Beams of Unoriginality

Recently, during one of my hourly space-outs at work, it occurred to me that there are quite a few films that feature a huge beam of (usually blue) light reaching into the sky. The longer I sat there, staring at the wall with an untouched report in front of me, the more films I thought of which feature a sky-beam. For the most part, it seems to be the go-to visual representation of some cataclysmic craziness.

Here's my beam list:

The Avengers (2012)

This Is The End (2013)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

The Last Airbender (2010)

Transformers (2007)

Iron Man (2008)

Cloud Atlas (2012)

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Thor (2011)

Tron: Legacy (2010)

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (2011)

Sky-beams are rapidly becoming quite an action movie cliché. However, having said that, I don't actually dislike their use in a blockbuster. They're undeniably cool to look at, but I fear that we'll get very sick of them very soon, due to sheer over-exposure. Kind of like when I foolishly ate everyone else's Wagon Wheels at Ben Charles' 10th birthday party and as a result, to this day, the mere thought of marshmallow makes me gag. 

How about mixing it up a bit every once in a while, Hollywood? Why not throw a sky-helix or a sky-zig-zag in there from time to time, for the sake of variety? Please don't let the sky-beam become cinematic marshmallow. I can't stomach it.

Chef (2014)

When I watched Chef the other day, something just didn't sit right with me about it. I really wanted to enjoy it, but I found myself impatiently waiting for it to end. I didn't get involved in it at all, but I couldn't figure out the reason. It wasn't just the cringe-worthy attempt to be hip by continually referencing Twitter, although that definitely grated on me. I sat and pondered this for a while, and eventually realised why I couldn't get into this film. There wasn't enough at risk to make it interesting to watch.

The reason they're all so happy is because not a single thing has ever gone wrong in their entire lives.

Most films follow the three act structure. The first act is used for exposition, and it introduces the characters, setting, and some sort of problem for the characters to overcome, or a goal for them to strive towards. The second act involves the characters attempting to solve the problem, but finding themselves unable to, and everything goes pear-shaped for them. In the third act, the characters complete their character arc, where they learn something about themselves or grow/change in some way, and finally solve the problem at the end of the movie. The tension is supposed to rise and rise throughout the film until the climax finally gives us the satisfying resolution we've been waiting for.

This is what a normal movie feels like as we're watching it.

In this movie, Jon Favreau plays the eponymous chef, who ends up leaving his job at a restaurant after having creative differences with the owner and a humiliating public fight with a critic. Instead, he opts to buy a food truck and travel around, selling the food that he's passionate about. Now, in a more interesting film, he'd struggle for a big portion of the film. Maybe the truck keeps breaking down in the middle of nowhere, or perhaps he can't seem to attract many customers. He'd probably be on the verge of giving up on his dream, but finally, towards the end, he'd manage to overcome all of this and succeed. There'd be the big, rewarding payoff that we'd been waiting for.

However, in this film, that's not how it went down. In this film, this is what happens after he quits his job at the restaurant:

• He got his hands on an old food truck.
• His old work colleague turned down a promotion in the fancy restaurant to come and work alongside him in this decrepit truck for no money whatsoever. I guess I'm willing to let this one slide. Maybe they were incredibly good friends or whatever, but that was a terrible business decision on the colleague's part.
• Colleague gets the truck spruced up all nice.
• Chef's son posts Tweets and Vines about them, which go viral and attract a huge fan base wherever they go, making them instantly successful.
• The critic who had wronged the chef earlier in the film comes with a gushing apology, and vows to buy him a goddamn restaurant where he can do whatever he wants.
• Chef gets his ex-wife back.
• Everyone lives happily ever after.

Everything goes well for him after the initial problem is encountered. It just doesn't make for an interesting film at all.

This is what Chef felt like as I watched it. Apart from the tiny rise in tension where he quits his job, nothing else got in his way, making the whole ride far too easy to keep me interested.

I get that this film is probably just supposed to be a feel-good movie about the dude's family, but I really didn't find it particularly interesting. There are plenty of feel-good movies in which there's still conflict to make it more exciting. I'm a fan of Favreau's work in quite a few other movies, but this was essentially two hours of him living out his fantasies on screen, where he plays around with his cuisine hobby, and somehow gets with both Scarlett Johansson and Sofia Vergara. Also, just a minor thing, but I got a bit sick of all the cuban music by the end of the movie. I don't even know why. Maybe that was just me.

Overall, I rate Chef 3/10.

I did enjoy all the food porn, although for a film called "Chef", I expected a lot more of it. It certainly was a feel-good movie. In fact, it was too much of a feel-good movie. There was so much good-feeling that it was boring to watch.

