] I really don't think I need to spend any time on this I just find it hilarious that this is able to happen as this quick moment is not integral to anyone's survival or any plot mechanics it is simply a couple of shots of something utterly ridiculous occurring so I will move on after defeating multiple Orcs Bilbo is whacked in the face by bulk rendering him unconscious I am unsure why bulg went for the less than lethal method of dealing with an enemy as this is certainly not something he has ever been shown to do before and it is doubly lucky that this happens after Bilbo and dwallin had dealt with all of the Orcs otherwise Bilbo would likely be killed whilst unconscious meanwhile Azog has evidently had enough of fighting Thorin and orders his Orcs to finish him off this confuses the interpretation that Azog personally wants to rip thorin's head off which has been suggested not once but twice at this point and it also allows for Legolas to consume some of his ammunition foreign [Applause] this may seem like a strange thing to highlight but trust me there is a reason why I'm bringing this to your attention meanwhile during her search for Keeley ladyless is ambushed by bulg who manages to overpower her but once again does not deal a killing blow when he easily could have this is a problem because of what is about to happen so Keeley sees bulk standing there not killing ladyless and he attacks in order to save her bulg then almost immediately gets Keely with Keely ah it really does appear then that Thorin cared more about Bilbo's life than he did about either of his nephews this actually deserves a little more exploration I can totally buy none of the dwarves having mithril at the start of an Unexpected Journey as they seem to be a disparate faction with seemingly little in the way of resources and they of course did not have access to arable or morya at this point in time by the start of the Battle of the Five Armies they have retaken Erebor the greatest Kingdom in Middle Earth Erebor was of course incredibly wealthy and had not been raided since its fall due to the presence of a certain Dragon meaning that we can reasonably assume that such a great and Wealthy Dwarven City would have had miseral shirts in its Armory therefore given that I would like to assume that the dwarves do not want to die I know I know look at me being all charitable they should all be wearing mithril shirts and that is without even considering the scene in which Thorin gives Bilbo a mithril shirt which confirms explicitly that they have access to them I do not accept for a moment that the greatest Kingdom in Middle Earth only had one single mithril shirt and even if it did thorin's decision to give this shirt to the one member of the company that is least likely to see combat is extremely confusing the only way out of this is if we accept that there is only one single mithril shirt in Erebor and that thorin's counterproductive distribution of this mithril shirt is as a result of him being [ __ ] Bonkers which is an incredible cop-out to suggest that he was crazy in exactly the right way so as to allow the plot to happen I don't believe that the writers considered this when making the film however if this is what was intended then this is worse than the conveniently crazy ex-king of numenor in rings of power so why did the writers decide not to give mithril shirts to each of the dwarves I honestly cannot even begin to guess the reason cannot be that Philly and Keely needed to die because wearing mithril does not make make you invincible you can still be decapitated or have your throat card or be killed in any number of other ways because every main character death in this film is explicitly shown to be as a result of a stab to the Torso this can only mean that they were not wearing mithril shirts which is fundamentally inexplicable by all accounts it doesn't make sense anyway back to the film so what has just happened is bulge attacked ladyless but opted not to finish her off and was then attacked by Keeley whom he immediately impaled the reason why this happens is to allow for the tragic conclusion to This Love Story had ladyless been killed and then Keely also been killed after attacking bolg in a fit of rage this would also have been tragic and as ladyless is an entirely original creation of these movies there is no in-law reason why they could not have done this alternatively ladyless and Keeley could have fought together to bring down bulg allowing the potential for further development of their infatuation we could have maybe seen them combine fighting styles as well as showing them each putting themselves in danger to save the other maybe the scene could be upbeat and heroic where they try to avenge feely whilst attempting to bring down the nearly Unstoppable bulg only for the tone to shift dramatically when one of them takes a fatal blow maybe they fail and both are killed by bulg dying in each other's arms this would then firmly establish how powerful bulg is and it would make the subsequent boss fight with Legolas emotionally charged as Legolas of course cares deeply for ladyless rather than what we got which was simply two people hitting each other until the other one stops moving keeping ladyless alive only facilitates a minor payoff for thranduel's character and I do not consider this a worthy trade-off anyway having now seen that guy she met a couple of days ago die in front of her she grabs bolg and throws them both off the cliff it is possible