by Grace Crawford

Images courtesy of New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, WingNut Films, and Warner Bros. Pictures.

I don’t think I’m what you could call a hardcore fan of The Lord of the Rings. I mean, yeah, I watched and loved the Peter Jackson movies like everyone else, and I’ve sat through more than one extended edition marathon.

But I barely know how to spell The Silmarillion, much less know what it is, and I keep calling that Westmarch one the Red Book of Dorne, which is completely wrong because I’m mixing up high fantasy universes and they should revoke my nerd card immediately and ban me from attending conventions ever again.

So I don’t think you could call me a fan by any definition of the word. I do, however, enjoy the movies immensely — so much so that I went to see The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies last night in the VIP theatre. (Pro tip: do that. They bring you food, like right to your chair.)

But this is not a plug for movie theatres and their rising standards. This is me talking about the movie I saw, my impressions of the franchise, and what I think comes next. So let’s take an unexpected journey, shall we?

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by Grace Crawford

Images courtesy of New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, WingNut Films, and Warner Bros. Pictures.

Desolation, n. a state of complete emptiness or destruction.

Doesn’t it annoy you when people pick a word, maybe not even a particularly fitting word, to define an entire subject and then begin a discussion with a dictionarial definition of that word? Doesn’t it seem pedantic? Doesn’t it seem… almost sm[a]ug?

It’s been a while since I  saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. And it’s been even longer since I read the book. So I have no right to be smaug, or even just plain smug, about anything to do with this movie, and I’m pretty sure some fans are going to take umbrage with my subject matter. In my defence, I mentioned last time how difficult it was to write reviews for epic-length movies, and I still stand by that statement. There’s just so much action, so many characters, and so much plot development to keep track of that it all boggles the mind a bit. But let’s try to dive into that, shall we?

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By Grace Crawford

Images courtesy of New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, WingNut Films, Warner Bros. Pictures

The big problem with reviewing epic movies is that you can never cram in all the things you want to talk about. And by the end, when it’s all formed into one cohesive, coherent piece, you find that there are a lot of little things you forgot about or had no place for, which is quite sad. So I will do my best with this, because it was a lot of the little things that made this movie so enjoyable.

Since I saw this in the theatre, as opposed to what I do normally—which is watch things on my laptop while I’m wearing my pajamas and eating chocolate chips by the handful because reasons—I wasn’t able to pause the movie at various points to take notes and think about things and also get more chocolate chips because I ate the whole bag. So this is gonna be a little scattered, and you’re gonna deal with it, and you’re gonna like it, because your only alternative is Thom, and he doesn’t like fantasy or sword fights or anything awesome ever.

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