How to make a Michael Bay Transformers movie

I guess Michael Bay is an easy target for criticism by this point, because it's gotten to the stage where we expect his films to be awful. That doesn't mean I'm going to lay off him, however. I watched all four of the Transformer's movies over the space of a couple of weeks (I couldn't bear to watch them on consecutive days). After investing over ten hours of my life watching these movies, I developed this fool-proof list of rules to allow anybody to put themselves in Michael Bay's shoes and make a Transformers film. In this article, I'll abbreviate the titles as follows:

T1 = Transformers (2007)
T2 = Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
T3 = Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)
T4 = Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

So, in no particular order, I give you Michael Bay's rules for making a Transformers movie:

• Ensure the product placement in your film is as shameless, blatant, and frequent as physically possible. Above all else, you must remember that your movie is not art in any way. I mean, is art going to pay for your third Malibu mansion? Hell no it won't! Your movie is a product. It's a medium through which you can become a rich bastard. The easiest way to get a truck load of money is by selling out through corporate sponsorship, and using your movie as a two and a half hour advert for a thousand different products. 

How about a round of "Spot the Product"? My favourite is in the bottom-right, where Michael Bay has used his movie to advertise another one of his own goddamn movies.

• If you can't squeeze enough product placement in the "background" of every shot, just use the Transformers themselves! Plaster them with brand names and you're guaranteed at least two more wheelbarrows of cash. 

Because an ancient race of alien robots would highly value brand awareness. My favourite is the Oreo one. How shameless is that advertising? "Hey guys, I know you're busy watching Transformers battling each other, but how about trying some delicious Oreos? They taste amazing dipped in milk. Go buy a pack or two. You know you want to! Okay, thank you for your time. Now back to the action."

• Make sure Optimus Prime, the most badass and interesting character in this whole franchise, is absent/incapacitated for a huge chunk of your movie. In T1, he didn't even show up until over an hour into the movie. In T2, he's dead for half the film. In T3, he gets tangled in some cables whilst most of the action is going on. In T4, he gets captured and locked up in a big space prison. JUST LET US WATCH OPTIMUS FIGHT THINGS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!
• When Optimus Prime finally shows up, upgrade him and make him look all awesome (just like the trailer promised), but make sure he's only upgraded and awesome for about a minute, before he goes back to standard Optimus. In T2, he took the old, dying Transformer's parts and he became badass for about a minute. In T3, he had his trailer to carry all his equipment and he became badass for about a minute. In T4, he rode on the back of a Dinobot and he became badass for about a minute. Starting to see a pattern?
• Remind your audience how awesome and powerful America is, with a enough military propaganda to make Joseph Goebbels proud. The underlying message of these movies is that America is the greatest nation on the planet, so cram in shot after shot of America's almighty military. I want to see fleets of battleships, huge rooms of drone pilots, squads of indestructible Navy Seals, and endless intelligence agents supporting them all. Seriously, these films made me feel proud to be American, and I'm from North London.
• If that wasn't enough, it's very important that there are dozens of American flags scattered throughout each film. Remember: America rules, guys. Don't forget about America. Hello? Guys? Are you thinking about America? Please look at this flag. Isn't it glorious!

Hell yeah!

• It's of utmost importance that the main human characters are generally as annoying as possible. Every time it cuts back to them, your audience should groan in boredom.
• The purpose of your female lead is to be a sex object. In fact, basically every female character who isn't a mother needs to show either arse or tit in order to receive screen time. Women must be sexualised to the extreme. Have them wearing as little clothing as you can get away with. Remember, a woman's purpose is to give us guys some eye candy!

(Top) First scene featuring female lead in T2. (Middle) First scene featuring female lead in T3. (Bottom) First scene featuring female lead in T4.
Notice a trend? To really put this in perspective, try and imagine the male lead being established in the same way.

• Also, make your women as orange and shiny as you can. Ideally, you'll cast a tangerine in fishnet stockings. 
• In fact, try and make every single shot almost entirely composed of various shades of orange and blue. If you can't do it naturally by shooting everything in a desert, or at sunset, do it in post-production, by screwing with your actor's skin tones until they look jaundiced.

I'm seriously concerned about the state of everyone's livers.