that this was intended as suicide however they both survived the fall Legolas sees this and then together foreign the fact that Legolas throughout the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit never runs out of arrows is not particularly realistic I view this in the same way as I view the blood spatter issue I raised earlier or the question of gloin making a Mighty Poo we can reasonably assume that ammunition is finite in Middle Earth in much the same way as we can reasonably assume that blood and poo exist even though we rarely see any this requires suspension of disbelief however as it is never brought to the attention of the audience it is easy to suspend one's disbelief and it is reasonable for the writers to expect this this is much the same as how in many action movies the number of bullets a particular gun can fire without reloading is often exaggerated this is a concession that is sometimes a necessity depending on things like genre and tone we can reasonably assume that whenever Legolas was off screen he was picking up more arrows and we can also assume that due to how experienced and skillful he is at archery he pays very close attention to the number of arrows remaining in his quiver but the fact that we never see him doing any of this means that the number of arrows he has in his quiver is never brought to the attention of the audience until now right at the wrong time Legolas has finally run out of arrows how cataclysmically inconvenient and arguably the only reason this happened was because Azog decided to send cannon fodder towards Thorin instead of fighting him himself thus giving Legolas the opportunity to use all of his available arrows so Legolas needs to get to bolg before bulg can kill ladyless naturally he leaps off the tower and impales this Stumpy troll boy in the head and makes it knock over the tower so as to make a bridge and also not squash ladyless at this point I'm done commenting on run-of-the-mill stupidity in this film I really need to focus on the important bits and so Legolas and bulg do battle on the ruined Tower as it falls apart meanwhile we see Thor in above fighting more Orcs he throws one off the cliff which causes old to be squashed by Rubble you could describe this as convenient and I mean it is but as this does not actually kill bulk it is merely a random unlikely occurrence that is not elevated to the status of being plot armor Thorin is then approached by another orc and he is now unarmed having left his sword in the previous orc's head this scene is starting to look rather familiar isn't it so Legolas throws his sword and saves Thorin repaying the life debt that he didn't know he had okay all joking aside I actually like this this is a moment of deliberate repetition that allows these two former enemies to help each other I do also find it amusing that the sword Legolas was wielding that he then threw to save Thorin was orcrist the sword Thorin found in the trollhord that was subsequently confiscated by Legolas this means that Legolas also considered it to be a particularly good blade but he ultimately decided to part with it so as to save Thorin and this then allows for Thorin to be reunited with his blade for his final scene which again and despite everything else going on functions for me on a thematic level everything surrounding it is trash but moments like this I do appreciate okay Thorin does not care about his nephew's lives Bilbo is horrendously lucky Legolas is Honorable and is a God this next part of the film is the two climactic boss fights rather than depict each fight sequentially the filmmakers decided to cut between the two it is not at all uncommon to edit together separate fights or battles indeed this happens frequently in The Lord of the Rings but the problem that I have in this instance is that Thorin and azog's emotionally charged climactic Showdown is interrupted with well this [Music] thank you yeah I don't quite know what to say about this maybe I've become numbed by the sheer amount of [ __ ] present in these films so far does this look dumb absolutely is this moment extremely lucky absolutely is this the dumbest moment in the film not by a long shot is it physically possible for Legolas to do this [ __ ] no I honestly think this is self-evident but I will explain briefly using my limited knowledge of physics for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction when you walk your foot exerts a force on the ground and the ground exerts an equal force back into your foot thus allowing you to walk or in this case jump in this scene Legolas is exerting a force into the falling rubble and because of the fact that the rubble is in free fall it cannot exert the same Force back into his foot it is not possible to climb falling Rubble unless your mass is zero I did manage to find someone far better at mathematics than I am who managed to calculate how much Legolas weighs using this scene from fellowship as a reference by use using the approximate tensile strength of snow and the size of his feet They concluded that Legolas weighs approximately 7.5 pounds or three and a half kilos which is approximately the weight of a newborn baby even if we ask no further questions and accept Point Blank that Legolas weighs less than three and a half kilos this is still fundamentally impossible without some other form of magic helping him and going purely by the films we have no reason to assume that there is anyway Legolas then goes to stab bulg and bulg