• Just as the military story starts to get interesting, cut back to the goddamn Witwickys bickering about plant pots or whatever it is they do. Forget what your audience wants, you're in charge. If you want to focus a big chunk of your film on the "hilarious" mundanity of suburbia, just go for it. After all, it's suburban adolescents who are going to see your movie. Maybe this way, they'll think, "Wow, this guy is just an average high school kid like me. He has parents and lives in a house and everything! I can really relate to him. I'm definitely going to go and see all four thousand sequels." That's how kids' brains work, right?
• When the Transformers are transforming, make sure it's as incomprehensible and vomit-inducing as possible. If anybody can tell where Bumble Bee's legs came from whilst he's transforming from a car, then you've made a mistake. Go back and make it more confusing.
• Any ethnic characters must be portrayed in the most racist way possible. It's very clear that Michael Bay and his writers have never met anybody who isn't white. For this reason, we need to rely on stereotypes and offensive caricatures. Remember the introduction of Jazz in T1? He actually said this: "What's crackin' lil bitches? This looks like a cool place to kick it!" whilst doing flips and striking poses. Or how about the insanely incompetent twins from T2? All they did was fight each other, get in the way of everyone else, and talk with such over the top ghetto slang, that their dialogue was no doubt written by a middle class white guy who still lives with his mother. What about the Japanese Transformer in T4? I can just picture how the thought process went for him: "Alright, let's have a Japanese Transformer, who speaks with a Japanese accent for some reason, even though he's an alien robot. What do Japanese people look like? Of course! Samurai! Problem solved. Now, for the next order of business: an African Transformer who looks like a Zulu warrior..."

(Top) Jazz in T1 posing for the front cover of Run DMC's Greatest Hits. (Middle) Even the other characters in T2 hated the twins. (Bottom) Samurai Transformer from T4. Shut up, that's why.

• Get Linkin Park (or, if they've had enough of your crap, get Imagine Dragons) to write a song for your movie. Don't forget that the soundtrack is yet another opportunity to get a load of cash. What band are the kids into these days? Find 'em. Get a song out of 'em. Sell it. 
• Make sure that Optimus Prime becomes less and less likeable as you progress through the series. When we first meet Optimus in T1, he's the wise, powerful leader of the Autobots, who would gladly give his own life for mankind. By the time we get to T3, he's the worst. This is an exact quote from him in T3, after the Decepticons had spent a day destroying Chicago, completely unhindered: "Your leaders will now understand Decepticons will never leave your planet alone, and we needed them to believe we had gone, for today, we take the battle to them." Putting aside the fact that this reads like it was written by an eleven year old, what a total dick move by Optimus. So you sacrificed the city of Chicago, and allowed millions of people to be slaughtered, just to make a point? Talk about passive aggressive! He then went on to execute Sentinel Prime, his wounded, unarmed prisoner who used to be a close friend. He also murdered Megatron who had literally just saved his life. In T4, he threatened the Dinobots by basically saying, "If you turds don't let me rule you, I will literally kill you." Yes, Führer! Heil Optimus!
• The film must finish within a couple of minutes of the action ending. Don't forget that your audience has the mental capacity of a turnip, so they won't be able to stay focused after colourful things have stopped fighting other colourful things. As soon as you finish the action, wrap everything up ASAP.
• Always finish your movie with Optimus doing a voiceover, summing everything up, like J.D. in Scrubs.

So there you have it. With this guide, you too can produce a billion dollar film franchise, just like the almighty Michael Bay. What young artist doesn't aspire to be on par with a modern day Shakespeare like him? Now go out there, and don't come back until you've sold ad space to every company you can think of. Godspeed.

I, Frankenstein (2014)

God damn, this film is stupidly bad. There's so much stupidity, I don't even know where to start, so I'm just going to jump straight in. 

The plot is an unimaginative "evil forces plan to destroy mankind, and only one person can stop them" kind of story. That one person is Frankenstein's monster, or Adam as he's called in this film. ("Get it? Like the first man god created? It's like mankind is playing God! Do you see what we did there?"). 

Why has this poster been photoshopped so lazily? Two of those gargoyles have clearly just been copied and pasted. The same lack of effort went into every other aspect of the film, so I guess it works well in the marketing too.

The main character in this film had no personality whatsoever. Not only that, but he has no motivations to justify any of his actions. Why does he decide to start hunting demons after 200 years of being alone? He clearly doesn't like the company of others, so why not just stay isolated? Similarly, later in the film, why does he suddenly start caring about the people? He seriously said: "My circumstances have changed. I have someone with me now. A human. A scientist. I have to protect her." Why do you have to protect her? There's no motivation for it, other than "it's where the writer wants the story to go".

The film was written terribly. Putting aside the hilariously cheesy dialogue, it's as if the film couldn't make up it's mind if we're supposed to be supporting the angels, or Adam, or maybe both? He constantly flips between fighting with them and fighting against them, to the point where I stopped rooting for anyone to be victorious. 