grabs the blade using the same move that he used in The Desolation of Smaug to disarm Legolas notably this exact setup and payoff also occurs in Spartacus although in the case of Spartacus it is subverted in an absolutely masterful way seriously go and watch that show anyway this time Legolas sees the trick coming and so he is able to flip onto bold shoulders and stab him in the head whilst I like the repetition of bold's Sword grab move this fight scene was pretty unbearable and the fact that the filmmakers decided to cut to this scene not 15 seconds into the Thor in and out fight just indicates to me that they didn't have any faith in their audience's ability to concentrate on one thing at a time before we jump back into Thorin vs Azog we see briefly that Legolas is looking for ladyless now that he has defeated bolg this is the only explanation we get as to why neither of them assist in defeating Azog as they are or at least were relatively close by I think I'm willing to accept that Legolas would rather save ladyless than Thorin so whilst this is mildly convenient I don't consider this to be particularly substantive we now come to the long-awaited showdown between Thorin and Azog their choice of location is a frozen lake and whilst this looks rather cinematic it is also rather impractical for both parties as walking let alone fighting on ice is something of a challenge we see briefly the rest of the gundabad army approaching the main battle that is presumably still going on before Azog charges Azog is fighting using a flail and as a result is gradually breaking the ice upon which they are fighting Thorin manages to land a hit on Azog who then gets his flails stuck in the ice and then [Music] I am rather conflicted on how I feel with regard to this on the one hand this is the fourth time that the Eagles have arrived to save the day but on the other hand as this story chronologically takes place before the Lord of the Rings this is in actuality the second time we also see that radagast is riding one of them and we already know both that Gandalf or potentially Wizards in general have an affinity with the Eagles plus the fact that radagast appears to have a close relationship with animals in general in the book maybe this worked far better as presented in the film however the Army from gundabad arrived literally two minutes ago in terms of screen time and then the Eagles turn up and Destroy them before they can actually do anything the Army from gundabad does not have an impact upon the Battle of the Five Armies indeed they do not actually arrive at the Battle of the Five Armies the only thing the gundabad Army facilitated in the narrative is that it gave Bilbo a reason to travel to Ravenhill to warn Thorin and the reason why this was deemed necessary I suspect Act is so that Bilbo could be present for the climax of the trilogy the trilogy called The Hobbit as Bilbo serves no further purpose this could have been removed entirely yes I am well aware that the Army from gundabad is present in the book but at the risk of repeating myself I am not analyzing the book I am analyzing the film if you take something mentioned quite literally once in the novel expand upon it by dedicating a lot of time to explaining what gundabad is having Legolas and Lady let's go and investigated and having Bilbo risk his life to warn Thorin of the impending reinforcements from gundabad only to then have said reinforcements be deleted before they can actually do anything then forgive me for accusing the film of wasting my [ __ ] time always my [ __ ] die anyway in addition to radagast Beyond is also here riding one of the Eagles before he promptly throws himself off whilst hundreds of feet up in the air anyway whilst Azog is distracted by The Eagles Thorin picks up azog's flail and throws it to him what this thing was stuck in the ice unless you're telling me that Thorin is suddenly physically stronger than Azog this does not make a lick of sense he then steps backwards and allows Azog to fall into the frozen water Thorin appears to defeat Azog by outsmarting him he uses the environment to his advantage and Azog pays the price for not concentrating however has this moment required that Thorin suddenly be stronger than Azog this ends up as a bit of a mixed bag we then see Azog floating Downstream underneath the ice which once again does not make any sense as this is a frozen lake with nowhere for the water to be flowing too as OG appears dead and thawin follows presumably to confirm that Azog has actually drowned then this happens Azog launches himself up through the ice and catches Thorin off guard this requires that the ice is thin enough for him to jump through and that the lake was shallow enough for him to push himself up both of which are certainly possible although the idea that Azog can leap eight feet or so directly up whilst fully submerged is a bit of a stretch as organ now having the upper hand pins Thor into the ground after a struggle here is what happens [Music] thank you Thorin realizes that he cannot beat Azog and that his only chance at avenging his family is to allow himself to be killed it is also entirely possible that he does not think himself worthy of ruling the dwarves after the whole crazy gold thing and that this is his idea of penance he is evidently also not wearing any mithril but I have already said my peace on that he then catches Azog off guard and skewers him through what appears to be a gap in his armor so as far as epic