Because I didn't care about the characters, there was no tension in any of the action scenes, since I couldn't care about the outcome. If the action was decent in this film, it might have made it bearable, but it wasn't. The fight choreography was standard, the CGI was poor, and the make up made the demons look like something out of some old Star Trek movie.

There are loads of small things that pissed me off about this film. We're supposed to believe this 30 year old doctor woman is one of the world's most respected electrophysiologists? Even if that were true, why is she the ONLY person who is able to make sense of Frankenstein's journal? It doesn't make any sense. Blonde doctor also declares that she'd rather die than help the demons reanimate an army... except if they kill a work colleague. At that point, it's worth raising an army of monsters to kill all of mankind, just in the vain hope that she'll also revive some old dude she works with. 

I think the thing that annoyed me the most about this film was how incapable the army of angels/gargoyles were. So you've been defending the Earth from demons for hundreds of years, and yet you still couldn't figure out that their (enormous) base was a quarter of a mile from yours? How useless are you people? They also lock Adam up at one point for not being secretive enough when he killed a demon in an alley, but later we see the gargoyles flying around, roaring loudly, smashing up buildings, crushing cars, causing huge fires and being a general nuisance. Bit hypocritical aren't we? Also, are there no humans in this city whatsoever? The entire city was deserted for the majority of the film. 

These kind of films are often good for just switching off your brain and enjoying some mindless fun for a while. Not this film, however. This film really didn't entertain me in any way.

Overall, I rate I, Frankenstein 0/10.

On no level did I enjoy this film. It's worthless. 

Horrible Bosses 2 (2014)

The first Horrible Bosses wasn't bad. I mean, obviously it was nothing groundbreaking, but there was a good cast playing some hilarious characters, with a decent amount of laugh-out-loud moments scattered throughout it.

Horrible Bosses 2 is everything that's wrong with comedy sequels. The producers wheel out the same cast and tell them to do the exact same thing again (but with a much worse script). Due to the success of the first film, they know this one will likely make a profit. For this reason, they don't bother putting in the effort to make this film as good as the first, because what's the point? Schmucks like us will go and see it either way. 

I notice that Kevin Spacey isn't on this poster. He made a wise decision distancing himself from this piece of crap movie.

There are virtually no funny moments in the whole movie, because the entire thing is just 1 hour 48 minutes of Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day talking over each other. 90% of the dialogue between the three main characters is completely incomprehensible. 

Fortunately for the sake of the story, a load of the secondary characters from the first film (angry boss, slutty boss, weird gangsta), as well as a couple of new ones, were also crowbarred into this movie to carry the plot on behalf of the main characters who were essentially passengers in their own movie. Unfortunately, my favourite character from the first film, the hilarious douchebag son played by Colin Farrell, was killed off in the last movie, so he couldn't even make an appearance in the sequel and redeem it a little bit. 

At the end of the day, a comedy movie is supposed to make you laugh. As long as you're laughing, who cares? Well that's just the thing. There was barely any of it that I found funny. Most of it is stuff that we've seen before. Remember that bit at the beginning where it looks like Charlie Day is wanking off Jason Sudeikis, because of the audience's perspective? Wasn't that a hilarious, original joke? It's not as if that gag has been done to death in a million other movies... 

Most of the "humour" was just the characters arguing indecipherably. It was kind of funny for the first few minutes, but it got stale very quickly. Similarly, I very rapidly got bored of Kevin Spacey, who was just there to be angry, and Jennifer Aniston, who was just there to say vulgar sexual things. I mean, a film which can make you begin to resent actors you've always liked has to be doing something very wrong.

To be honest, this film was so empty that I'm struggling to write much more about it. There's nothing to talk about. There was a good cast and a standard wacky plot for a comedy movie, but the film itself was just so void of anything worthwhile, that it made the whole thing pointless. It's not worth the time spent watching it.

Overall, I rate Horrible Bosses 2 2/10.

I laughed once or twice, but apart from that, this film was a lazy cash-grab that isn't worth watching.

Frozen (2013)

Earning almost $1.3 billion dollars at the box office worldwide, Frozen is the highest grossing animated film of all time by quite a significant margin. Before I saw it, I'd only heard good things about it.

When I did watch it, I was left with a feeling of indifference. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't amazing either. What's the big deal about this movie? I couldn't really get emotionally invested in Elsa, the irritating ice bitch. She was deceptively marketed as the main character, but the film wasn't really about her. It was much more about her sister. Not only that, but I didn't laugh like I usually do at these kind of movies. In fact, at least one of the jokes was totally ripped off. The "we finish each other's... sandwiches" gag has been done before in both The Simpsons and Arrested Development. Probably elsewhere as well, come to think of it. That's just a minor thing, but it's still a testament to how unoriginal this film is, which I'll talk about a bit further down.

From L to R, "Dog-Horse-Reindeer", "Will they? Won't they? Romantic interest", "Annoying comic relief", "Ice witch bitch", "The more likeable sister", "Surprise surprise, I'm actually a villain".

Before I go any further, I will say that it was an interesting angle to have the whole "act of true love" being the love between two sisters, rather than a token handsome prince coming to save the day. Additionally, with Elsa running off and refusing to be a "perfect girl", there was some cool feminist vibes in Frozen, which is good for the millions of young girls who do love this movie. However, it was a bit heavy-handed with the girl-power message, which made it a little bit cringeworthy. Disney's Tangled (2010) is a much, much better version of this movie. It had a very likeable female lead. Anna felt like a cheap imitation of Rapunzel, and Elsa is just a miserable, self-centered bitch for most of Frozen. I really didn't care what happened to her. Not only that, but the feminist message was a lot less ham-fisted in Tangled. It showed how Rapunzel and Flynn were equals who worked well as a team, and their relationship came about very naturally in the setting of the story. Frozen's message is pretty much, "like this if you're a strong independent ice queen who don't need no man", and the story seemed to be secondary to this statement.

Frozen really is just a lazy copy of the vastly superior Tangled.

For me, Frozen is worth less than the sum of its parts. It's incredibly derivative. It felt as if the producers had a checklist of kid's movie cliches to fill out this film.

• Goofy comic relief sidekick
• Horse (or in this case, reindeer) which acts kind of like a person and kind of like a dog
• Romantic subplot
• Shut-in princess
• Quirky magical creatures
• Parent-less main character(s)
• Prophecy of some kind of looming danger
• Random outbursts into song

Despite managing to squeeze all of this in to make a film with the oh-so-familiar Disney style, there still wasn't enough to produce anything more than a generic, cookie-cutter kids film that we've seen a hundred times before. I would also add that these cliches were poorly executed in this movie. For example, Olaf was purely annoying, as were the stupid little troll things. They were blatant attempts at marketing some cute little characters to sell merchandise.

Not only that, but I found that barely any of the songs were in any way memorable. Most of them sounded like terrible show-tunes, rather than the catchy music Disney has made in the past. I will admit that Let It Go is the one catchy song in the entire film. I'd hoped for a reprise of it at some point later in the movie, but it never returned. We just got more of the boring songs. Don't ask me how any of them go, because I don't have a clue.

"It's just a kid's movie. You need to lower your expectations."

This is the defence I hear most often when I complain about the film and, in my opinion, it's an infuriatingly weak one. There are so many animated kid's movies which I adore, both old and new. I actually spent a while listing them all, but ended up changing my mind, because the list went on forever and was really boring to read. Just know this: there were a truck load. Frozen just didn't live up to any of its predecessors. There are a load of kids films which are a lot more entertaining. In fact, the main thing Frozen has going for it (the feminist icons for young girls), has been done even better in previous films (Mulan, Brave, and, of course, Tangled are great for this). This film felt like it was made due to a load of executive marketing calculations, rather than a passion to tell a particular story.

Overall, I rate Frozen 4/10.

A below average score for a below average movie. It got the job done, but it didn't excel in anything whatsoever. It has no rewatchability.

Boyhood (2014)

I watched Boyhood a couple of weeks ago with my girlfriend. It came up in conversation yesterday. She asked me if we were drunk when we watched it, because she remembers nothing about it. I reassured her that we were stone-cold sober, but I then realised that I barely remember anything about it either. Seriously, what even happened in that film? Was there an actual plot other than "young kid grows into older kid"? 

"But you're missing the point of the film! It's realism. It's depicting real life, maaaaaan." 

I (as well as the majority of the human race) watch films for two main reasons:

1. To get a couple of hours of escapism. I want to experience something extraordinary that I wouldn't normally, in my everyday life. 
2. To see interesting, complex characters reacting in their own interesting way to the real world. 

I do not, however, watch films to see normal, boring people living their normal, boring lives. I didn't care about any of the characters. None of them really had any depth beyond their familial roles. Not a single interesting event happened to warrant their dull personalities. If I wanted to experience the mundanity of real life, I wouldn't waste a tenner on a ticket in order to do so. 