fight scene climaxes go I like this one a lot the only major problem I have with it is the lack of explanation for why Thorin is not wearing mithril or seemingly any armor of any kind from a character perspective Thorin defeats Azog by outsmarting him twice rather than by physically overpowering or outmaneuvering him he also pays the price for his misdeeds earlier in the film and yet he also redeems himself by a avenging the deaths of his grandfather and his nephew as Thorin never actually learns that Keeley had also been killed meanwhile Bilbo wakes up and watches Thorin walk to the cliff I would have preferred however that he crawled to the edge of the cliff struggling to pull himself across the ice whilst bleeding heavily thus making it very clear that Thorin is going to die despite my thoughts on thorin's ability to stand up I very much like that the first thing he does upon defeating Azog is check on the state of the battlefield he wants to know that what he just went through was not for nothing and given the timely arrival of the Eagles it appears that the Orcs have been driven back into the tunnels and are in full Retreat Thorin then collapses his task complete knowing that they have been Victorious Bilbo approaches Thorin and attempts to stem the bleeding lie still oh oh I wished apart from you in French take back my word and my Deeds forgive me I'm so sorry I thought I have led you into such Pearl Master burglar go back to your box and you're around this world would be a marriage no no no no no no no no no Lauren and Thorin then passes this scene is Far and Away the best scene in the Battle of the Five Armies in the first film we had Bilbo riddling with Gollum in the second film we had Bilbo talking with Smaug and in the third film we have Bilbo reconciling with Thorin that this scene is at all emotionally effective is a testament to the acting of both Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage in a better movie this scene could have been phenomenal unfortunately this scene requires two hours and 15 minutes of [ __ ] for it to exist even if you were to ruthlessly cut this Trilogy down and remove as much of the insane nonsense as possible from this movie in particular the emotional impact of this scene is entirely contingent upon Thorin reconciling with Bilbo which is only necessary because of the crazy gold subplot which may just be the most fundamentally broken part of this Trilogy had the crazy gold subplot made a lick of sense and had thorin's succumbing to the sickness being at tall coherent and believable then this scene would have tied it all together masterfully what we actually got however was a nonsensical setup with a fantastic resolution I vastly prefer this to the inverse where the resolution wastes the potential of the setup so I will commend the filmmakers and the actors once again forgetting this moment essentially Pitch Perfect okay Azog is overconfident and Thorin is a smart fighter we'll die to ensure Azog is defeated cares about his people and is remorseful we then cut away from the character death that I actually care about and the reaction of another character that I actually care about too ladyless who is mourning the death of her weapon of ass destruction meanwhile franderwill searches for Legolas indicating that he did in fact decide to head to Ravenhill albeit after the fighting had concluded given that he is not accompanied by any army my presumption here was that he wanted to make sure his son had not Fallen although that legolas's insistence on helping the dwarves did not prompt the same response is interesting we simply have to assume that thrandwill was so shocked by the large number of Elven casualties that he prioritized pulling his forces out over helping his son Legolas tells his father that he cannot go back and thrandwell asks where he will go there are a couple of reasons why Legolas may not want to go back to his home and I think the intention here fundamentally is that his experience in the last two films has changed him he has learned to respect dwarves to some degree Thorin in particular he has also potentially grown out of his horny adolescent phase and he has also severely damaged his relationship with his father probably most importantly however he has experienced Combat on a massive scale he is now well aware of what the enemy is capable of and so he is no longer content with chilling in mirkwood this actually fits rather well with his portrayal in The Fellowship of the Ring as he is not initially hostile towards Gimli rather it is Gimli who initiates their Feud have you heard nothing lord El Ronda said the ring must be destroyed I suppose you think you're the one to do it I will be dead before I see the ring in the hands of them so thranduel tells his son find the tuna die there's you shall meet him his father arathon was a good man his son might grow to be a great one what is his name is known in the wild as Strider his true name you must discover for yourself do you think the scene should have been cut going purely from The Source material Aragorn would have been around 10 years old at this point in time however the films follow a slightly different timeline in the books there is a 17-year gap from when Frodo acquires the ring to when he first meets Aragon as this is obviously not the case in the films this would mean Aragorn is approximately 27 years old at the time at which this scene is taking place given this information could thranda will feasibly have