"Boy" from Boyhood (I don't even remember his name) progressing from small child to edgy teen.

"But did you know that Boyhood was shot over twelve years?!"

I do appreciate that, but it's not really enough to compensate for the bad acting and seemingly empty script. Additionally, although the film was technically shot over twelve years, it was actually only three or four days of filming each year. It wasn't really enough time for the actors to gel, and it came across in their performances. For the most part, it didn't feel like a family, broken or otherwise. It felt like a few strangers reading lines of pseudo-intellectual dialogue at each other.

The impression I got from watching Boyhood was that the director gathered everyone up once a year and said, "How about we do a scene where you talk to your teacher for some inspirational words or something? That'll probably be enough content for this year," or, "What about filming you bowling again? Yes, I know we've already done that, but I'm really struggling to come up with new ideas here. Plus, the owner of the bowling alley said he'd give me free hot dogs for life if I film there again."

The whole "broken family" thing is something that's been done hundreds of times before, in films where things actually happen. Not only that, but it just seemed so amateurishly done in this film. The over-acted/under-acted delivery of the cheesy writing throughout the film just left me cringing.

The example that immediately springs to mind is the scene where the drunk stepdad stomps his way to the dinner table for a little tantrum. "ANYBODY ELSE HAVE A PROBLEM WITH ME DRINKING AT MY TABLE?!" he yelled "intimidatingly", shortly before angrily throwing his glass across the room. In my case, this is one of the few scenes that has managed to remain in my memory, just because of how awful the acting was, and how forced drama felt. It was like I was watching a terrible, low-budget soap-opera.

It was an interesting experiment in terms of filmmaking, and it had so much potential, but it's completely wasted here, simply because this movie is painfully uneventful. There's no overall story arc whatsoever. The entire film is nothing but a sequence of scenes in which nothing of value occurs. If it wasn't for the visible ageing of the characters, most of the scenes could be interchanged without make the slightest bit of difference to the "plot". 

Overall, I rate Boyhood 3/10.

I was going to give it a generous 4/10, simply for the long-term persistence of the filmmakers, but I subtracted an extra point for the kid's annoying teen facial hair. Here's a tip to any young guys reading this: if you can't grow a beard, don't grow a beard. Patchy wisps of adolescent whiskers look lame. Always have. Always will.

I'm genuinely astounded by the number of awards and nominations that this film received. I get that it's an interesting idea to see all the actors grow for twelve years before your eyes, but in my opinion, it's still just a gimmick, and not a good enough one to save this event-less film. I firmly believe that if they'd gone down the conventional route of using different actors to portray the characters at different ages, nobody would care about this film. Subtracting the gimmick, this film has very little else going for it.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

I finally got around to watching the last Hobbit film this week. I went in with pretty low expectations, praying it would at least be better than the cinematic piece of excrement that was presented to us one year earlier. Nope. It was a disastrous finale to a declining franchise. I love The Lord of the Rings, so to me, watching the Hobbit films felt like being bitch slapped by a cave troll. 

I've been sitting, seething, ever since I skulked out of the cinema. There were so much wrong with these prequels that the easiest way for me to deal with them is by listing every single thing I hated about Peter Jackson's latest bowel movement. I need to therapeutically spill them out of my head and onto this page as a purging of my mind. So, in no particular order, here we go:

• WHY IS EVERYTHING CGI?! It's impossible to feel any sense of danger in this trilogy when all you're seeing is computer images smashing each other for nine hours. It's extremely noticeable for the entirety of the three films and ruins any immersion. A good example is in this last film, when we see the elf army standing at the foot of the Lonely Mountain. Even the elves standing right in the foreground were CGI. You couldn't hire a couple of extras for that scene, just to stand there?  CGI should be used to enhance practical effects, not to replace them entirely. I mean, the CGI was noticeable now, but in ten years' time, when CGI has moved on significantly, this film will have nothing going for it. It's a shallow, empty, computer generated snooze-fest. 

(L) Lurtz from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. (R) Azog the Defiler from The Hobbit trilogy.
Which is more intimidating? Correct answer: Lurtz, because he's an actual massive dude who could crack some skulls. Just looking at him is scary because I know he would genuinely tear me apart. There's a real sense of danger with Lurtz. Azog the Cartoon doesn't really pose a threat to me, because I can just delete him off the animator's hard drive and then he's gone. It's hard to feel intimidated by a drawing. There will come a day where a completely computer-generated character will be as photo-realistic as the real actor it is battling, but it is not this day.

• 99% of the orcs can be killed by chucking a rock at them, or giving them a little headbutt, apart from Bolg and Azog who are apparently terminators in orc form, and require half a movie to kill. I mean, we all know they're going to die in the end anyway, so why drag it out so much? It got incredibly boring and tiresome.
• I hate how the goblins all look like Dobby from Harry Potter has let himself go. They look ridiculous.
• The cave trolls in The Lord of the Rings had a very specific look. Why do all the trolls in this film look like 60 year old alcoholic Russian men?

(L) Troll from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. (R) Troll from The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
See what I mean?!

• Whilst we're on the topic of trolls, why are there suddenly GIANT trolls which are 5 times the size of regular trolls? Are these the grown up trolls? Are the trolls from The Lord of the Rings all infants? Did Legolas slaughter a baby in the mines of Moria? Should we start calling him "Legolas the baby-slayer"? These are the questions that need answering.
• Why the hell was the death of Smaug saved for the beginning of this film, rather than being at the end of the previous film where it rightfully belonged? It took less than ten minutes. Because of this insane decision, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is the only Tolkien film, out of all six, which has no resolution. Seriously, cut out the boring, over the top, Scooby-Doo chase sequence around the halls of Erebor. It added nothing except bad CGI and only made Smaug the Terrifying seem totally incompetent and non-threatening. The death of Smaug added nothing to this movie and its removal only detracted from the previous one. Also, Smaug's monologue in Lake Town was a total cliché. "I'M EVIL AND I'M GOING TO KILL YOUR CHILD BECAUSE I'M SO SUPER EVIL!" Get lost.
• Most of the dwarves have zero personality and are essentially extras throughout the entire Hobbit trilogy. You know that emotional scene at the end where Bilbo is saying goodbye to all the dwarves? I swear there were a few who I don't think had any lines in any of the three films. In fact, there were a couple who I don't even remember seeing before.  After the first movie, where they'd only properly introduced about five of the twelve dwarves, I wasn't too worried because I assumed that since there are two more movies to go, there would be plenty of time for us to get to know the other dwarves. Nope. I don't have a clue who most of those little bearded enigmas are.

This is as far as my understanding of the dwarves' characters goes.

• Kate from Lost kept slipping back into her American accent. Ain't no American elves! I half expected her to whip out a Big Mac with lembas bread buns.
• Where did those battle goats come from? Seriously. We saw the dwarf army marching in. We saw the elf army marching in. Neither brought any armoured goats with them. Thorin and co. charge out of the mountain and leap straight onto these ridiculous war goats which were conveniently standing there, waiting for them. WHY WERE THEY THERE?
• Now that I think about it, why doesn't anyone ride actual horses in this film? Thranduil rides an elk, Thorin rides a goat, Dain rides a pig, and Radagast gets around on a sleigh pulled by rabbits. RABBITS!
• Beorn doesn't look anything like how I imagined him. He's supposed to look like a huge, muscular, black-bearded lumberjack. What we got was a lanky Scandinavian dude who looks like a werewolf in mid-transformation. Not only that, but:



Sort your eyebrows out, Beorn. You have guests.

• BEORN WAS ONLY IN THIS MOVIE FOR FIVE SECONDS! That's not even an exaggeration. He was introduced in the last film and established as a total badass who even Azog was wary of. I remember being so excited to see him do some serious damage in the finale. It could have even been a slight redeeming factor of this horrendous movie. But no, Peter Jackson elected to cut one of the most interesting characters from the Hobbit in order to leave more screen time for his own awful character: Alfrid.