heard about this incredible 27 year old's accomplishments yes this is plausible does that alone justify this scene's inclusion absolutely [ __ ] not surrandewell tells his son to randomly go out and find one particular 27 year old dude for seemingly no reason whatsoever this is fan service at its most blatant and intrusive there is no in-universe reason for them to be having this discussion thrandwell may as well be saying I hear there are two young Hobbits in the Shire who you should meet they make excellent sausages tomatoes and nice crispy bacon there is no reason at all why thranduel would want Legolas to go and see Aragorn and the only reason this line is here is to prompt the drooling masses to garble incoherently at each other yeah I just came anyway has Legolas leaves Randall tells him that his mother loved him more than life itself they then gesture at each other respectfully and he takes his leave we then see that thrandwill is teary-eyed at his son's departure possibly acknowledging that his own behavior contributed to this decision he then approaches ladyless and her deceased flugenheimer [Music] [ __ ] you are a thousand years old am I really supposed to believe you have never had your cheeks clapped before so much well it ain't getting any better this is actively hysterical ladyless is behaving as if she is 10 years old and her Boo has stopped texting her back thranderwill's response is that the reason it hurts so much is because it was real he has seemingly accepted that she was truly in love with Keeley and this is perhaps informed by his rather brittle emotional state following his conversation with Legolas this plus the fact that ladyless did demonstrate to him in no uncertain terms that she was willing to die for her love is enough to convince him that he was wrong what you feel for that dwarf is not real so much because it was thrandwell's reaction to ladyless's grief I like the fact that the film treats this as some massive realization for ladyless however is absurd what I also find interesting is that she is so focused on how sad she is that she does not make any mention of the fact that thranduel could easily have prevented keeley's death thranderwill is also not given the chance to Grapple with this idea possibly because he doesn't particularly care about one dead dwarf as this is the final scene we get for these two characters I think it is worth mentioning that we get absolutely no closure with regard to thranduwill everything he has done in this Trilogy has been with the goal of obtaining white gems of pure Starlight from Erebor he was willing to go to war in pursuit of this as Thorin has now died and as we are about to see Dane be crowned King Under the Mountain it is highly unlikely that thrandu will will ever achieve this goal Dane has even less of a reason to give thranduel anything than Thorin did and because the film does not address this we can only assume that after this scene thrandu will simply abandoned his centuries-long quest to acquire gems from Erebor in the grand scheme of things this is a very minor plot thread so I can absolutely see why this was not included as the trilogy wraps up but this just highlights how wafer thin thranduel's motivations were the gems were mentioned once or twice their existence facilitated his presence within this film and then they were promptly forgotten about Faith Randall loves his son conceals his emotions well and acknowledges when he is wrong and ladyless is entirely unfamiliar with the concept of love cut to Bilbo who is approached by Gandalf in the aftermath of the battle as he cleans his pipe neither one seems to know what to say it is pretty clear Bilbo has changed just as Gandalf predicted can you promise that I will come back and if you do you will not be the same they then watch the dwarves as they mourn the loss of their King the lake townians also then pay their respects to Thorin again the question as to whether or not Dane will pay what Thorin had promised them is left unanswered we then see that Thorin is to be buried alongside his nephews with the Arkenstone the king's Jewel in hand the dwarves then welcomed their new king thorin's cousin Dane so although I like this scene and I honestly have absolutely no idea why it was not in the theatrical cut I do have a rather important question is the idea here now that the Arkenstone has been buried with Thorin that the whole crazy gold thing is just not a factor anymore because if that's what is intended then that's absolutely not how this has been seen to work more than likely Dane will also succumb to the exact same sickness as Thorin possibly even more severely as Gandalf told us previously this isn't particularly relevant to this movie but it definitely means that this is far more of a bittersweet ending than what is initially implied and it suggests that the reason Dane and his army did not help whatsoever during the Lord of the Rings is because Dane had been Afflicted with being [ __ ] Bonkers additionally if the Arkenstone is now buried then this would imply that Dane cannot rule over the seven Dwarven kingdoms as he does not bear the king's Jewel yes the other dwarves could just kind of accept him as their King but to that idea I say nay as the entire plot of these films is contingent upon that very thing being outside of the Realms of possibility that said this scene closes the book on the dwarves of Erebor they have completed their quests they have reclaimed their home and have instilled a new king without this scene's inclusion there is no closure for the dwarves so I am very happy to see it included in the Extended Cut anyway at the entrance to Erebor a teary-eyed Berlin tells Bilbo of the great feast they will have to honor Thorin I will play you part of this scene now because I do quite like it and I think describing it won't do it justice songs will be sung Tales will be told Lauren Oak and shield will pass into Legend I know that's how you must honor him but to me he was never that to me he was well I think I'll slip quietly away will you tell the others I said goodbye tell them yourself this is an excellent send-off for Bilbo and it clearly shows that all of the surviving dwarves truly consider him to be one of their own one issue here is that this development happened entirely within the first film which is something I will go into in the final autopsy video Bilbo extends to them an open invitation to visit him in the Shire and he departs this scene is very selective with its dialogue and Bilbo occasionally finds himself unable to speak because he is understandably overwhelmed this is a rare moment in these films where the emotion and the acting is front and center we then see Bilbo and Gandalf's journey home Gandalf accompanies Bilbo as far as the borders of the Shire and he then says you're not really supposed to that only all adventures and escapes were managed by yeah [Music] luck [Music] luck [Music] luck luck luck [Music] [Music] luck [Music] I know there is a follow-up that contextualizes this line but in isolation I find it extremely funny that this line is in this film given everything that has happened magic rings should not be used lightly so here it is revealed that Gandalf knew about the ring from the moment Bilbo appeared to them outside of the goblin tunnels this is something that on first viewing I considered to be absolutely catastrophic but now I am less sure Gandalf knows that Bilbo has a magical ring and this is evidently nothing particularly abnormal for Middle Earth Gandalf himself of course also has a magical ring given Gandalf seeming indifference to Bilbo having a magic ring I think it is probably also safe to assume that there are lesser magical Rings within Middle Earth that are not the one ring as Gandalf seems to believe that the one ring was swept out to sea by the anduin there is no immediate reason why he should suspect that Bilbo's ring is the one ring that is what I have in defense of Gandalf's lack of concern unfortunately there is a flip side to that ring in Fellowship of the Ring Gandalf begins to suspect that Bilbo's ring is the One Ring after he attempts to touch it it is unclear exactly what happens here as the flash of the eye of Sauron is only there for the benefit of the audience so my interpretation is that Gandalf is able to sense some kind of dark magic when he touches the ring he then travels to ministerius and confirms that it is indeed the One Ring the suggestion then is that had Gandalf merely touched the ring in this scene he would have then known 60 years early that it is the One Ring The question as to how reasonable it is to expect Gandalf to not only allow Bilbo to keep the ring but also to not even ask to inspect it is an open question as Bilbo goes on to lie to Gandalf and claim that he lost the ring during the battle the writers could very easily have had Gandalf asked to see the ring only for Bilbo to then claim it to be lost which would have gone some way towards plugging this hole and would have made Gandalf's reaction to Bilbo's Disappearance in The Fellowship of the Ring more explicable I don't really have a strong opinion either way my preference however would have been that they removed this dialogue exchange entirely as then the question is never asked this would then also mean that Gandalf's first knowledge of Bilbo's magic ring would have been when he went invisible at the beginning of Fellowship as was heavily implied by that movie I suppose you think that was terribly clever there are many magic rings in this world this world will beggins and none of them should be used like Gandalf's reaction here certainly makes a lot less sense if he already knew that Bilbo had a magical ring that can turn him invisible and my presumption is that the reason this scene exists in the Battle of the Five Armies is so as to tie it in neatly with the Lord of the Rings by having Bilbo and Gandalf unknowingly discuss the central McGuffin of that trilogy anyway Bilbo bids Gandalf farewell and he returns home he then finds that his belongings are in the process of being auctioned off as the other residents of the Shire had presumed Bilbo to be dead meaning that Bilbo has returned home after over a year and coincidentally he arrived back on the exact day that his belongings were being sold will back the film on a needless convenience and more fan service we certainly haven't had our feel of that for some strange reason Bilbo is then asked to prove that he is in fact Bilbo Baggins as seemingly the entire town has forgotten what he looked like and so he presents the contract that he signed in the first film contract of employment there my signature seems to be an order who is this person you pledged your service to foreign Organ Shield he was my friend I [ __ ] love this and I [ __ ] hate that they couldn't think of a better way to include it than to have the entirety of the Shire forget who Bilbo is Bilbo here is able to finish verbalizing the thought that he