• Alfrid. I've seen him described as the Jar Jar Binks of the Hobbit movies. I think that's a compliment. At least Jar Jar moved the plot along. Alfrid added absolutely nothing. He was just annoying and cringey. I get that he was supposed to show that Bard was such a good guy in comparison, but it was completely unnecessary. He definitely didn't need as much screen time as he got. I was expecting him to either get killed off at some point, or to change his ways and fight with the men of Lake Town. You know, like a character arc? Characters are supposed to develop and grow so we can connect to them and feel something for them. Not Alfrid. He just goes around, irritating everyone, then wanders off at the end with a load of gold. So unsatisfying. It pisses me off to no end when I think that Beorn was cut so that we could see Alfrid stuffing gold into his bra.
• What's up with those giant worms? What were they all about? I'm not complaining so much about stuff being added for the films, but this just raises the question, "if the orcs had access to GIANT, MOUNTAIN MUNCHING, DEATH WORMS, then why wouldn't they use them in the Lord of the Rings? Don't add random stuff just for the sake of it. 
• The eagles coming to save the day. Again. I know it happens in the book, but in this film it was so anti-climactic when they arrived. It didn't give me that feeling of relief that I got in the Return of the King. I didn't feel anything. In fact I felt nothing but boredom for this entire film.
• Legolas looks like an old man when he's supposed to be 60 years younger. It's noticeable. Maybe the one place that could have actually used more CGI is Orlando Bloom's face.
• It's impossible to take Bard's family seriously when they keep calling him "Dah". Impossible.
• Way too many ridiculous, over the top stunts. I know the Lord of the Rings had a few (Legolas taking down a Mumak), but none of them were as bad as Bard riding a wagon down a gentle decline, as it exponentially increased in momentum until it jumped over his kids and smashed into an alcoholic Russian man/troll.
• The love triangle was so boring. I don't think anybody watching this film cared in the slightest about the weird, interspecies relationship going on between Tauriel and Kili. It got more and more cringe-worthy as time went on. It resulted in possibly the most groan-inducing piece of dialogue I've ever heard. Tauriel is grieving over Kili's dead body, when she turns to Thranduil and says something like, "If this is true love, I do not want it. :'( Why does it hurt so much????", to which Thranduil replies, "Because it is real". I instantly vomited in my lap.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOORIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!

• To be honest, there was absolutely no need for the female elf character. I can understand the introduction of a female character to stop the film from being too much of a sausage-fest. However, if you bring in a female character JUST to be the love interest of one of the male characters, you've missed the point a bit. I mean, yeah, she killed a load of orcs, but ultimately her presence in the film made no difference to the plot whatsoever.
• When Kili dies, the longing look between him and Tauriel went on for far too long. Lengthening a shot doesn't give it any more emotion when I don't give a damn about the characters. You need to sort your editing out, Jackson.
• Too many forced references to the Lord of the Rings. The worst offender is right at the end, when Legolas is like, "the boyfriend of the girl I love is dead so imma bounce on outta here," and Thranduil says something like, "you should go and seek out this ranger from the north. His father was a great man and he'll be even greater one day. People call him Strider, but his real name you will have to discover for yourself". He may as well have turned to the camera and winked at the audience at this point. Why couldn't you just say his goddamn name? IT'S ARAGORN! There's also literally no reason that Thranduil would tell Legolas that he needs to go and find Aragorn, other than to shoehorn a Lord of the Rings reference in there.
• Why do the orcs only speak orcish in this trilogy? It's really distracting having to constantly read subtitles for them. They never spoke orcish in the Lord of the Rings. It's yet another small difference that greatly distances the Hobbit trilogy from the Lord of the Rings.
• For that scene where Galadriel, Saruman and Elrond come and save Gandalf from Sauron and the Ringwraiths, I could just see Peter Jackson saying, "wouldn't it be super cool if Gandalf got captured at some point so that all the most powerful good guys had to have a fight against all the most powerful bad guys for no reason whatsoever?" Nah. It was bad CGI and blatant stunt doubles jumping around. Yet another pointless reference to the Lord of the Rings.
• Apart from Bilbo, none of the other characters had any closure. For the whole trilogy, they're talking about restoring Erebor and Dale to their former glory and when they finally reclaim the mountain, the film's over. Oh. Okay then. Similarly, the whole subplot with the Arkenstone goes nowhere. We should at least have seen Thorin being buried with it. Nah. We get nothing. Well, that's what I get for investing in a storyline, right?
• Dragging Pippin back to sing the final song over the end credits. Yet again, I hear Peter Jackson saying, "Y'all remember that super emotional bit in Return of the King where Pippin sang a song? Well Imma put another one here to try and force some emotion out of this dead, empty film." So forced. So uncomfortable.
• Last but not least, barely anybody in this film seemed to care about it. They all seemed bored. It came across in their performances. It's fair enough though. I'm sure that shooting in front of a green screen for weeks on end isn't the most fun way to make a film. I empathise. I was bored too. I found myself looking forward to the end of this monstrosity of a movie. 

Overall, I rate The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies 1/10.

I bumped it up from 0/10 simply because I really like Martin Freeman and Sir Ian McKellen. They did the best they could with the God-awful movie they were dumped into. Apart from that, this film doesn't really have any redeeming qualities. I didn't even find the action good enough to compensate for the lack of... anything interesting in this movie.

I feel completely let down by the entire Hobbit trilogy, and by Peter Jackson and his bloated, money-grabbing ego for "pulling a George Lucas", and ruining his own magnificent original trilogy with an abominable prequel trilogy. 

I'm going to go and watch the Lord of the Rings again to cleanse myself.