had at Erebor to me he was he was my friend enough time has passed for him to come to terms with thorin's death and he is finally able to speak those words which end up being the final words of the film concluding this Trilogy with Bilbo reminiscing about his friend Thorin if only Bilbo then feels drawn to the ring and decides to take it out of his pocket for another look revealing that he did not lose it as he had told Gandalf earlier which of course we as the audience already knew we then cut forwards to Gandalf's arrival at Bag End in Fellowship of the Ring we don't know more visitors well wishes or distant relations and what about video [Music] meaning that the move movie has thrown away its potential for an ending centered around Bilbo and thorin's friendship and has instead opted for characters being idiots contrivances and nostalgia-baiting I actually can't think of a more fitting end for this Trilogy the films seem to think they are about Bilbo and Thorin and whilst this is true to some degree it is utterly overshadowed by an endless stream of idiotic characters insane contrivances and wasted time injecting Nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia and with that dear viewer we cut to the credits so that concludes my thoughts on the Battle of the Five Armies the length of this script has exceeded even my expectations and so that is the reason why this one took a little longer to release than I had intended but we are not done yet regulars on the channel may be aware that when I covered rings of power I concluded the series with a final autopsy video where I collected all of my thoughts on the series as a whole and gave definitive conclusions I have decided that I will do a similar video to round out the Hobbit is not very good series that said I am still working out exactly how I'm going to structure that video as the reasons why rings of power is not very good are generally not the reasons why the Hobbit is not very good I have no idea how long that video will be or how long it will take me to make it but stay tuned because that video is coming next I will save most of my final thoughts on the trilogy for that video but for now I will offer as much of a conclusion as I can with regard to the Battle of the Five Armies this film is absolutely the worst of the three the disparity in quality between this and Fellowship of the Ring is not dissimilar to the disparity between The Empire Strikes Back And The Phantom Menace there were not five armies in combat at any point in time the elves retreated before gundabat arrived and as I already mentioned gundabad did not appear to make it to the battle before being defeated by The Eagles there are multiple Massive Action set pieces and not one of them feels grounded in any way whatsoever a huge amount of the narrative is reliant on one character being crazy in a very specific way there is an overabundance of Reliance on visual effects for the various armies meaning that it is incredibly difficult to take any of this seriously virtually all of the fighting became numbing because I cared about very few of the characters and those I did care about were seemingly Invincible until they weren't the insane physics and slapstick comedy have been dialed up to 11. the film spends an unfathomable amount of time on greasebag which is Criminal for reasons I already went into the sheer amount of bloat in this film in is unlike any other now for the bits I liked thorin's climactic battle with Azog and his reconciliation with Bilbo was mostly excellent this film contains the most emotionally effective scenes in the trilogy although this is largely as a result of the narrative payoffs being contained within this film the acting is generally excellent with one or two exceptions Lee Pace's thrandwell is the highlight of the film for me both as a performance and as a character with Dane as a close second so with that dear viewer it is time for me to depart I want to give a massive thank you to each and every one of you who has been watching my videos somehow enough people are enjoying my content for me to essentially be doing this full time I am immensely grateful for all of the support from you guys it honestly means the world to me I also want to give a special thank you to happy nihilist gagalam the mad goose wizard Gurney spunker fire Chewie trufflepup Vanessa reader Evie Sky Flopper Ryan cry pixel pit poison sumac nizul tank and Aussie for providing the rather excellent drawings as seen earlier in the video so if you have made it this far please do consider liking sharing or subscribing as it will help me make more videos like this in future if you have not already check out our community Discord server Link in the description where you will also find a link to my patreon if you want to support me directly thank you so much for watching this stupidly long video and I will see you in the next one

Channel: Random Film Talk

Views: 265,960

Keywords: random film talk, review, film, movie, movie review, film review, reviews, scene, clip, trailer, teaser, rings of power, autopsy, galadriel, sauron, elrond, gandalf, a shadow of the past, lord of the rings, the hobbit analysis, the hobbit verdict, the hobbit breakdown, the hobbit is bad, the hobbit, smaug, bilbo and smaug, benedict cumberbatch, thranduil, legolas, bard, luke evans, lee pace, battle of the five armies, the hobbit trilogy

Id: 4fMCCz2vwl4

Length: 235min 47sec (14147 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2023